Rules of Survival(75)

“Shaun!” Patrick screamed. His voice echoed through the trees and bounced off the surrounding mountains. The compressions were faster now. Harder. If he kept this up, he’d break Shaun’s ribs.

I fell to my belly beside Shaun’s head, unable to stay upright any longer. Tears rolled down my cheeks, leaving icy trails in their wake. “Don’t go, Shaun. Please.” I reached out and took his hand in mine. It was ice cold. Surely no one’s skin could be that cold if they were still alive. I glanced down at his right arm. The shackles didn’t look broken, but maybe the fall into the water unlocked them somehow? “We can’t get to know each other if you go…”

“He’s—not—going—anywhere,” Patrick huffed. He continued the compressions, but a part of me just wanted him to stop. This was pointless. Morbid. Shaun had been under the water too long. He wasn’t coming back.

A small, shiny object caught my eye on the dock a few inches from Shaun’s other hand. Forcing myself up on my hands and knees, I crawled around Patrick to see what it was. He was still fruitlessly working. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but the look on his face made the words stick in my throat. It was easier to focus on the shiny thing on the ground. I didn’t know why it was so important right then, but it just was. In fact, it was the single most important thing in the world. As I got closer, the thing took shape. Thin, it was tipped on one end and rounded at the other. It was a key.

The shackle key.

The cuffs hadn’t broken. Shaun had unlocked them. He’d had the key the entire time and had sacrificed himself, taking the precious time to unlock the cuffs so I could get away instead of trying to untie himself from the brick.

I wanted to scream—and I might have, too, if a sudden round of waterlogged coughing hadn’t filled the air.





Chapter Twenty-Five


Whirling around, I saw Patrick rolling Shaun onto his side as he spit up a lungful of foul lake water. He hacked and gagged, and it was the most amazing sound I’d ever heard. I tackled him, arms wrapping around his shoulders as he sputtered and gasped to refill his lungs.

“You’re okay,” he wheezed, returning the soggy embrace.

“And so are you.” I pulled away to look at Patrick. He was sitting on the other side of Shaun, just watching us. He suddenly looked older. Tired and frail, in the same way I’d seen a thousand times in Mom. Knowing what I knew now about her past and the things that haunted her, I understood. The stress. Always trying to hide the truth. In many ways, Patrick had done the same. He’d hidden his past—a past he could never truly escape from—and begun chasing the very thing he’d been.

Mom had run away from it. Patrick had run toward it. It didn’t end up bringing either of them any peace. I couldn’t help feeling that if they’d only embraced it and dealt with things, they could have been able to move forward.

“How did you find us? You pulled the tracker from Shaun’s jacket at the diner…”

“It wasn’t hard to figure out where you were headed,” Patrick said. He fisted a handful of his navy-blue shirt and wrung out the water.

Shaun grinned. That’s exactly what he’d told me. “Then what took you so long?”

He leaned forward and pulled a wet leaf from Shaun’s shoulder. “I was a little preoccupied by Grayson. That son of a bitch packs a mean punch…”

Patrick winked at him, then turned to me, expression serious. “I got a letter in the mail last year. I hadn’t recognized the name and it had no return address, but I knew the handwriting.”

“My mom,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Patrick said. “I owe you an apology. This whole mess could have been avoided if I’d only opened it right away—but I couldn’t. I just—it…” He took a deep breath. “When you called me from Gerald’s and mentioned Mick, I opened it.”

“And?” My heart pounded. I wanted him to tell me he knew for sure. That Mom had confessed that it was his genetics I shared—not Mick’s. The idea that it was Mick’s blood that ran through my veins bothered me almost as much as the lake. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” Shaun asked.

“What Mick said right before he pushed us into the lake. He was implying that I was—”

“Mine?” Patrick finished for me. He kept his face impassive, and it drove me nuts. I could usually read people like the Sunday funnies—everyone except Mom. And now, Patrick. I didn’t like it. “She didn’t tell me for sure, Kayla. I wish she had, but she didn’t. The only thing she sent me was a hint to where she’d left the evidence. A song lyric. One only I would have understood. I found an SD card, checked it out, and everything made sense. It proves Mick was the one who stole Bengali’s money and killed his son. I don’t know how she did it, but Mel got a full confession. He spilled his guts.”

“Oh.” It was really a stupid thing to be upset about—especially after all we’d just been through—but I couldn’t help it.

Patrick put his hand on my shoulder. “After Shaun said you were eighteen—not seventeen—I suspected. Mel never told me she was pregnant. Only that she was done. She wanted out of the game and I didn’t question it. I was more than happy to retire and settle down with her. I’d told her that over and over again, but she loved the life.”