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“Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, Mack,” Je
“What is this?” I asked, giving them a cautious look as I surveyed the light blue envelope.
“Just open it!” Brayden shouted, bouncing up and down on his barstool, his lips turned up into a sly smile.
Eyeing my two friends, I slid my thumb beneath the flap of the envelope and pulled out a card. Opening it, my jaw dropped. “Guys…,” I started.
Brayden held his hand up. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“But you have student loans to pay back, boo. And Je
“No, it’s not,” Je
I stared at the check, speechless. “It’s just too much. You guys work so hard for your money.”
“So do you,” Brayden offered. “Consider it years’ worth of back rent for letting me crash at your place when I was too drunk to drive back to mine.” He winked.
“I’m not going to be able to persuade you otherwise, am I?”
“Not a chance in hell,” Je
“Fine.” I shoved the card into my purse and raised myself off the barstool, walking between them and hugging them both. “I love you wholes.”
“We love you, too,” Brayden soothed. “We’re in this together, Mack.”
I kissed both their cheeks and slid back into my barstool. Returning my attention to my very boring non-alcoholic drink, I took a sip of the tart cranberry, my eyes catching a news broadcast on the large screen mounted on the wall of the understated bar. Ghosts of my childhood flashed before me and my breath caught. I was unable to make sense of the scene being displayed.
“Can you turn that up, please?” I asked the bartender, my mouth becoming dry.
She finished making a drink and grabbed the remote, raising the volume.
“What is it, Mack?” Je
“I’m not sure,” I replied, my tone even. “But I know that house.” I gestured with my head to the blonde reporter, her hair perfectly coifed, her makeup heavy, standing in front of a large white colonial. Reading the subtitle saying Double Homicide Outside Fort Bragg, I tried to wrap my head around what was going on.
“How do you know that house?” Brayden asked. I could feel his eyes examining me, penetrating my soul, reading all the secrets I could no longer guard.
“I grew up in it,” I muttered, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them. “Nearly every night, I sat in that tree between the two yards with my best friend, Damian, who lived next door.” I instantly began to regret that I never tried to find him after I disappeared in the middle of the night all those years ago. I was warned not to because it could put my family’s life in jeopardy.
“I thought you grew up in San Antonio,” Je
“No.” I shook my head. “We moved there when I was ten. Before that, my dad was stationed at Fort Bragg.” I had probably already told them too much, but if I couldn’t trust my two best friends with the truth of who I was, who could I trust?
“New orders?” Brayden asked.
“Something like that,” I agreed, straining to listen to the newscast.
“Tragedy struck this tight-knit neighborhood in Fayetteville, North Carolina, just outside of Fort Bragg early this morning. This is a community of servicemen and women where people watch out for each other, but nothing could have prepared them for the horror they woke up to.”
The live broadcast cut to previously shot footage of a medical examiner rolling two gurneys down a driveway I remembered playing hopscotch on, the bodies covered with a sheet, distraught neighbors looking on with sorrow and condolence.
“The decapitated bodies of a married couple in their sixties were found at approximately nine o’clock this morning at the house behind me, which has been vacant for the past several years. A real estate agent stumbled on what is being called a ‘horrific, ritualistic killing’. The victims have been identified as Lucian and Emily Sheperd.”
A photo of a happy couple surrounded by an extended family appeared on the screen and I gasped, my trembling hand covering my mouth. It had been years, but I’d never forget the woman who was like a second mother to me when I was growing up… Damian’s mom. I didn’t recognize the man at her elbow. All I knew was it wasn’t Damian’s father. They must have divorced.
“Emily Sheperd was known as Emily Mills before she married her second husband approximately five years ago. She and her first husband lived in the house next door, but it is unclear whether that has any co
“Curiously, this neighborhood isn’t new to the headlines. Over fifteen years ago, Francis Galloway, a highly-decorated colonel, who lived in this same exact house, died during a gruesome and fiery attack on the U.S. Embassy in Liberia, which cost over sixty people their lives.”
A dated photo of my father in his dress uniform flashed on the screen. I could barely recognize him, his face clear of any scars or burns.
“Just hours after the attack, his wife and daughter were reported missing and were never found.”
My fears realized, old photos of both my mother and me appeared on the screen, my mother wearing the jeweled cross I had worn nearly every day until I ran from Tyler, leaving it at his house in Boston.
“There were always suspicions of a co
I could feel both Je
“Mack…,” Brayden began before I hushed him, listening to the broadcast once more.
“The police here feared another unsolved case, but were able to lift hair fibers found at the scene. They were identified as belonging to one Charles Patrick Montgomery, who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in co
A photo of Charlie wearing his Ranger beret appeared on the screen, his blue eyes brilliant as he smiled. That was before the madness ate away at him, before he dug into something he shouldn’t have…if his version of events could be believed.