Page 55 of Tracked
Thunder boomed in the distance, the sound soft by the time it reached us.
“It took a long time ... too long, trying to keep Creighton and Colby off each other to realize she hadn’t joined us.”
And I remembered the moment I did.
“There was a boom, almost like thunder but not. And then two more of the same. It wasn’t the storm. As soon as I opened the cellar door to find her, there were two loud cracks. They were gunshots, not thunder.”
“Calder ...” I felt her hand land on my arm, warm like the draw of a bonfire tugging me effortlessly and invisibly closer.
“I ordered Creighton and Colby to stay silent in the cellar. When I climbed out, I looked in through the kitchen and saw the masked men, all in black, all armed. As soon as they headed for the library, I went through the outside door to look for Mom.”
The raindrops had been frigid on my face, their pelting like frozen buckshot on my skin, the pain nothing compared to the sight of her.
“She was face down on the ground in front of the house. I knew ...” By fifteen, I’d hunted enough times to know when a living thing was dead.
“Oh, Calder.” The thick hitch of sympathy in her voice anchored me to the present.
“Before I could go to her, the masked men came outside, so I ran back to the cellar ...”
“You had to protect your siblings.”
I nodded, slowly, because even now, a decade and a half later, I still wondered whether it had been the right choice.
“I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and went back to the cellar. We were in there for an hour before Cassius opened the door.”
“God, Calder ... I’m so sorry. I can’t ... I can’t imagine.” Her head swayed. “Why ... Who were they? What did they want?”
“Something to do with her work for the government. I don’t know if Cassius ever really knew—found out what they were looking for.” And if he had, he wouldn’t have said. It was safer if none of us knew.
In the aftermath, he’d insisted on cleaning up the library on his own, though there were books and papers everywhere. And even after he had it put back together, I’d come across him roaming the library shelves late at night, looking for something yet nothing in particular.
“That’s horrible, Calder. I’m so sorry.”
My chin dipped, and I shifted my weight. “That’s the worst part for him. That he and Mom walked away from everything—that they abandoned that part of their life and everything that came along with it, and it still found them. And took her.”
“And the police, did they try to find—”
“The police weren’t involved,” I said, realizing how that must sound to a veritable stranger.Like we hadn’t wanted to know who had murdered Mom or why.
“W-what?”
“Cassius never called them. Never reported her death. He buried her on the ranch. Out on the bluff past Callum’s Watchtower.”
“I don’t understand.”
I didn’t expect her to. Maybe that was why I didn’t share this story often. After all this time, I wasn’t worried like Cassius was that those men or others like them would still come looking.
“There are six of us and one of him. In almost every scenario, survival isn’t about skills or strength, but simply about preparation and odds. And the odds of those men, or others, coming back to the ranch if word got out that Dr. Annemarie Stone had died or Cassius started digging around ...” Another slow shake of my head was all I needed to complete the thought.
It was too great a risk.
“Is that why you call him Cassius?”
My inhale pierced the pristine night air. What did it matter what I called him?What did it matter to her?
I wanted to brush off the question, but when I looked at her, the beauty of empathy stained her irises and flushed her cheeks ... Maybe beauty wasn’t a tool of survival but instead the most unexpected weapon, the way it held me hostage, demanding a reply.
“I call him Cassius because I missed all the signs that night,” I finally said, the howl of wolves echoing in the distance. “I missed all the signs of her panic. Of her fear. I missed that she didn’t come in the cellar with us, which she would’ve done if it was a storm. I missed her gun at her side. I missed the chance to realize what was really going on and the danger we were in. And I missed my chance to help her. To save her—”
