Lead Me Home (Fight for Me #3)(106)

The sweeping stretch of beauty laid out below was almost a mirror, the blue, expansive lake and the twist of the river that wound around the mountain in the distance.

My spirit throbbed and pulsed, and the prayer silently spilled out into the vast expanse of land below.

Sydney, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to you.

I hate it.

I wish I could go back to that day and change it.

Take it back.

Let you know that we loved you. So much. It was the fear of it that had held our tongues. We’d never, ever wanted to sever those bonds.

Yet, those bonds had been severed in the worst, worst way.

And my sister . . .

Hugging my knees to my chest, I rocked where I sat on a dry patch on a smooth stone that had been carved out by the flow of the waters.

Sadness cut through the center of me. I had no idea how to piece it together.

If I was attempting to draw lines that didn’t connect or if I was just praying that they didn’t.

A gentle breeze rippled through, swishing through the tops of the trees. I hugged my knees tighter.

I swore, I could feel her brushing across me, a whisper in my ear.

Fly, fly, dragonfly.

A wistful smile tugged at one side of my mouth, and I let my eyes drop closed and relished in her memory.

In her hope and her beauty and the way she had looked at life.

I was almost too lost in the moment to hear the movement behind me. It took me a second before I froze just as the hairs at the nape of my neck prickled in awareness, standing on end.

“They’ll be coming for me soon.”

The voice swallowed me from behind.

Low and menacing.

Disgust swam with the fear. Lighting my nerves and jumping into my veins.

Todd. He was there.

And I suddenly got the sensation of something I should have known all along.

The way he’d watched.

The comments he’d made.

Always right there, gaze directed at me in ways it shouldn’t have been.

Tremors rolled, and I tried to hold them back when I slowly pushed to standing and cautiously swiveled around to face him.

He stood at the edge of the woods that grew up the side of the mountain behind him.

The same mountain where I’d played as a child. Ran and laughed and believed.

“Uncle Todd.” I attempted to send him a surprised, welcoming smile as if this were all one big coincidence when all I wanted to do was throw up again.

This was the man who’d hurt my sister.

Inflicted a kind of pain I couldn’t comprehend.

My mind flipped back through everything that had happened over the last few months.

My apartment getting broken into.

My grandma’s box stolen.

The notes on my windshield.

Caleb shouting at Ollie that he had no clue what he had been talking about.

It wasn’t until that second I realized he hadn’t been lying.

It wasn’t Caleb who had done all those things.

Todd cracked a smile that sent a cold chill skating over me. “Well . . . if it isn’t Nikki Lou.”

I tried to smile again. All I managed was a grimace with the way he was looking at me. “What are you doing all the way out here?” I asked, going for coy.

As if I were clueless.

A na?ve little girl.

That’s what he’d always wanted, right?

“Looking for you.”

My knees knocked.

Oh, God.

I had to stay strong.

I frowned at him in an innocuous way. “Well, you could have just called. I would have been happy to come out to Grandma’s for a visit.”

“Think we both know it’s too late for that.”

My mouth went dry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It was a lie.

I knew it would be so much better to play dumb with a desperate man.

He laughed. Biting and hard. “Come now, Nikki. You think I don’t recognize it in your eyes? You think I don’t see the way you’re looking at me?”

So badly, I wanted to refute it. To stand my ground. To continue to pretend. But the denial of his claim won out. “You don’t know anything about me.”

An ominous chuckle rode on the dense, dense air. “I know everything about you, Nikki.”

My blood froze.

My heart stuttered.

I tried to remain steady. To draw out time. Studying the best way to beat him.

Fight or flight.

I still wasn’t sure.

All I knew was I wouldn’t let him win.

His nose curled in some kind of unknown disgust. “I should have known better than to trust someone to do what they’re told. Should have known that punk kid would get greedy and not follow directions.”

Confusion had me shaking my head. “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

It was true.

He was talking in circles.

Unbalanced.

I guessed I’d just missed out on the fact he was deranged.

He made a low sound. Disbelief and outrage. “He was supposed to dump that old car. Should have done it myself, but I figured the farther away I kept myself from it, the better. Hell, should have done it all those years ago, but I figured I’d better get gone.”

A disorder shifted through the breeze. Branches lashing as if they felt the tumult.