Love Me (WITSEC #3)(68)
His jaw clenched. “If it were me, I’d want to know what was on the line before deeper feelings developed.”
“I love them, Logan. There are already deeper feelings,” I snapped. Knox and I hadn’t said those words to each other yet, but I did love him. I had been in love with him for a while. “You’re acting like they don’t know anything. Like I downplayed the seriousness. I haven’t. I’ve told them pretty much everything and they’ve done their own research,” I argued. “Them not knowing the details from that night isn’t going to make a difference.”
“Details matter.” He shoved his chair back and stood. Grabbing the tan file that had been lying untouched in front of him, he flipped it open, and he dropped a piece of paper on the table for all of us to see. The guys either hissed or cursed before looking away from what Logan laid out. The moment my eyes landed on the blood, I realized it wasn’t a piece of paper, but an eight-by-ten photograph of a brutally murdered girl. A brunette girl, around my age, with many, many stab wounds and bruises, and a picture of my face stapled to hers. She was lying on her stomach, head turned to the side, on what appeared to be a bed. The picture was from her waist up, but it was obvious she was naked. There was so much blood on her skin and around her on the bed. Before the need to blink hit me, I saw rope still tied around her wrists.
I closed my eyes and didn’t open them right away. I didn’t know why I thought closing them would hide the image of the girl or ease the feeling of the room closing in on me. It didn’t. The picture of the dead girl Mr. X had killed because he couldn’t find who he truly wanted was carved into my brain.
“Olivia Berns,” my uncle said, and my eyes shot open. I watched as he pulled another picture from the file and tossed it on the table. “Jessica Rivers.” It was another brunette girl with my picture stapled to her face, killed in the same manner. Logan tossed down picture after picture of girls, saying their names that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Jonathan McConnell,” he said with a strained voice and before I could finish processing my father’s name, he tossed down the picture.
Tears fell from my eyes without warning, or maybe I was just too shocked to realize they’d started, as I stared unblinking at the image of my father lying on the couch, gray eyes open, blood everywhere from his nose down, his insides on the outside. Seeing it seemed to sharpen the memory I had of finding him that way.
Logan’s voice broke with the next name he said. “Heather Mc—McConnell.” Like the girls Mr. X killed, my mom had been killed by multiple stab wounds.
She was fully clothed, though.
I didn’t know why that thought popped into my head.
Maybe I thought it would lessen the brutality of her death and thus help me feel slightly better.
It didn’t.
Logan held one more photo in his hand. His hesitation in tossing it down drew my eyes up to his. He was staring at me, his expression schooled. “Shayla McConnell,” he said, dropping my sister’s picture on the table. My gaze dropped with it.
Colt looked away. “All I see is Shiloh.”
The others were quiet. I didn’t know if they looked away like Colt had or couldn’t look away from the photo like me.
I felt dead inside as I took in my sister’s pale pink hair, her vacant gray eyes. Blood had crusted the corners of her mouth. Her skin was ghostly. The blood all around her neck made it more apparent.
Numbly, I pulled out the chair in front of me and sat. I stared across the table at my uncle with tear-streaked cheeks. Colt reached for my hand at the same time Keelan grabbed my knee. They both squeezed a little, a silent way to ask if I was all right. I didn’t give any indication that I was.
Logan wouldn’t stop. He was so convinced that the details of that night would be the push that the guys needed to leave me. Them still sitting here after seeing horrific pictures of murdered girls and my butchered family was evidence enough that they wouldn’t.
Details matter, Logan had said. I couldn’t be more detailed than a photograph. Yet he still stared at me, waiting.
“Play the recording.” I tried to sound confident, spiteful, as if I couldn’t wait to prove him wrong. But my words came out defeated and weak. I had no fight left. Just forced acceptance.
“No,” Knox said. “If you are not ready, I will not take that from you. None of us will.”
Logan didn’t seem to care about that and pressed play on the recorder. My voice poured from the small device.
“I can’t do this,” I cried.
“Yes, you can, Shi,” Logan said firmly.
“Please, Logan, tell me it wasn’t real. This isn’t real. I’m dreaming! I’m dreaming! I need my mom. I need her! Mommy!” I wailed.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!” I yelled frantically, slamming my hands down on the table. “I’ll do it! I’ll tell them! Just please turn it off!”
Creed snatched up the recorder before Logan could and turned it off.
I couldn’t sit here and listen to that. The pain. The despair. The voice of a broken girl who had lost everyone she’d loved, whose life had been completely destroyed. Even though it was me, a moment captured from my past, it was the rawness of it I couldn’t take. Like the first sting after a cut. The hurt would never be as painful as it had been then. To sit here and listen to it…it felt like a violation. That girl didn’t deserve to have that horrible moment where no amount of begging and pleading would change what had happened broadcast like this. I didn’t deserve this. Maybe one day, I’d let the guys listen to that recording, but it wasn’t today.