❝Sometimes you need to run away just to see who will come after you. But it's the monsters you ran from who come.❞
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In which an accidental murder leads to accidental discoveries that should've stayed in the dark.
The small town of East Vienna is h...
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THE NUMBER OF impulsive decisions Kiera Cohen had made in the past twenty-four hours was absurd. Never did she imagine in her nightmares that she would've gotten drunk, killed a person, and ended up in front of a potential criminal's house.
She had no idea where this provocative side of her came from. Was it built up frustration from years of solemnity? Or did the inclination to stupidity run in the family? Her mom was pregnant as a teenager, her dad was sentenced to prison forever, and her brother chose not to be a Cohen anymore. She was probably bound to be next in inheriting idiocy.
Kiera pressed her palm on the gate fork latch. Chipped paint and rust gathered onto the tips of her fingertips. There was no turning back when she had come this far. She sucked in her breath while quietly slipping into the Burnetts' front yard. The hinge creaked as she shut the gate behind her and she inwardly cringed.
What was supposed to be a garden had dirt with a few specks of green life. There was no railing as she made her way up the concrete steps. The floorboard below her squeaked with each step she took. Cigarette butts littered the porch and a wooden rocking chair laid on its side. The door was covered in scratches from what looked like nail markings.
The girl stepped back and inspected her surroundings to see if anyone was awake. She doubted so, but she still took in the neighboring houses–clustered, dimmed, and broken. The house in front of her was an extreme of all that. To put it bluntly, it was a glorified dumpster. The roof looked like it was going to inwardly collapse and the windows, with the exception of the cracked one on the first floor, were barely decent enough to block the wind. The gray stone that gave the house structure was unforgiving and ready for ruin.
Her clenched fist hovered inches away from the door. She glanced between the feet that had brought her here and the door she was supposed to knock. It was laboring to force punctuating breaths in and out of her lungs but a normal pattern came itself to be after a few moments.
Kiera's hands flew back to her sides, but they remained in tight fists. How had she ended up here? She had only been here twice.
The first time was to take Taedyn Burnett's sister home because she had been drugged during their graduation party. One look at the vulnerable and helpless girl–who wasn't even in their graduating class–and Kiera's instincts took over. The girl was barely able to say her address and Kiera couldn't heave her near dead weight for long, arriving to this place by scarce luck. She came a second–and what was supposed to be the last–time under the pretenses to check on the girl's health.
But in the back of her mind, Kiera had a feeling that she might've helped the girl as an excuse to leave the graduation party, coming a second time really only to avoid self-condemnation.
No one had answered the door the second time.
Foolish. On what chance would someone be here this time? The probability of not being a fugitive was dwindling down to single digits. Any further analysis on her doomed condition was brought to an unanticipated pause when she heard a scoff.
