“When Allison and I were on the road, we were attacked. I don’t know if these men wanted to assault us or worse, but they tried to split me up from Allison. I had my gun. I tried to reason with them, but in the end I had to stand my ground. I couldn’t let them do anything to Allison. I…I chose to aim it at the leader, and I shot him. I got him in the neck, and he bled out in front of us. I killed him, Matt. I murdered someone, too.” She looked up at him, terror painted on her face. It seemed as though she was hanging on his next words.
Matthew felt like he’d been hit with a sledgehammer. Kathleen’s confession rang in his ears. He imagined the scene: Kathleen’s desperation, Allison’s fear, the way they’d most likely been pushed to the limit. The sound of a gunshot. Blood on the ground. He also imagined what could have happened and suppressed a full-body shiver. The alternative was so much worse.
“I murdered someone,” Kathleen repeated. “I’m just as untrustworthy as Jade. So how can you trust me and not her? How can you look at me the same?”
“Oh, my love,” Matthew said in a rush and brought her fully into the circle of his arms. She clutched at him and he felt sobs wrack her body. He held her tight. “You should’ve told me,” he whispered into her hair. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was scared of what you would think,” Kathleen said, her voice muffled in his shoulder. “I was scared you wouldn’t love me anymore. So stupid, right? I thought that if I voted Jade out, I wouldn’t have to think about what I had done. That I could pretend it never happened. But then she stayed, and it was like she could handle everything so much better than I could. That she was stronger than me. I hated it. It felt like she was throwing her strength in my face. She was better at taking care of our family, taking care of the kids.”
“How could you think that?” Matthew asked, and pulled back so he could see her tear-stained face. “What you did was the strongest thing I’ve ever heard. You protected our daughter. You protected yourself. I’m so proud of you for doing everything you could to come back to me and save our family. I’d never think less of you because of what happened.”
Kathleen’s face softened with relief. “It sounded so awful when I said it to myself. I thought I would make it worse by speaking about it.”
“I wish you’d told me,” he said, brushing messy strands that had escaped from her braid behind her ear.
“I know. But Matthew, I thought you’d never forgive me. I thought you’d never trust me again.” Her voice cracked. “How can you trust me, then, and not Jade? We’re cut from the same cloth.”
“The situation was completely different,” Matthew said. “Jade wasn’t being threatened. She wasn’t protecting anyone but herself. That makes all the difference in the world.”
“It doesn’t,” Kathleen said. “I spoke to her about it. Matthew, if you want to forgive me, you have to forgive Jade. We have to make up to her what we did. Jade might not be family, but we made a mistake treating her like we did. We have to figure out a way to fix it.”
Matthew felt lost. His whole world had been upended, but at least now he could understand why Kathleen and Allison had been acting the way they did. Sorrow rushed through him about everything they had gone through. About the weight of the past that they all carried. About how the world had changed, and thus stripped them of the innocence and happiness they had once known. They could be happy now, but they were all scarred from their experiences. He just hoped they could recover from it, and do it together. They were family, after all. There was nothing more important.
He opened his mouth to say as much, when a high-pitched shriek cut through the morning light. He spun around to look for danger, but only saw the empty driveway and the sunlight outlining the pine trees in bright green.
“What was that?” he whispered.
“It’s Jade,” Kathleen said, gripped his hand hard enough to hurt. “It has to be.”
“We don’t know that,” Matthew said, and he wondered when the hits would stop coming. When the world would stop testing them. “It could be a trap. We have to be careful, Kathleen.”
The shriek came again. He could just barely make out the words calling for help.
“No one else is that close,” Kathleen said. “It’s her, Matt. We have to help her.” She started to walk down the driveway but Matthew hung back. Their arms were like a bridge between them. Kathleen squeezed his hand once before letting go and started running down the road. With a curse, Matthew followed, knowing he couldn’t let Kathleen handle this on her own. They were together in everything. He had to prove that he trusted her. That nothing had changed between them. That, maybe at the end of the day, they could be stronger because of it all.
At the end of the driveway, Matthew saw Jade come around the corner of the road. A hunched figure was draped over her. She had one arm wrapped around the figure’s waist while the other balanced him against her side. Whoever she was dragging appeared broken and struggled to stand. She staggered under his weight and called out to them, “Help me! This guy is hurt!”
Matthew recognized that slouching posture, but he couldn’t put his finger on why until Kathleen let out a sharp gasp.
“Max!” she called, bolting for Jade. “Oh my god, Matt. It’s Max.”
22
Max heard his name being called out from far away. A set of strong arms helped him stand up. He leaned into the weight and focused on putting one foot in front of the other, but he honestly felt as though he was being dragged. The trees cast long swaying shadows over the asphalt. The bright sunlight nearly blinded him, and he squinted up into the blue sky. It still amazed him that he was outside in the real world instead of locked up in the metropolitan center of Chicago. Soon, the dark tunnel that had been closing in around his vision became a tight pinpoint of exhaustion. He might have lost consciousness. He couldn’t remember. All he knew was that he heard Kathleen calling out to him again and he forced himself to blink and look for her. He’d come this far for her, after all. Might as well pull himself out of brain trauma long enough to say hello. His brain trauma had other ideas.
When he came to, it seemed as though no time had passed. His lungs still ached from slogging up the hill to the hotel. His legs felt as though they’d been put on wrong. Points of pain echoed throughout his joints, but it was the internal ones deep inside that made him worry. He hoped it was nothing more than deep bruising. He’d brushed off his car accident as an escape, not a traumatic event, but was starting to realize that maybe he’d been injured worse than he initially thought. It didn’t help that he’d been beaten up, either. Beaten up twice.
The dark-haired young lady who had found him sprawled on the ground helped him to his feet and steered him along the road. Earlier, he’d tripped, not sure if he’d caught his foot on something or if it was due to his own clumsiness, and his quick twenty-minute break face down in the dirt had turned into an unconscious hour. He’d come to with her patting his cheeks and asking if he was okay, just before she’d pulled him to his feet like some kind of superhuman.
The young woman’s thin, but strong, arms fell away from him, replaced by two stronger supports. Max swayed and blinked, looking into the blue eyes of his brother-in-law. “Matt?” he asked, knowing he sounded incredulous, as though Matthew had dropped from the sky like an angel.
Matthew chuckled. “That’s the most excited anyone has been to see me in a while. Long time, no see.”
“Glad the two of you are exchanging pleasantries,” a familiar voice said.
Max grinned because he’d know that snark anywhere. He’d grown up with it, watched it sharpen from bratty sister to a wit that could leave him smiling against his will. “Aw, Kathy. You found me!”
“Are you drunk?” Kathleen asked, slinging Max’s other arm over her shoulder.
“Concussion,” Max corrected.
“You’re going to have to explain that one later,” Kathleen said as they rounded the corner and a large rustic hotel sitting in a clearing came into view.
“Wow, it’s really pretty,” Max said, hating how dumb he sounded. The mountains appeared black and stark against the blue sky. Pine needles drifted down from the trees in slow motion. The scent of clean water and freshly turned dirt reached his nostrils. He could imagine families trucking up here with their kids, taking nature walks and exploring the woods. Doing Boy Scout stuff, or whatever it was that people did on vacation. For a moment he held back tears, so happy he was here, and not anywhere else in the whole world.
“Max?” Kathleen’s voice floated around him. “Max, are you okay? You’re looking a little green.”
“Just woozy,” he said, blinking rapidly.
“Are you sure? Max, are you sure? Are you listening to me?”
Her endless questions actually comforted him instead of annoying him this time. He wanted to answer them, pleased that she had so much to say to him, but the black tunnel tightened again and he lost a moment of time before coming to with a jerk. “I’m okay,” he said, even as he felt a deep fear wash over him. Should he be passing out this much? “Seriously. I’m okay.”
Kathleen patted his cheek over the raw slap that Jade had left. “We are going inside, and then you’re getting a physical. You just fainted.”
“Lies,” Max said. “I might have passed out, but I would never faint.”
“Get the smelling salts,” Matthew murmured under his breath.
“Max, for once in your life, shut up.” Kathleen huffed in irritation and helped him walk up the front steps of the sturdy log entryway to the hotel. He stumbled, but Kathleen had become a terrifying force with a purpose, and Max was led up a series of stairs and dumped into a bed in a retro-styled room with tiny rose-bloom wallpaper. “Ouch,” he said, even though he hadn’t been in pain, not really, and Kathleen glared at him. “I’m getting the first aid kit,” she said and stormed out of the room.
“Don’t forget the smelling salts!” Max shouted to her back before that tunnel of blackness tightened and stole his consciousness for a couple minutes more. Maybe he shouldn’t have joked about fainting. He might actually need to be worried about this whole blacking out thing.
He woke with his body thrashing, momentarily disoriented, before relaxing when he saw the rose wallpaper. He squinted his eyes open. The room was quiet with the door halfway shut for privacy, but Max could still see the shapes and profiles of Matthew and the young woman who had saved him deep in a heated conversation just beyond his room. The young woman had her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and the arms crossed tight over her chest set the tone for the scowl twisting her lips as she glared at his brother-in-law.
“No matter what you say, it won’t make a difference,” she said.
“Let me try, at least,” Matthew said, a hint of desperation coloring his voice. Max knew that tone—it was Matthew’s marketing voice, only instead of promising trends and interview opportunities, he sounded incredibly genuine. “I’m sorry for what I said. I’m even more sorry for what I did and how I acted. I made a terrible mistake based on a lot of my own assumptions, but also my own fear. Please forgive me, Jade.”
The young woman—Jade—snorted as if she’d heard that line one too many times. “Words are cheap, Matt. What are you going to do in an hour when I make you mad? Throw me out again? I’m not sticking around to take the brunt of your anger. I won’t allow you to take your fear out on me.”
“That was wrong of me,” Matthew quickly cut in. “I can’t apologize enough.”
Max shifted in his bed to see that Jade’s glare had intensified and Matthew’s mouth clapped shut. “Your mood swings are getting to me,” she said. “To be honest, I don’t care if you want me to stay or not. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to be somewhere else—no, around other people that I can at least earn respect from. I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted, and you’ve made it perfectly clear where you stand on that issue.”
“You are wanted here,” Matthew insisted. “I didn’t mean to drive you away.”
“Your words say something way different than your actions.”
“At least stay the night. Leave in the morning. I’m positive you didn’t get any sleep while you were at the Carpenter Country. Spend the night, relax, and head out early tomorrow. Please.”
Jade hesitated and bit her lip. “Fine,” she said, her voice clipped. “One night. That’s it. Unless you throw me out earlier, that is.”
Max studied Jade as she spun on her heels and disappeared from his line of sight. Now alone, Matthew slumped as though all the fight had drained out of him. His face looked drawn and older, as if he carried an incredible unforeseen weight on his shoulders. It was a much different look for him, compared to the progressive eyes-to-the-stars marketing expert Max had always known. Whatever had passed between his brother-in-law and Jade…it had been bad.
A wave of dread flowed over Max and he eased back down so that he was lying in the bed. Jade seemed like a good person—she’d saved his life, after all—so what could have transpired between her and Matthew to make Matthew kick her out?
Whatever she’d done, Max would put money down that she hadn’t broken out of jail, stolen from a second-hand clothing store, beat up a prison guard, and enraged the cartel. He would put a whole wad of cash down because he knew whatever she had done, it was nowhere as bad as what Max had been involved with.
The thought was sobering. He’d toyed with the notion of coming clean to his family, or at least to Kathleen, but now that he saw that they were kicking out people who they most likely trusted, he wasn’t sure he wanted to confess anymore. Maybe he should just keep everything close to the chest until he could see how things played out. Or at least until his thoughts weren’t quite so mushy. His eyes drifted closed even though the situation made his stomach knot with anxiety.
“Max. Max, can you hear me? Max?”
Kathleen’s voice washed over him and Max groaned in response. He heard her chuckle before cracking his eyes open. Sunlight filtered through the windows, showing him that the bright morning had slid into an even brighter afternoon.
Kathleen hovered over him. A line appeared between her brows to illustrate her concern. “Two black eyes,” she said as if reciting a list. “Split lip. Bruises on your shoulders and all along your ribs. Head cracked open. Concussion, most likely, but I’m not a doctor. That’s all I can see right now. How many bears did you fight off to get here?”
Max laughed and immediately winced with pain. “Only a hundred.”
Kathleen tried to hide a grin by reaching around him and fluffing the pillows behind his head. Max took small pleasure in his ability to make her smile, even at his worst. Kathleen cleared her throat and said over her shoulder, “Matt? Can you find Ruth and see where that hot water and bandages are, please?”
Max heard a humming sound of acquiescence come from behind his sister and realized Matthew had been watching over him. His footsteps retreated away from them down the hall.
“Why does Matthew get a please and thank you, huh?” Max asked. “I only get yelled at.”
“Well, Matthew doesn’t have any internal bleeding or broken bones,” Kathleen said, matter-of-factly.
“Neither do I,” Max said, even though he wasn’t exactly sure.
“I’m glad you’re certain,” Kathleen said. “We don’t have any way to treat such injuries, and today is not the day that I lose my brother.”
Max snorted a laugh, even though he saw the dark shadow cross over Kathleen’s face. In moments, the door squeaked open and Ruth came in with a pot of steaming water between her hands and fresh washcloths slung over her forearm. Max knew Ruth was Matthew’s mother, but he hadn’t really spoken with her since Matthew and Kathleen got married. He gave her a tentative smile and wondered what kind of stories had been told about him to her. “I hope these injuries don’t ruin my good looks,” he joked as Kathleen ripped open three packets of pills from the first aid kit and handed him a handful of white tablets.
“Improved t
hem, I’d say. Now take the pain pills.”
“That looks like a lot of pills.”
“Are you in a lot of pain?” she asked.
Max waited a beat. That assessment wasn’t something he could lie about. He nodded.
“Then it’s the right number of pills,” Kathleen said. She handed Max a bottle of water and he downed half of it in one go. Ruth set the pot on a side table and dipped the washcloths in, handing one to Kathleen. The two women set to washing his open wounds.
“I can do that myself,” Max said.
“When you stop passing out, you can,” Kathleen huffed and started bandaging his ribs.
Ruth chuckled. “Sibling rivalry, I see.”
“There’s no rivalry,” Max said. “Only victory.”
“Sometimes I wished Matthew had a brother or sister,” Ruth said, “but we were only ever just blessed with one.”
“They’re not worth it,” Kathleen said as she helped ease Max back down.
“I second that,” Max said, even as he let out a sigh of relief. His ribs felt tightly bandaged and secured, his face was clean of blood, and the cold compress Ruth handed him seemed to help with the swelling.
“Thank you for your honesty,” Ruth said as if suppressing a laugh. She stood and headed to the door. “I’ll give the two of you a moment alone.”
Kathleen sat on the edge of the bed and took Max’s hand. She squeezed hard. “What happened? How did you get out of prison? What happened to you?”
Max ached to tell her the truth. He wanted to tell her everything he’d been through. He wanted to whisper a confession to her that he’d been terrified for his life, terrified of her finding out someday that he’d wound up dead at the hands of Colin’s goons, left on the side of the road. Stupid Max, the pretty singing bird who bumbled through life and never got anywhere. He wanted to tell her all of this like they were kids sharing a secret in their pillow fort in the middle of the living room. He wanted to hold his flashlight under his chin and make her scoot closer in anticipation, wanted to tell her the things he barely admitted to himself most of the time.
EMP Catastrophe | Book 2 | Erupting Danger Page 16
