Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  “I’m really sorry,” I whispered around the lump in my throat. “If I could go back, I would never have set that first fire. If I’d known…”

  The mugs clanged together, cutting through my words with a sharp twang that hurt my ears. “But you didn’t know, right?” he snapped, pushing away from the counter. “How could you possibly know that others were out there on the road, hiding in homes, scavenging through car parks and gas stations? How could you possibly know that what you did would burn down the lower half of the state, and probably most of the survivors left in it? How could you know that, Riley?”

  When he turned around to look at me, his face wasn’t hard like I was expecting, it was soft and overwhelmingly sad. Broken. Very much like my heart.

  “I didn’t think, Connor. At the time, I just wanted the voices to go away, to let the dead go,” I sniffed.

  “By doing what, killing those who were left alive?”

  I blinked up at him, and glanced down at his clenched fists. He was angry, furious with me. “I-I should go back upstairs,” I mumbled, turning to leave.

  But he reached out and grabbed my arm, pushing me aside so he could get through the doorway first. “And run back into Drake’s arms? Convenient. Stay and drink your coffee, Riley,” he grumbled, leaving me in the kitchen.

  As he stormed off, he paid no attention to the shadows in the next room, but I saw them, especially the short one huddled in the corner, though I refused to look directly at it. I spun around and held onto the counter and coughed until a sickly green phlegm came out with a bloody tint. Wiping at my mouth, I grabbed the mug closest to me and lifted it high above my head, prepared to throw it to the ground, when the sound of a clearing throat came from just behind me.

  Expecting Connor, I dropped my arm and pivoted, bracing for another insult, but instead, it was Ashlyn. She stood a foot away, her arms at her sides, her petite and perfect body hidden under a satin robe, with the wild look of a scorned woman burning in her eyes.

  “It was your fault?” she hissed. “The fire – that was you?”

  With the mug still in my hand, the muscles clenched in my jaw as I stared at her freakishly large eyes and brushed hair, wondering how she could be so well put together. “Connor seems to think so,” I snapped back at her.

  With her eyes locked on mine, she leaned toward me, and a hot rush of pain detonated through the lower side of my abdomen. Confused, I looked down at her extended right hand as she stepped away from me, and stared at the knife tightly clutched in her bloody fist. My eyes focused on the floor under her hand, where a tiny puddle of my own blood was beginning to fill up the space between my feet. Touching my stomach with my free hand, still not understanding what had happened, I brought it up to my face, warm and wet.

  The mug fell out of my other hand and landed with a thunk on the floor and I stumbled away from her, dazed. “Did you…did you…” Words escaped me.

  “Yes, Riley, I did,” she bragged. A wicked grin spread across her face and she looked down at the blade and examined it with a chuckle. “I’ve been wanting to use this gutting knife for a long time. You’re my first.”

  The pain flared through my midsection and I went down on my knees, hard. When she took a step toward me, I flung my arm out to block her, but she put both her hands up in surrender and carefully set her knife down on the counter.

  “Please,” she said, with the same fucking smile plastered to her face. “Let me help you get more comfortable.”

  Trapped inside my own body, I slumped onto the floor, but she kneeled and lifted me under the arms, pulling on my upper body till I was standing again. The pain, at first hot like fire, stretched around my abdomen with an excruciating dull ache and I clutched at the hole below my navel, terrified my insides would fall out.

  “Don’t touch me,” I gasped, as she half-dragged and half-walked me into the next room. She let me fall into an oversized chair near the window and shoved a pillow behind me so I was propped upright.

  “There, there. Better?” she asked, draping a throw blanket across my blood-streaked legs.

  Horrified, I recoiled away from her as she tucked me in, and tried to lift a leg to kick, but the muscles in my stomach screamed in protest with so much force that I dry heaved from the pain. I whimpered, trying to keep the cough in that wanted to clear from my lungs. But it came anyway, and I choked on it, feeling bile come up my throat as I clutched in a panic at my wound.

  She smoothed back my hair as I struggled to breathe, and I tried to headbutt her face, but she jumped back and laughed at me. “So feisty,” she purred. “I’ve thought about this moment a lot, you know. But now what?” After she stood back to look at me, she readjusted her robe and crossed her arms. “I have an idea,” she said, returning to the kitchen to retrieve her knife. “I’ll be right back…don’t go anywhere, okay?”

  Helpless, and unable to cry out, I watched her rush out of the room and toward the stairs. With one hand pressed tightly against the hole she made, I used the other to push against the chair, hoping I could stand and stumble my way upstairs, but I couldn’t lift myself up.

  “Zoey,” I whispered. “Zoey…”

  She was most likely already back up in bed with Drake, or with Connor. I couldn’t scream, and every deep breath I tried to fill my lungs with triggered a cough that threatened to expel my lower intestine, but I could whistle. It came out shrill and interrupted at first. After a handful of tries, I could whistle clearly. Panting, I waited for a reply, and a few seconds later there was a huff, then a bark, and then the soft sound of padding feet on the stairs.

  Zoey came into the room alert, her tail raised and her ears lifted, then rushed at me. Crying, and whining, she tried to climb into my lap and examine the source of my bleeding, and it took several painful tries to push her down and get her to sit.

  “Go get help, Zoey,” I gasped. Her tail wagged furiously against the rug and she tilted her head at me, confused and concerned. “Go,” I hissed, using a hand to push her back, but she tried to climb into my lap again. “Shit.” She wasn’t going to leave me, I knew that, so I told her to sit in the strongest tone I could muster. “Bark,” I commanded. Then with more force, “Zoey, bark…” She answered with a quick yelp, and I praised her. “Again, Zoey, bark.” Excited, she stood and turned in a circle, and barked loudly into the room as I struggled to hold in my cough. With each bark, I told her she was a good girl, and to do it again, hoping it would bring me help before the fuzzy dark spots along my vision closed in.

  But when someone did come down the stairs shortly after, it wasn’t help, it was Ashlyn, and she wasn’t alone. In her arms, kicking her feet and flailing her little fists, was Lily.

  ASHLYN

  Oh, sweet baby Jesus, did it feel good to drive her knife into Riley’s stomach. Her only regret, as she snuck into Jacks’ room, was that she didn’t put enough force behind the stab. It was just a poke, really, she thought. Just a poke. The next one would go all the way in. She wouldn’t stop till she buried the hilt of the knife deep inside the other woman. But first, she wanted an audience.

  Jacks was asleep with his pillow pulled over his head, and as she crept around the end of the bed, she heard the dog in the hall and braced for Jacks to sit up and catch her standing at the foot of Lily’s crib, but he didn’t stir. In a quick and silent move, she scooped up the baby and crept back out of his room, leaving the door open.

  “Riley, is that you?” Drake called out softly from his room, and Ashlyn froze on the first two steps of the staircase, blinking in the dawn light. She counted to five, and then rushed down the stairs, shushing the baby when Lily tried to gurgle a hello.

  Once on the lower level, she relaxed. She was in control. No one else would be able to ruin the moment for her. Riley was exactly where she left her, propped in the chair, with the dog barking between her legs. Soon, the others would come down to investigate, and Ashlyn was ready for them. She tapped the tip of the knife down on the baby’s chest for Riley to s
ee, and the barking stopped when Riley shushed her bitch of a dog.

  “They’re going to come down,” Riley said, struggling to get each word out. “They’re going to come.”

  “I’m sure they will,” Ashlyn said sweetly. “I want them to, actually. I don’t want them to miss the show.”

  “The show…” Riley repeated. Her head dipped, but she snapped it back up and glared at her. For a second, the warm morning light behind the window lit up behind Riley’s head like a halo, and Ashlyn frowned. She was more beautiful than she remembered. Even sick, and probably dying from the hole in her gut, she was more beautiful than Ashlyn.

  “I’ve never liked you,” she blurted, tapping the knife down on the baby’s stomach. Lily grabbed at it, and when her hand clumsily glanced off the handle, Riley winced.

  “Obviously,” she wheezed.

  Ashlyn adjusted the baby in her arms, already tired from her weight. “I mean, long before I even met you, I didn’t like you. You fucked him up, you know.”

  “Who?”

  The dog began to growl at Ashlyn, but she ignored the sound and moved slowly across the room toward the kitchen. “Connor…you fucked him up.”

  “It was…an accident,” Riley gasped.

  The dog, unsure of what was happening, felt the thick tension in the air between the two women, but didn’t bite Ashlyn when she reached down and grabbed the dog’s collar. Riley, getting weaker every second, tried to stop her, but Ashlyn backed away, and dragged the dog through the kitchen, opened the door, and kicked it onto the patio. After she slammed the door shut, Zoey began to bark furiously.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean the fire,” Ashlyn said, taking a deep breath and rejoining Riley in the sitting room. “You fucked him up in the head. I can do that too, you know. It’s not hard to control a man.” She smiled at Riley and let Lily yank on the butt of the knife in attempt to pull it toward her mouth.

  “Please, don’t,” Riley begged, a look of horror on her face at how close the sharp end of the blade was to Lily’s hands.

  “She’s fine,” Ashlyn laughed. “Might as well start them young, right?”

  “You’re…the fucked up…one,” Riley spat.

  She nodded, and turned her head toward the sound of running footsteps above them. “Maybe.”

  Jacks was the first to burst into the room, and his panicked look multiplied by one hundred the moment he saw Ashlyn holding his baby, a bloody knife hovering over her face. “Ash?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  She pointed at him to stop, then wiped the blade clean on the side of Lily’s jumper. “Relax. She’s fine. I need you to do something for me, baby,” she cooed.

  He stepped closer, then froze when he looked behind Ashlyn. “Riley?”

  Ashlyn backed up toward the fireplace, giving him an unobstructed view of her work. “Oh, she’s totally not fine.”

  “Fuck,” Jacks cursed. When he went to rush forward, Ashlyn held the knife closer to Lily’s pink face, and he froze again. “You wouldn’t,” he growled.

  “You don’t know me at all,” she laughed back at him.

  “Don’t,” Riley wheezed. “Don’t hurt…her…”

  “She doesn’t have much time, I don’t think,” Ashlyn said, gesturing at Riley. “I need you to get the others, Jacks. Are you listening? Go get the others.”

  Shaking, he cautiously backed out of the room, and Ashlyn felt a thrill rush through her at the hopeless look on his face as he glanced between her and Lily. Jacks was completely powerless, and he knew it.

  She yelled at the dog to shut up, and sighed with irritation when Zoey only got louder. “You know, I always wanted a baby,” she said, more to herself than Riley, who was getting closer to fading out of consciousness. “But I would never have one now. This kid has no chance, you know? What’s the point of keeping her around, if she’s going to end up dead in a year or three?” Riley cried, and Ashlyn smiled at her before continuing. “I’d be doing Jacks a favor, you know, saving him time and resources. I could do it quick. Not like you.”

  Connor’s voice boomed from the stairway, and she flinched. He barreled around the corner with Drake nearly attached to his hip. Jacks pushed between the two of them, and then Kris’ voice, quiet and sleepy, came from somewhere in the back.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Please,” Ashlyn said, pressing the tip of the knife gently down on Lily’s leg. “Take a seat, everyone.”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Connor roared, stepping toward her with hate in his eyes. “Give her to me!”

  When he reached out for the baby, Ashlyn pressed down, pricking through the baby’s sleep clothes until the blade met skin. Connor came to a shocked halt, and gaped at her as a small bead of blood turned the pale-blue fabric over Lily’s knee a bright red. The baby went rigid, turned purple in the face, then began to scream.

  Jacks scrambled over the couch and lunged forward, but she lifted her hand, placing the blade under the crying baby’s chin. “Take another step and I’ll go right through her little neck,” she said loudly over the howling and yelling from the men. Aside from Lily’s startled wails, the room went still and quiet and Ashlyn nodded at the furniture. “Please, sit. There’s something else I want you to see. It won’t take long, I promise.”

  She waited for everyone to fumble into the closest chairs and couch, and only then did they realize that Riley was bleeding out in the chair opposite of them. Kris began to cry, and Jacks covered his face with his hands before fisting them into his hair.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Connor whispered.

  Drake, she noticed, said nothing. He kept his eyes on Riley, and though his hands twitched in his lap, he didn’t rush her like she expected. He was waiting for his moment, she thought with some amusement. She made a tsk-tsk sound at him, and he finally looked up at her.

  “Don’t try anything,” she warned.

  When she had their attention, she slowly circled around the room toward the kitchen doorway, where she was closer to Riley’s chair, but also closer to the exit, and bounced the baby in her arms till the scream turned into a mixture of hiccups and gasps.

  “What do you want?” Jacks begged through his clenched teeth.

  With a sigh, she stared out the window and absentmindedly dragged the tip of the knife along Lily’s side. She looked back at the group, at each of them, and the previous excitement of what she had done faded into something that felt a lot like defeat. Taking Riley out of the equation wasn’t going to give her an upper hand over the men. Riley was clearly their queen. Ashlyn would have to leave, and start over with someone new. And this realization, as she stared at the watercolors of dawn, pissed her off.

  “You know,” she said, gripping the handle of the knife tightly. “I was going to help you. I was going to help you see that she can’t give you what I can. But now…” She paused to look down at Lily, who was still red in the face, and sucking furiously on her thumb. “I think now, that doesn’t matter, does it?”

  Drake rose from his seat when Riley coughed and cried out from the pain, and Jacks grabbed at his wrist. “Don’t…the baby,” he begged. But Drake ignored him. He watched as Riley’s head lolled to the side, and didn’t come back up.

  “This doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying as I thought it would,” Ashlyn complained.

  She didn’t notice that the dog had stopped barking, and only noticed that the kitchen door had been opened from the outside when a gust of fresh mountain air hit the back of her neck. It wasn’t the only thing that hit her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  COLE

  Dawn was hot on their heels as the truck took the final bend into the valley. The short road to the lodge, waterlogged and slushy, and flanked by a thick bunch of mixed aspens, pines, and spruce trees, stretched out before them, and Cole nearly pissed himself from excitement. He’d been up for almost twenty-four hours, and spent half of that time walking through the day before, but he wasn’t tired, not anymore. With the bag
of medicine safely propped on his lap, and the white medical box resting between his feet, Cole hoped it would be enough to show the others his loyalty. To prove to them that he was on their side, and would do what it took to earn their trust, and their respect. To get Kris back. He’d do anything, he thought, anything it took to make them see him as part of their group, as part of their family.

  When the damaged lodge, frosted over from the night, finally came into view, Jin asked Keel to stop and park the car so they could walk the rest of the way and not wake the others with the engine. As Cole hopped out of the truck, he refused to hand the box over to Jin, because he wanted to be the one to carry it in. It had to be him, he told himself; it had to be him that gave it to Riley.

  They said little as they approached the building, but at some point, one of them realized the dog was outside, barking wildly. Jin stopped them in their tracks so he could listen, and turned around to glance at Keel, sending the other man a knowing look. They treated him like a child, but Cole wasn’t a kid anymore. They didn’t have to tell him that something was wrong.

  With the box still clutched to his chest, they ran around the building and straight into Zoey. She bounced at their feet, whining, whimpering, and barking. Jin squatted beside her and gently stroked her head until she calmed down, but she left them to scramble up the deck steps, where she began to bark again.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Cole said, propping the box onto his hip. He pulled his hat off and shoved it into his coat pocket. “Is she out here alone?”

  “She shouldn’t be,” Jin said, scanning the valley. He held up his hand, damp from fresh blood.

  “Is she hurt?” Cole worried.

  “It’s not hers.”

  Keel moved him aside to get a peek into one of the windows. “I can’t see anything.”