Sparrow

I wanted to run. Knew I could run really fast, but not as fast as a bullet, and not with legs that felt like they had concrete blocks attached to them. I gained more control over my feet, but I doubted it would be soon enough to save me.

I wasn’t giving up, though. If I was going to die, it wouldn’t be without a fight.

It was freezing, and I was wearing nothing but my running gear. My teeth were chattering and my hair, a little damp from running earlier, was coated with a thin layer of ice.

We walked in silence. The crunching of the twigs and the occasional sleepy bird chirping a good morning were the only sounds reminding me that time didn’t stand still.

I felt bile rising in my throat, my head swirling like I was going to faint. I’d rarely considered how I was going to die, and never imagined it’d be like this. But right now, with the shovel and the gun, with Brock looking like he did, wrath and cruelty dancing in his eyes, the odds of me leaving here in one piece, or leaving here at all, were growing slim.

We stopped near a tree stump marked with a slash of white paint. There was a fresh grave underneath it, carefully covered in mud. Brock pushed the shovel into my hand and cocked his head toward the leaf-covered ground.

“Start digging.”

I looked down. The earth was soft from all the rain, but the shovel was damn heavy and my body and legs were still not working right, though getting better with each passing second. I knew exactly what he was asking. He was asking me to dig my own grave. Looking back up, I felt my tears pooling behind my eyes, but I had no time for self-pity

I needed to do something, quick.

“Why are you doing this? I’m not him. I’m not Troy.”

“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “But you’re important to him. If I can’t steal you away, I will make sure he doesn’t have you, too. It was your choice.” He smacked his lips. “I tried my best to do it the easy way, but you didn’t want me. Tough luck.”

“Important to him?” I exclaimed, “You’re wrong. I’m not important to him in any way.”

“Yeah, you are.” He thrust me forward, pointing at the ground with his gun. “Now dig.”

Why was Brock so hell-bent on hurting Troy? He was the one who ended up marrying Troy’s girl and got a job from the guy afterwards. Troy may have been a jerk to him and his family, but Troy was also a jerk to everyone else, too. It was a universal thing. He didn’t discriminate.

Unless he knew about Troy and Catalina…then again, Brock himself said they were only two people living under the same roof for Sam’s sake.

Nothing made sense.

There was no logic behind this scenario.

My vision blurred with unshed tears. The green of the forest and brown of the mud smeared like a bad painting. I didn’t budge. Couldn’t dig my own grave.

Brock shoved me again, but this time, I tripped. I fell into the mud, my knees buried deep. It was freezing, my damp pants sticking to my thighs.

“Please don’t make me torture you more than necessary.” His voice was disturbingly composed for someone who had just insinuated that he was going to kill me. “It’s nothing personal. At least not against you. Come on now, sweetheart.”

I felt his warm hand jerking me up on my feet. I couldn’t look at his face, and sure as hell didn’t want him to look at mine as he broke me like no one else ever had before.

“I promise to make it quick and as pain free as possible if you cooperate. You won’t even realize what’s happening.”

I choked on my own saliva, gasping for air.

He took a step closer, his heat against my cold body. “I’ll do it when you won’t even notice, out of nowhere. You’ll have your back to me. Deal?”



TROY



I STORMED INTO Rouge Bis in search of Brock.

No one had seen him that day, and nobody had spoken to him in recent hours.

Stalking into his office, I froze when I noticed the little clue he had left for me.

A toothpick. My toothpick. Sitting pretty in the middle of his newly empty glass office desk. A toothpick still tangled in the green fiber of Brock and Catalina’s bedroom carpet.

His laptop was gone, so were the stacks of papers, pictures of his family and everything else he personalized the place with. Just my toothpick. And I knew why he put it there.

He realized I was f*cking Catalina. Realized what I was half begging him to find out for f*cking years. And now it was backfiring big time, blowing up in my face.

There were too many coincidences that day, and I knew the two disappearances had to be connected. He took her.

He took my wife.

A part of me wanted to smash the whole place down, walls included, but I didn’t have time to fall to pieces. It was now my job to glue them together, to make sure Red was going to be okay.

I called my little pawn at the Metro police. John was one of the greediest bastards on my payroll. For the right price, he would have volunteered his own daughter to be diced up into steaks and served at Rouge Bis.

“How can I help you?” he asked

I gave him Brock’s full name—both names, just in case—asking him to issue an APB.

“This could take a while,” he said immediately. “Lotta paperwork involved.”

“I’ll pay whatever to make it happen fast.” It wasn’t like me not to negotiate, but time was not on my side.