Page 94 of Restless (Brazen Bulls Birthright 5)

Light flooded over the storage bins, drawing long shadows across the concrete floor.

In the midst of those expected shadows, another: something large and dangling from a rafter. Something with a shape both utterly alien and heartbreakingly familiar.

Petra turned and fled up the stairs.

She ran through the living room, through the dining room, past the table full of paperwork horror, through the kitchen, and out the back door.

There, she fell to her knees and puked in a bed of hostas. Every retch came out as a wet scream.

When the retching and screaming was over for the moment, she knelt where she was, in the warm sun of an early autumn afternoon, and felt utterly alone. Her mother dead. Her father dead. Her best friend, the person she’d turned to in every pain, every loss, for years, was no longer her friend.

She had friends, but they seemed so far away. Continents away. Eons away.

Her father’s voice rose in her head.I know I’m not leaving you alone in the world.

She wasn’t alone. Even now, she wasn’t alone.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and called.

Jake picked up on the first ring. “Hey there.”

He sounded so relaxed, so pleased to hear her voice, Petra thought she’d go mad. Or maybe she already was.

“I need you. Please come.”

His tone changed instantly. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“My daddy ... please come.”

“I’m coming. Right now. Are you at his house?”

“Please come.”

“I’m already on the move. Ten minutes.”

Petra dropped her phone and lay down in the soft grass of her dead mother’s garden.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jay roared up ontothe long driveway at Petra’s father’s Swan Lake address. He’d never been here before; he was meant to come for the first time later on this very day, for dinner with Petra and her father.

Instead, he’d bugged out of work, shouting out, “Something’s wrong, I gotta go!” and Simon and Duncan had come running after him thirty seconds later. Now they were pulling onto the driveway behind him. Jay had barely spared them a thought.

He’d ridden all out the entire way, barely slowing on the driveway. Aiming to put his bike next to Petra’s Volvo, he finally eased back—and then he cleared the house and saw her lying on the ground.

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