Page 1 of Eight Years Gone

One

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

-Pablo Neruda

Wakeview, Pennsylvania

August

Thunder rumbled far in the distance as Jagger drove his vintage black Stingray down one of the worst blocks in East Wakeview. He kept his speed low, trailing his gaze over gang-tagged dingy buildings and barred windows, searching for his best friend.

The area was sketchy at best in the daylight. In the dark, it tended to be deadly.

“Where are you,” he muttered, taking another left as tension coiled his shoulders tighter.

He knew this place well—had grown up in a two-bedroom shithole three blocks south.

Typically, hookers loitered on the corners, and desperate junkies wandered up and down the streets, looking for their next score. But tonight, it was quiet. Silent. And that was never good.

He took his eyes off the road when his phone vibrated on the dashboard. He glanced at it long enough to send Grace’s latest call to his voicemail. Then he selected her brother’s icon on his screen.

“Yeah,” Logan slurred.

“Where are you, man?”

“I don’t know. Just—just get here.”

Jagger clenched his jaw when Logan’s labored breathing filled his ear before the line went dead. “Damn it.”

Things had been rough for Logan for a while now. They hadn’t talked much since his latest downward spiral. But when Jagger’s phone rang fifteen minutes ago, there’d been an urgency in his friend’s voice that had told him to get his ass in his car and drive over to the wrong side of town.

Lightning flashed with the next roll of thunder, and that’s when Jagger saw it—Logan’s mangled white Porsche. The right front fender and tire had been obliterated by the impact with the sidewalk.

“Shit.” Jagger sped up the street only to slam on his brakes, then hurry outside into the summer’s oppressive heat and humidity. A sinking feeling settled in his stomach when no one sat in Logan’s driver’s seat. “Logan!”

He spun a slow circle as the glint of blood on the chain-link fence in the nearby lot caught his attention.

“Shit,” he muttered again, making quick work of pushing his way through the hole along the side of the post where someone had helped themselves with a pair of cutters once upon a time. “Logan!”

“Over here.”

Skirting around rusty vehicles, scrap heaps, and the occasional refrigerator, Jagger used the flashlight on his phone to make his way farther into the mess.

If he’d had half a clue that picking Logan up meant he’d most likely need a tetanus shot, he would have worn something other than gym shorts and one of his ratty muscle shirts. “Where?”

“Here.”

Jagger pointed the beam of light toward the faint voice, stopping cold, struggling with a wash of horror as he stared at Logan’s crimson-soaked T-shirt. He’d expected bad, but this was so much worse. “Holy fuck, Logan.”

Logan opened his crystal-blue eyes as he sat propped against an old Ford Bronco, grimacing as he clutched at his side. “Get me out of here.”

Jagger rushed over, studying the trails of sweat dribbling along his pasty skin. Any hints of Logan’s tan were gone.

“Let’s get a look,” he said, fighting to keep his hands steady as he pulled up the shirt, watching blood ooze from a bullet wound in Logan’s stomach. “You were shot?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell happened?”

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