Page 20 of The Complete Truth Duet
“Hey hey hey! Open up!” a female voice shouted. The panic in her tone spiked my own.
I dropped the bag and hurried over to the door, snatching it open.
The young girl Cora had introduced as Don’t even look at her the day before shoved past me, demanding, “Bolt cutters.”
“What?” I asked.
She was in pajamas, and her dark hair was in a pile on the top of her head. I’d known she was young when I’d briefly met her, even younger than the one we’d found in the shower. But with terror in her eyes and fear etched on her pale face as she turned in a circle, scanning my apartment, she looked like a baby.
When she saw my toolbox on the counter, she sprinted over, flipped the lid open, and then began frantically rifling through it. “I need bolt cutters.”
“For what?”
Before she had the chance to answer, Cora yelled from somewhere in the distance. “River, hurry up!” Her tangible fear sliced through me from all angles as it echoed off the walls.
“I’m trying!” she replied, her voice cracking as she continued picking up and dropping tools in her frenzied search.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. But she’s gonna die if we don’t get that damn door open.”
A blast of adrenaline rocked me back a step. “Who?”
With tears in her eyes, she paused long enough to level me with her brown stare. “Does it matter?”
No. It didn’t. Not even a little. And, finally, my confusion transformed into purpose.
“Move,” I ordered, reaching around her. The best I had was a pair of cable cutters, but they would have to do. After snatching them up, I took off.
“First floor!” she yelled, running behind me. I barely heard her over the thundering in my ears.
With the all-too-familiar sour in my gut fueling me forward, I took the steps three at a time, launching myself down to the landing. Then again with another flight. The minute my foot hit the first floor, I saw Cora still wearing the same jeans and tank top she’d been wearing earlier, standing outside one of the apartments. Her face was shoved into a two-inch opening, a chain at the top of the door preventing her entry.
“Oh God, Angela. Please hang on! I’m coming, sweetheart. I’m right here.”
“Get out of the way,” I rumbled.
Her back collided with my chest as I leaned over her and clamped onto the chain. The damn thing didn’t budge.
“Hurry!” she cried, squeezing out from in front of me.
“I’m fucking trying,” I snapped as if my inability were her fault.
Using my thigh, I leaned my weight against the door to keep the chain taut and brought both hands up for extra leverage. My arms shook and my muscles screamed as I gave it everything I had. Just as I thought my tool was going to crack before that damn chain, the door flew open, sending me stumbling inside.
But I didn’t just stumble into an apartment.
I stumbled through time.
Four years, three months, two weeks, and four days to be exact.
On the floor, covered by shitty, gray commercial carpet, a woman lay face down, pools and pools of blood forming all around her.
Her skin was pale.
Her hair was brown.
And I couldn’t fucking move.
Pain and memories, past and present, agony and regret all rained down over me like a million rusty razor blades slicing through the numbness.
As if it were in slow motion, Cora raced past me and dropped to her knees at the woman’s side.
I’d spent a lot of years trying to change the outcome of the night I’d lost Lisa. Playing the what-if game so often and so intensely that I barely knew what was real anymore. In most of my scenarios, I’d saved her. A few, I’d lain down next to her and died too. But, in all of them, I’d actually fucking done something.
Yet there I stood.
Bare feet to that goddamn carpet. Unmoving. Completely unable to process the all-too-familiar massacre in front of me.
“Help me!” Cora yelled.
Like an involuntary reaction, my eyes slid to hers.
And then, like a bullet from a gun, she said the only word that could have destroyed me any deeper. “Please!”
My mind splintered. Time collapsing upon itself. Reality warring with What-if.
And then all at once, I exploded forward. “Lisa!”
Cora
The boom of his voice rattled the walls, but it was nothing compared to the screaming inside my skull. My heart raced at a marathon pace, and my lungs were more than following suit.
With wide eyes, Penn stormed over, bent, shoved one arm under her shoulders and one under her legs, and then lifted her off the floor.
“No!” I yelled.
She dangled in his arms, her long, dark hair brushing his thigh. But he just stood there, his gaze bouncing around the room without actually focusing on anything.
“Not on the carpet,” he rumbled. He didn’t spare me the first glance as he marched to the sofa, deposited her flat on her back, and repeated on a mumble, “Not on the fucking carpet.”
