Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(38) Alone

The front door to the DuPont residence was unlocked, which was extremely uncharacteristic. My heart was beating loudly in my ears as I turned the knob and pushed the door open lightly with my fingertips. No alarms sounded; the normal beeping when the front door was open didn’t sound. The security camera pointed at it had a clamp over the wires, and I knew they were seeing an old feed, a recorded one. I swallowed hard and tucked my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, wishing I had my gun to reassure me. My knife was pressed against my shin in my boots, but it wasn’t enough.

I took to the stairs two at a time. My footsteps echoed in the odd quiet.

The walk to Jonathon’s bedroom nearly killed me. I paused outside of it with my hand out to take the knob, but I could see it was locked. It was eerily quiet. And then there was the sound of a muffled hit and a groan of pain, and the panic flooded through my veins. I backed up and kicked the door down, stumbling inside on unsteady legs.

Rian’s head snapped over to look at me, his face expressionless and his gun at his hip. Jonathon was slumped on the ground next to his bed, his hand to his face, blood on his fingers. He looked up when I stood there in the doorway, looking between them, and I washed as his eyes flashed with recognition, and then cold panic.

I felt so cold.

“Caitie!” he yelled, his eyes wide as he tried to pull himself up, but Rian must have hit him one too many times in the head because he immediately stumbled and lost his balance again, hitting the ground. “Caitie, run! Get out of here, run!”

I looked at Rian. He was laughing to himself now. He couldn’t help it. He was a monster like me, and this betrayal was bitter to me, but sweet to him. I almost couldn’t blame him. This was the kind of moment that he had been waiting for—he wanted to break Jonathon’s heart. He wanted me to be free from this, free from it all. Free to love him the way he wished I would.

Rian shook his head, grinning, and Jonathon looked at him, so horrified that his face made me dizzy.

“She isn’t going anywhere,” Rian chuckled, smirking. “Are you, Caitie?”

He pulled my gun out of his back pocket and tossed it to me. It flipped three times through the air.

On reflex, I reached up and caught it. As I brought my hand down, looking at Jonathon with my eyes wide and my heart wide open, I watched as he turned from horrified to confused to completely and utterly betrayed.

“You . . .” he started, but he didn’t quite seem to know what to say. I didn’t, either. “You and him . . . You . . .”

I stumbled toward him one step but froze again when he flinched away from me. “Jonathon,” I pleaded with him, feeling like I was looking in on my life through a window, but I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t call out to him no matter how loudly I raised my voice and he would never see me if I tried to catch his attention. I was running in a circle around and around, and I would never be somewhere else. He was looking at me, but he was looking through me. He couldn’t see me. “Jonathon, you don’t understand.”

“I hadn’t quite gotten to the good part,” Rian said, looking over at me. “I was explaining to him everything that’s happened over the last couple of months. I haven’t quite gotten to you yet.”

“I don’t think you need to tell me anything anymore,” Jonathon said, and I could hear his heart shattering into a million pieces. “I don’t really want to know.”

Rian shrugged. “As you wish—this is only prolonging your life.”

Jonathon’s eyes moved to me as he murmured, “I just want to know why.”