Elijah's POV
A pained groan leaves my lips. My knees hit the concrete floor, even as Jamie tries to catch my fall.
My sister. My sister. Gone.
I force myself to feel it, to punish myself, by putting myself through the fear she must have felt. The thoughts of what she must have done wrong, what I must have done wrong, for her to end up in a situation like that. It was clear from her screams, the muffled sounds of her trying to call for me, that she was terrified. There was nobody to help her.
And the pain. For that split second, when the gun silenced her, she must have wanted to scream. The blinding pain of a bullet in her must have stopped her. Maybe it hit her in the head. Maybe in the chest. Maybe it hit a place on her body that didn't give her a quick death, so she laid there and hoped for death to come sooner.
A hand lands on my shoulder-gentle, but firm. "Elijah?"
I stand, my gaze fixed on her. "You. You did this. Why didn't you kill me?" I didn't think I could get her more. I grab her, pulling her closer. Her familiar eyes are wide. "Why didn't you kill me?" I scream, wishing now that I could make her feel what I am feeling. The one person I lived for is dead.
My sister was my responsibility. I failed her.
That thought squeezes my chest, leaving a dull emptiness in my body. It leaves me numb and wishing that I could cease to exist. She was the only thing that mattered, the one thing that I needed to do right-and I couldn't save her.
What will my parents say? That they knew from the start that I would fail, but never expected it to be so soon.
Bree doesn't move, she simply watches the pain in my eyes, the thoughts flooding my mind. She feels it too-the pain, the regret, the hatred for that man. Of course she does, because Bree and I grew up together.
In a way, Kasey was her sister too. She has lost too.
"We have to kill him, Bree."
"Not we. I have to kill him. This has always been my fight." She tries to pull away from me.
"It become my fight the moment he-" That searing pain returns, making it hard to speak. "The moment he killed my sister." I can barely get the words out. There is a dullness in my body, making my bones feel heavy and hard to carry.
It makes me wish there was a way to escape this, to feel nothing at all. But that is not what Kasey would have wanted. She would have wanted me to fight.
Jamie steps up beside me. What is he even doing here? Did I miss something? "I'm in, too." He looks towards me sadly. The pain there, it's not grief. It's the pain of knowing how much this is killing me, like an infection slowly eating me from inside. "I want to kill that son of a bitch."
Jamie's words fortify my heart, forcing out the self-pity. We're going to kill him, and only then will I allow myself to feel anything. I want to wrap my fingers around the soft part of that killer's neck and watch him struggle until he's out of air.
Easier said than done, as the face of my sister keeps pushing its way into my mind. It is paralysing, knowing that one moment she was here and now she never will be. Now, I will only be able to talk about her in the past tense.
The hardest part is knowing I could have done more. I could have called her more often. I could have gone to visit her more, to watch her grow up. I could have been more of a brother to her; could have protected her when she was scared.
I can't imagine how she must have felt, in a strange place with a man she didn't know holding a gun to her head.
I wipe my cheeks, refusing to let myself feel. Not yet.
Bree nods, her gaze shifting from a combination of pity and pain to determination. She opens her mouth to say something, but decides against it.
That man that just killed my sister is her dad. The woman I slept with is . . . her mom.
I knew that she reminded me of someone. That's why, when the older woman flirted with me and shifted closer, I didn't stop her. Now there are a thousand things I wish I could have done differently, and all of them seem to somehow come back to Bree.
"So what do we do?" I ask, looking at Jamie.
He glances at Bree. "I don't know, ask the person who has plotted peoples murders before."
She shrugs, glancing towards her car which is sitting idle in the parking lot. "I don't want to get you guys involved. I know that is a selfish thing to say when you've already been brought into this, and you deserve to make him feel pain for . . ." She can't bring herself to say it. For the death of my sister. "But I can't risk it. He will use you against me. It could get in the way."
"He killed Kasey. You know I am not going to sit around and wait while you put yourself in danger again. Bree, he killed your sisters. He killed mine too. We both deserve to be a part of this fight."
It's a good point. From the way she opens her mouth, then closes it again, I know that she doesn't have an argument against it.
She huffs and walks over to the trunk of her car. "You're going to need weapons then."
"I have a knife in-"
She opens the trunk and there is an array of weapons ranging from explosives to elixirs that could poison or paralyse.
How? How could I have not known all this time?
"Shotgun the shotgun!" Jamie cheers and grabs the weapon, then takes shotgun in the passenger seat.
•<•>•
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