How hard could it be? • LM / SS

Chapter 54

He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion when the others didn't look slightly happy with the discovery. This was good! This was helpful! They knew where they were! Why did everyone look like it was the opposite of good news? "What?"

"You don't remember what you said right before you came out of it, do you?" Stiles was the first to find his voice. Isaac shook his head. "You said when they captured you that they dragged you into a room and that there was a body in it."

"What body?" he questioned, his voice cracking as fear seeped through his veins.

"Erica. You said it was Erica."

If there was any amount of money in the world that Jade could pay to forget the looks of denial and horror on Max and Isaac's faces, she'd pay it.

Isaac shook his head, refusing to believe it. Erica wasn't dead. She couldn't be! She could hold her own against anyone, some alphas weren't gonna get in the way of that! No way. He wouldn't believe it until he saw a body. A body was solid proof.

Max stood still, not moving. The others started bickering, unsure of what else to do. But Max stayed where he was, his body rigid and his eyes staring blankly ahead. Jade and Scott attempted to whisper comforting words. It was no use.

You know that gut feeling you get when someone tells you news that you didn't want to hear, but there's just no use denying it? Cause deep down, no matter how much you pray for it to not be true- it is.

And that's the problem with grief. No matter how much you want to scream and shout and cry and tear down all the posters in your room and burn all the photos of you two; what's the good in that? There was no more tears left in him to cry. He'd spilled them all over too many people; his mom, his dad, Jason. At least that's the way he felt. It wouldn't bring her back. Nothing could undo the amount of pain and damage, yet also the sense of emptiness, that he felt in this moment in time.

Nothing.

No one could bring back his best friend. His first proper friend in Beacon Hills. The girl he had confided in. The girl he had took polaroid pictures with and stuck them to each other's books. The girl he had spent hours in the skate park with. The girl he had went for ice cream with. The girl who would beat up anyone who was mean to you. The girl who was really a ray of sunshine. The girl who had apologised countless times, but still couldn't forgive herself. The girl who was deemed a bitch, yet never got the chance to show who she really was.

The girl with her whole life ahead of her, who had so much more to offer.

The girl who would forever live on in his memories.

His best friend, who could never be replaced, Erica Reyes.

~

"All right, so we meet at Derek's at 5 to go over the plan, and then we don't get started until dark," Scott explained.

"Okay. What do we do till then?" Stiles questioned.

"Well, right now, we've got english. How are you feeling?"

Max's head snapped up quickly, eyes distant. He nodded, the thought of words feeling too much. Stiles squeezed his hand in reassurance, understanding that this wasn't easy. He hoped that Max knew they weren't trying to brush her death under the carpet, that they were trying to stop the alpha pack. Maybe then they'd find a body. She could have a funeral and Max could have some closure.

~

"Okay. See this? This is how they got in. It's a rooftop air conditioning vent. Leads down into the wall of the vault, which is here. One of the robbers were lowered into this shaft. Now, that space is so small, it took them about 12 hours to drill into that wall, which is stone by the way. Then throughout the rest of the night, they siphoned the cash up to the guys back on the roof through that one little shaft in the wall," Stiles circled places on the map of the bank.