by Lacey Silks
“I didn’t, I swear! You can have it all. Just let them go, please. For God’s sake, she’s my sister, Rick!”
“And a fine sister she is.” He grasped Annabelle’s breast. If I could have climbed out of my skin, I would have. I promised myself that the next time I got a chance, if Rick ever got within my reach, I would kill the bastard.
“But definitely not an ass worthy of keeping. And if you think I’m done with you”—he pointed to Missy— “then you’re mistaken, little sister. I will haunt you until the end of my days. I will not let a betrayer like you live and bear the spawn you’re carrying. You were never loyal to Father, and you’ll pay for it in your own time.”
“You’re a sick bastard.” Annabelle turned her head sideways and spat into his face.
Rick wiped the spit off his eye and cheek, reached out, and pulled on Annabelle’s hair, forcing her to bend backward. “And you’re a whore who sleeps behind her husband’s back.”
I felt my muscles tense and every fiber of my being wind with rage. God, if I only had been there!
“You were never a husband. Not in my mind and definitely not in my heart,” I heard her say.
Rick’s watched beeped. The son of a bitch had a devious look on his face.
“Missy, if Annabelle or Blake hit the water, my cell phone is in my pants. You call and then run to get help. Run as fast as you can,” I whispered. “Rick, don’t do anything stupid,” I warned, lowering my jeans.
“Oh, you mean like this.”
He bent over into the boat and lifted a boulder.
“Holy fuck,” I whispered under my breath. The rock was tied to a rope that wound around Annabelle’s feet. I pulled my shirt over my head, and without waiting for the splash I knew would come when he dropped the stone into the lake, I rushed onto the cliff and dove in. I cut through the water like a bullet, hearing the echo of a distant splatter underwater. When I surfaced, Annabelle was no longer on the boat, and Rick held Blake’s larger stone on the edge of the boat.
“Get Annabelle!” my brother screamed before Rick dropped the rock and Blake too disappeared underwater. My front crawl felt like I was swimming through molasses. An engine’s roar sounded in my ears, but I had no time to pay it attention. Missy’s cries became fainter the further out I swam. When I finally thought I was at the spot where Annabelle and Blake had gone down, just before the engine’s ripple of water left a trail, I dove. The nice thing about Peacock Lake was that especially on a bright day like today, the water was clear; though from the sound and look of it from above, more clouds were near.
It didn’t take long before I spotted Annabelle and my brother underwater, each trying to untie the knots at their feet. My brother saw me and something passed between us. He nodded, as if giving me permission to let him be, and I felt my gut twist. Swimming to Annabelle’s side, from the first look at the tied rope I knew that I had no chance to unwind it fast enough. And as soon as Annabelle’s body went limp, I lifted the rock and her and pulled her up to the surface. A cloud must have passed above us as I saw my brother’s face darken in the shadow. He nodded once again and pressed his fist to his heart.
I pulled Annabelle’s limp body out and blew a breath into her lungs, slowly making my way back to the shore. After two other attempts, she finally coughed the water out. But hauling a body and a rock wasn’t the easiest of tasks, and it definitely felt like I was running out of time.
Drops were now falling in a steady pattern. It was as if the sky was crying for us all.
“Blake....” Annabelle could barely speak.
“I’ll get him,” I said. My lungs were beginning to burst from the effort it took to hold Annabelle. I could no longer feel my injured leg. I was definitely running on pure adrenaline. If it weren’t for my SEAL training, I doubted that I’d be able to go on for this long. Hopefully it wasn’t too long. Hopefully I still had time to save my brother.
Waddling toward where Missy was standing in the water, I dragged Annabelle and the stone behind us. Its weight slowed us down, but it wasn’t impossible to swim. The moment Annabelle’s feet could touch the ground and Missy got a hold of her, I looked into her fear-stricken eyes.
“Go!” she said, and I left the girls on their own, diving back into the lake.
As soon as I dove down, I knew my brother wouldn’t be conscious. It must have been more than three minutes since he went underwater. And while many people could hold their breath for a long time, I knew from experience that the instinct to breathe when oxygen ran out of your lungs wouldn’t help. I prepared myself to see his unresponsive body, floating with the current. Yet knowing what I’d see and actually seeing it were two different things. Nothing could have prepared me for this—not even the SEALs. He was my flesh and blood, and I was supposed to watch over him.
Grasping the rope, I lifted the rock off the sediment and hauled it upward along with Blake’s body. At the surface, Missy’s and Annabelle’s cries echoed in the distance. I blew a breath into Blake’s lungs, once, twice, three times, slowly making my way toward the shore. He didn’t respond. It felt like it took forever to tow him to safety. By this time, Annabelle’s wrists and feet were untied. She met me in the water and started blowing the breaths even before we laid him on the grass. She also took over the chest compressions and CPR. Annabelle was trying to save him, breathe life into him, and revive his pulse, yet my brother’s skin slowly turned gray.
I removed the phone out of my pants and dialed 9-1-1. Unfortunately I knew this wouldn’t help much. I thought I heard Missy say she called them, but it didn’t register. It’d take a long time before the ambulance got here, and if Blake would only take a breath, I’d drive them all to the hospital without waiting. Eric and my father showed up too, but other than my brother’s unresponsive body and Annabelle’s effort to save him, I couldn’t pay attention to much else.
“Please, Blake. Open your eyes, baby.” Missy held his hand, rubbing it gently. Annabelle concentrated on her work, completely losing herself to the task of saving my brother. Sitting at his side, I pulled on my hair, rocking my body back and forth. He must have been under for more than five minutes. I knew the statistics of his chances of survival, and worse, remembering that one last look he gave me, we both knew what would happen. It was as if Blake were saying good-bye.
I wasn’t sure how long Annabelle continued the CPR, but it must have been for over an hour. When the paramedics finally arrived and took his body, she collapsed into my arms. I lifted my gaze to Missy. Her face was blotched with patches from crying. She sucked in a quick breath and held on to her tummy.
“Missy, come here.” Annabelle reached out for her sister.
But Missy stood still. I followed her gaze as she lowered it to her stomach. She turned around, looking behind her. As she turned, a red stain appeared.
“I think I’m losing my baby,” she whispered.
CHAPTER 22
Annabelle
The innocuous sound of a rhythmic beeping hit my ears. The smell of disinfectant and rubbing alcohol along with a mix of bland sourness and sweet vitamins overpowered the room. My arm ached, lungs burned, and head felt funny. I wanted to open my eyes but found it difficult to do, so I concentrated on the warm hand that held mine and tried to remember where I was. The beeping sped up as my memories returned. I felt my body shake, and my lack of control over it scared me.
“Shh, it’s all right, Annabelle. You’re safe.” Derek’s voice soothed my worry. Maybe it was all a bad dream. Maybe the hundreds of breaths I’d blown into Blake’s lungs helped. They had to have helped. Why was I here? What happened to me? The last thing I remembered was holding Missy in my arms.
I tried to open my eyes. The yellowish room slowly began to come into focus. I tilted my head to the side.
“Hi, pretty lady.” Derek’s face came out as if from behind a haze.
“Hi. Why am I here?” I asked.
“You passed out from exhaustion. And you had a few bruises on your ribs.”
That’s when I remembered Rick’s fist connecting with my ribs when I first woke up on the boat, struggling as he was binding my hands and feet. Oh my God! Everything rushed back in a flash. “Blake?” I asked.
Derek couldn’t hide the truth from me. He wouldn’t be able to lie even if he tried.
“No! No, no, no!” While I thought I was loud, I couldn’t have been because it was extremely difficult to speak. My throat still hurt.
“Shh,” Derek said. “Your sister’s with you.”
I looked over to the side where Missy was sleeping in a bed.
“We thought you may want to be together. They had to sedate her, Annabelle.”
“Her baby?”
Derek shook his head, and I felt more warm tears streak down my face. I didn’t want to wake up to this. I wanted to wake up and hear them tell me that my best friend was alive and that my sister didn’t lose her baby.
“You’re okay, Annabelle. You and Missy are okay.”
Did Derek not realize that he saved me? He chose to give me life over his brother. And that’s when I saw the dark circles under his eyes. The pain there—I’d never seen anything like it in my life.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried.
“It’s not your fault, Annabelle.”
There was a tightening sensation in my chest. The stupid beeping machine must have broken, because it was going nuts. I found it difficult to catch a breath and noticed that Derek pressed a red button. A nurse hurried into the room. Beyond our room window, I saw my brother pacing back and forth. He kept running his fingers through his hair. Emma stood beside him, talking on her phone, barking orders. She wasn’t happy. I think whomever she was speaking with must have done a bad job. A few words made it into the room: “was supposed to... not good enough... fired....”
I tried to get up just as the nurse walked into the room. The urge to rip out the needle from my arm was stopped when Derek took my hand again and with a bit of force on my shoulder held me down. I watched his and the nurse’s lips move, and then she added something into the intravenous machine connected to me. The beeping slowed. I felt my head become heavier each second, and then everything was all right again because I was back in my dream, where we were all happy and alive.
* * *
A soft cry woke me. It was the middle of the night. Derek wasn’t here, but he must have been a minute ago because I still felt the warmth of his hand on mine.
My gaze followed the sound to the corner of the room where Missy sat in a gown with her knees pulled up to her chest. I crawled out of my bed, and hauling the tubes attached to me behind, I shuffled my bare feet toward her. The linoleum floor was cold, but not colder than my feet.
“Missy? What are you doing on the floor?”
“They think I’m asleep, but I’m not,” she whispered. “My body doesn’t want to accept the medicine. It’s refusing it.”
She was shaking. I sat down beside her and took her into my arms. She nestled against me like a child who’d never been held. All I could offer her now was my body and every ounce of my love that I had. It was the only thing I had now. I wanted to give her much more than that, but nothing I gave her would ever be enough, because nothing would bring Blake or her baby back to life.
“Oh, Missy. You need to tell the doctor. They will help you. I want to help you. I can’t lose you too.”
“I know.” She leaned her head against me. “I don’t think I have any tears left inside me. It feels like I died. I want to be with Blake. I want to be with our little angel.” She pressed her hands to her stomach.
She may not have known it, but she did have more tears, because they were still streaking down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry, Missy. But I need you. I just found you, I don’t want to lose you, either. I can’t. Please. Come to bed.”
But neither one of us could move. It felt so good to be sitting beside her and to hold her. Now that I looked around the room, I noticed that it was one of the biggest ones I’d seen at a hospital—ever. And I’ve been to quite a few hospitals. It must have been Eric’s doing. There was a separate monitoring station with a desk, what looked like an examining table, and a lot of machines I couldn’t quite make out in the darkness. A curtain on wheels, a partition of sorts, separated that area. The little light that shone from the outside barely illuminated the space. Long-awaited rain tapped against the window. I thought I’d heard thunder in the distance.
“I can imagine what you’ve been through with Rick, Annabelle. I’m sorry he hurt you. I’m sorry my brother chose to hurt you, my sister.”
“He’s not your brother, Missy. A real brother would never do what Rick has done.”
She began sobbing again. “I don’t think I can go on.”
“Missy, please.” I joined her crying. “I need you.”
She sighed quietly. “I knew he would come.” Missy whispered. “If he was anything like Huntz, I knew he’d eventually show up, and I was so afraid for you, Annabelle.” My sister spoke without emotion when she mentioned Huntz. It seemed that every last ounce of life she had had been drained out of her. Though when she mentioned my name and started talking about our family, something seemed to have snapped inside her. “But I knew that Derek and Eric, they were looking out for you. And Emma’s been working so much trying to find him. I never thought he would come after us like that. I didn’t even think he knew about me. And Blake, he’s done nothing to him. How could he?”
“He is a bastard, Missy and one day he’ll burn in hell.”
The door opened and Derek came in with my brother. Without saying a word, they helped us up and back into our beds.
“Move me closer.” I reached for Missy. “I want to hold her hand.”
Derek pushed my bed toward Missy’s. We lowered the rails of our beds on the connecting side, and I took her hand.
“You should get some rest too,” I said to Derek and to my brother.
“Other than going to the washroom, I’m not leaving you, Annabelle. No way.”
From the tone of his voice I knew I couldn’t argue with him. Missy curled up into a fetal position on her side. Our gazes connected as she said, “It was going to be a boy.”
“He would have been a beautiful little boy.” I said, tightening my grip on her hand. And we both closed our eyes.
* * *
The constant tug at my hand woke me. When I opened my eyes and connected my gaze with Missy’s, the sheer terror there jolted me out of sleep.
“Someone’s here,” she mouthed in a low tone. We were close enough that her whisper couldn’t be heard by anyone.
“Don’t move,” I replied, slightly shifting my body, trying to make as little noise as possible. A shadow appeared behind the partition, and it wasn’t Derek’s or Eric’s. The stupid machine beside me beeped quicker, and I removed the oximeter off my finger.
I tried to reach for the nurse’s button on my side, but since they’d moved my bed I couldn’t. Missy’s was hanging between our beds, trapped underneath us. During the brief second I thought I could master a plan to save us, Rick showed his devil face and rushed at me. I remembered his hand moving toward Missy and then me. A fierce sting hurt at the side of my head just before my pillow was yanked from underneath me. Despite the darkness, I could see the pillow lowering to my face, and so I took a deeper breath.
Oh my God! This is not happening! Deprived of oxygen, I whipped my legs and arms around as my face was pinned. Straddling me, Rick must have pressed with all the strength he had. I couldn’t believe the bastard got in the hospital. And now he was trying to kill me! My lungs ached for air, but I held my breath. His weight over my body squished my chest, forcing my last inhale out. I felt myself slowly losing the battle.
Even if I wanted to fight with every last breath in my body, I no longer could, because the remaining ounce of life in my lungs had just run out, and I felt my mind drifting. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a muffled scream. The pressure above me had eased by a fraction.
The struggle at my midsection changed from Rick trying to kill me to him in distress. Something wet trickled on my gown.
The pillow finally fell off my face, and I sucked in a lungful of air and sat up. The battle on the floor didn’t register in my mind until I saw Missy on top of Rick, stabbing him over and over again. Although I couldn’t see a knife; in fact, I couldn’t see any kind of a weapon. Blood covered her gown. It was smeared on her hands and arms, and all I could do was sit and watch until a scream managed to manifest itself out of my lungs. While this appeared to play out in slow motion, I was sure it took no longer than a few seconds.
Both Derek and my brother flew into the room. After an initial pause, they yelled something out and helped Missy off Rick’s lifeless body. A group of nurses rushed in behind them. It looked like they were trying to save him, and I prayed they couldn’t.
Missy watched, waiting patiently until they declared him dead. I thought Missy would smile. I expected her to be happy. Instead, she simply fell into Eric’s arms and sobbed. But I doubted that she was crying for Rick. I was pretty sure that my sister would only now finally be able to mourn Blake’s and their baby’s death.
While Derek examined my bloody gown, Eric lifted Missy off the floor and took her into his arms.
“It’s not my blood,” I said, keeping my gaze on my sister. I wanted nothing more than to hold her.
“It’s over now, Missy. It’s all over.” My brother held her until a doctor came in to assess the cuts on her hands. Apparently Missy’s been so afraid that Rick would return, she snuck into a supply room and stolen a scalpel. She pulled the first cut right along his neck. As security mingled, I overheard that Rick had been hiding at the hospital since the day we were admitted, and the bastard snuck into our room through the drop-down ceiling. While I was sure the police would want to question my sister, there was no doubt in my mind that no charges would be laid.
