28 Days(6)

“Saige, it’s me.” His voice whispered in her dream…maybe even in her memory.

He knew her.

He’d expected her to know him, recognize his voice.

Unable to hold her tears in any longer, she let them fall unchecked down her face while a feeling of overwhelming grief surrounded her.

For the first time in eight years, she’d dreamt something that had felt real—something that she remembered the details of after waking, at least, she presumed it was the first time.

One thing she realized was that she wanted to know about the trial. She wanted to know about the man who was going to be killed in twenty-eight days.

The man she should have feared and hated. But that hadn’t been what she’d felt.

In frustration, she sent the room back into darkness.



* * *



11:20pm



* * *



Alexander Peterson, known for the past six years as Alex Peters, danced around the old leather bag in front of him, wishing like hell it was Richard Lockwood.

For eight years, his hate for the Lockwood family had grown and fueled his anger at the lies they’d told. And just like when his brother had been arrested and subsequently charged with the murder of those college girls, and the attempted murder of her, he felt helpless.

He loved his brother and knew he was innocent. Even when the evidence piled up and eventually incriminated him, Alex had never given up hope that one day Quinten would be acquitted.

Alex had hoped that she’d come forward and tell the world that it was all lies...except she hadn’t. She’d been hidden away by her family and he’d had no idea where to even start looking.

Quinten had needed her, he’d needed her, but Alex had given up searching because their mother had lost all hope. Just before she died, their mother begged him to get his life together instead of festering on the hate and betrayal he’d felt at his brother’s incarceration. He’d kept his promise, becoming a firefighter, but he’d still let the hate and betrayal fester. He’d just learned to hide it from her and his friends.

His brother’s defense attorney had filed so many appeals and motions to try and get another trial, but he’d hit a brick wall with all of them.

Time now slipped through his fingers.

Twenty-eight days.

Just hearing those words made him want to hurl.

In eight years, they hadn’t been able to get a retrial.

In eight years, they hadn’t found new evidence to implicate someone else or tampering with evidence in his brother’s case.

So what the f*ck could he do in twenty-eight days?

Alex wanted to go and beg Lockwood to help free his brother, but he knew that the man wouldn’t. No matter what Richard Lockwood had said to his face, he’d had no intention of helping Quinten. His wife had been another matter altogether. Christina Lockwood had lied to him. The only woman he’d ever let close, and she’d taken his heart and crushed it.

He first met her when Richard Lockwood had employed him and Quinten to create one of their masterpiece carvings for the wooden banister in the foyer of their home. At first, Christina flirted with them both when Richard wasn’t around, which they ignored.

A few weeks later, he found her upset when he went looking for a bottle of water. He saw a different side of her then, and over the course of the following weeks things had gotten out of hand, but neither could stay away from the other...and then she crushed him. Just as Saige did to his brother. If Saige hadn’t been her stepdaughter, he’d have said it was a case of like mother, like daughter, because Saige had crushed his brother’s heart.

Alex remembered the first time they met Saige Lockwood. It had been the day before she turned twenty-one. She suddenly appeared on the stairs in front of them on her way down to breakfast. His tongue had gotten stuck to the roof of his mouth, and as she passed them by, he noticed a similar stunned expression on his brother’s face. Quinten had been in a bad marriage back then, but Alex watched as his brother fell for her. He didn’t blame him. Saige was beautiful, and they later discovered that she was just as beautiful on the inside as well.

She had a head full of sun-kissed blonde hair that nearly touched her bottom. Her blue eyes had been like looking into the ocean on a sunny day. He hadn’t been as taken with her as much as Quinten. His obsession had been directed elsewhere, but from that day forward, his brother looked for her every time they were at her house.

Alex shook his head, wanting to forget all about her. She betrayed his brother and him in the end by lying about the man who took her. What he’d never been able to understand was why? Why would she lie and let the real man walk free? For years, he’d wanted answers, and still did.

Saige refused to see him when she’d first been taken to the hospital, before he even knew that his brother had been arrested for her abduction. Then when he discovered the lies she told, he felt nothing but betrayal.

His gut burned. He wanted justice, just like she should.

He wanted his brother to be set free, and allowed to live his life.

It killed him knowing that in twenty-eight days his little brother would no longer be on this earth. He would never see him again. Even though he was behind bars, he at least lived and breathed. But in less than a month, his brother would be put to death for something he didn’t do.

“Fuck,” he roared, and punched the bag blindly. He just missed knocking his lieutenant down.