Heads Will Roll – Chapter Three

NOT EDITED

Bonnie’s head felt like it was being torn in two. The concrete room spun a little around her. She squeezed her eyes shut again, which seemed to make it worse. Though she could no longer see the spinning, she could feel it, like she was in one of those amusement park rides that spun fast enough to keep the riders pinned to the walls when the floor dropped beneath them.

She leaned her head forward, forehead clunking dully against something cold. A metal pole, maybe. She kept her gaze on the floor for now, giving her brain fewer things to imagine spinning in that horrifically nauseating way. The pole or beam or pipe — whatever it was — was smooth and cooling and nice.

Bonnie closed her eyes again. This time, that nauseating feeling didn’t rise in her throat and squeeze her head.

Everything felt sort of… hazy. There at the edge of her mind but just beyond her grasp. Like if she reached out as far as she possibly could and wiggled her fingers, the very tips of them would just break through the haze.

She remembered… the high school. A sharp pinprick in the side of her neck. She tried to move her hand toward the phantom pain, but it didn’t get far. Something rattled and tugged painfully at her wrists. She opened her eyes. Handcuffed. Handcuffed to the metal pole her head still leaned against. Beneath each cuff, her wrists were wrapped in a thin layer of bloodied gauze.

She remembered ropes biting into her wrists as she tried to untie the knot or slip free. The school basement.

Bonnie lifted her head and scanned the room. It looked like a basement. Concrete floor. Unpainted brick walls. Tw+-o very small windows right beneath the ceiling. A drain in the middle of the floor. A water heater in the corner.

This one wasn’t the school basement. Or… certainly not a part of the school basement she had ever seen. She’d been moved.

A masked man. She remembered him. Remembered her phone ringing several times before he ripped it from her pocket and threw it across the room. Remembered fading out. Waking back up in the school basement.

Bonnie swallowed, wincing. Her throat hurt almost as much as it had when his hands had still been wrapped around it.

“You’re awake.”

Bonnie’s head whipped around toward the voice. The man stood at the top of the basement stairs. He had changed clothes, but he still wore the same mask he’d had on in the school basement.

He came down the stairs, one hand on the railing. Unlike at the school, he wasn’t wearing gloves. He squatted down in front of her, hands clasped between his knees. “The gag, it’s a handkerchief. I’m going to untie it. Go ahead and scream. No one will hear you but me. I can’t promise what I will do in response, but you go ahead and do what you need to.”

Bonnie fought the urge to headbutt him as he reached behind her head to untie the gag. It wouldn’t gain her anything. It would piss him off. Maybe earn her another head bashing or choking. But it wouldn’t gain her anything. If he killed her, there was no chance of escaping, and alive but brain-damaged greatly reduced her chances too.

So she swallowed the urge and kept her eyes shut until he pulled the gag from her mouth. He tossed the fabric to the floor and sat back on his heels. “Bonnie—”

“I don’t know who you are,” she interrupted, her voice shaking. “I-I haven’t seen your face. I don’t recognize you. You can let me go a-and I’ll go home, and I won’t tell anyone about this. No one has to know. I promise.”

“Oh, Bonnie. They’re already looking for you, dear. The deputies have already been to your mother’s house.”

“H-how long have I been gone?”

“Not horribly long. It’s a little after ten now.”

“Ten… at night? O-on Wednesday?”

“Mmhmm.”

Under twelve hours.

“I still won’t tell anyone. I’ll say I just… went on a long walk. That I needed a break from life for a couple hours.”

“I’m not letting you go, Bonnie. You weren’t some random choice. You weren’t taken because of random chance or random opportunity. I’ve been planning this for a long time,” he said as he rose to his feet.

Bonnie watched him as he walked across the room. “Why me?” she asked, unable to force her voice to be any louder than a whisper.

“I told you we had a lesson to teach Mister Downs. I wasn’t lying about that.”

“Why?”

His back to her, he lifted one shoulder. “He’ll understand the why. That’s all that matters.”

***

A little after eleven-thirty, Jeff pulled the cruiser into Rick’s driveway and shifted into park. When Rick didn’t undo his seatbelt or open the door, Jeff cleared his throat. “All right, Ricky, here we are.”

Rick lifted his head to look out the window. “I want you to meet me at the school in the morning. I’m thinking around seven.”

“So you don’t think she’s on her way to Florida, then.”

“I think… we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket, is all. If we wait until she could be in Florida, and then we wait for his parole officer to do a search of his house…” Rick let out a breath. “If we wait on that and she isn’t there, we’ve wasted so many valuable hours. Important hours. I can’t do that, even if this is Iowa. Even if it’s Ellepath. I just can’t.”

After a moment, Jeff nodded. “Okay. Tomorrow morning, seven o’clock. I’ll meet you at the school.”

Rick turned toward his partner and offered a tired smile. “Thanks, Jeff.”

“If this case were the other way around, if I believed she were in danger and everyone else in the whole fucking world believed she was a runaway, you wouldn’t sleep until you explored that angle with me, until you were absolutely certain she ran away on her own volition. If I can’t do even half of that for you, then I’m not worthy of being your partner.”

“Still, thank you. If she weren’t dating Peter, I’m not sure I’d worry she was in danger. I don’t know that I’d give it a second thought. I’m not… blind to the fact that her relationship to my kids is clouding to my judgment. And I know you know that. So the fact that you’re working with me on it even knowing that? I appreciate it. Deeply.”

“I know, man.” Jeff reached out and gave Rick’s shoulder a tight squeeze. “Go inside, shower, get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Rick patted Jeff’s hand before finally undoing his seatbelt. He headed up to the house as Jeff backed out of the drive and back onto the road. Rick unlocked the door and walked inside. He closed and locked the door, leaning his forehead against the door. He heard quiet footsteps behind him. Before he had the chance to lift his head or turn around, his wife’s arms wrapped around him. Rick let out a breath, shoulders relaxing as he lifted a hand to cover both of hers.

“I was starting to worry you weren’t ever coming back,” Heidi said.

“I always come back.”

“That’s the hope.” Heidi pressed a kiss to his bicep before shifting to rest her cheek between his shoulders. “Did you find out anything?”

“No. I mean… nothing that finds Bonnie and brings her home tonight.”

“Do you wanna talk about what you did find?”

“Bonnie’s dad was released on parole three weeks ago. Has a job in Florida. Tina wasn’t alerted about his impending release, or that he even had a parole hearing, so I think… that Bonnie found and read the letter, and then she hid it. Or threw it away. I just don’t know if she hid it or tossed it to protect her mom or because she was planning on going to see him, see if the stories about him were true. Or maybe just to tell him to stay away. But I don’t know.”

“Did you search her room?”

“No, I talked to Tina about it, but I didn’t ask about searching her room. It felt… I don’t know. Invasive. She’s dating Peter.”

“You can’t see her that way while you’re investigating. She has to just be another missing girl. Anything more than that will mess with your head far too much, and we’ll lose you again.”

“I know,” Rick whispered. “You’re right. I’ll… I’ll talk to Tina about searching Bonnie’s room tomorrow. Where would you hide a parole release letter if you were a teenage girl?”

“If I trusted my mom? Folded inside my diary. And if you find one, you should read the most recent entries too, no matter how it feels. Okay?”

Rick nodded. She was right. He knew she was. But it unfortunately didn’t make the idea of reading his son’s girlfriend’s diary any more appealing. “Jeff and I are going to the school tomorrow before it opens to the students. I want to talk to the staff, see if anyone noticed anything strange about her. She was leaving the school when Tina called reception. I want to make sure they physically saw her leaving.”

“That’s a good idea, baby. You know what you’re doing.”

Rick chuckled. “You’re like a mindreader. That’s been eating away at me all evening. What if she really is in danger and I’ve been out of practice with real cases for so long that I can’t save her?”

“You know all the laws, all the rules, all the procedures. Unlike everyone else, you have actual practice with real cases. If Bonnie’s in danger, you’ll save her. You’ll find her. I have no doubt about any of that, Rick.”

“We left California because I got too involved in cases with people I didn’t even know. If she’s really in danger, how the hell am I going to survive working this one?”

“Every single night, when you come home, we’ll re-ground you. We’ll bring you back to earth each time, make sure your mind is back home too, not just your body.”

“Thank you, Heidi.”

“Of course, baby.” She pulled back, pressing a kiss to his upper back. “Let’s go take a shower, make sure your mind is here, and then get some sleep. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect.”

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Chapter Two

Chapter Four

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter Two

NOT EDITED

By the time Rick got home, it was approaching six-thirty in the evening. The twins had probably gotten home around five, after their respective basketball practices. Enough time to have supper, enough time to get started on their homework. He made his way back to the rooms of his two eldest children, Jennifer and Peter. It seemed wise to start with Jennifer. She was friends with Bonnie. If something was going on with Bonnie, Jennifer was more likely to know the details, so long as Bonnie had gossiped about it. If there were rumors about Bonnie thinking of running away, Jennifer would have probably heard about them before Peter would.

Rick lifted a hand and knocked on Jennifer’s bedroom door. “Hey, honey, you too busy for a chat?”

It didn’t take long for Jennifer to pull open the door, one earbud pulled out of her ear and held in her hand. “You say something, Daddy?”

“Can we talk?”

Jennifer’s brow furrowed, but she nodded and took a step away from the door. Rick stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. It felt odd to be standing in his child’s room for what was essentially an interrogation. He’d done a lot in his career — seen a lot — but this one was a first for him.

“I wanna talk about Bonnie,” Rick said once Jennifer had sat back down at her work desk.

She threw her head back with a groan. “Did Pete send you? I already told her I don’t want to be involved.”

Well, pretending Peter had told him something was a damn good starting point, not to mention a good way to avoid telling Jennifer why he wanted to talk about Bonnie. “Yeah, but based on that reaction, I’m not sure he gave me all the details.”

“It’s just a little fight. It’ll blow over, and they’ll get back together. I’m not going to interfere with it.”

“Peter’s worried she isn’t going to come back on her own.”

“She will once she realizes she was wrong and that Pete doesn’t even see other girls when Bonnie’s in the room.”

Rick nodded. “When she was talking to you about the fight and the break-up, did she say anything weird to you?”

“Weird like how?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Something like… wishing things were different? That she had a different life or lived somewhere else? Anything like that?”

“No.” Jennifer’s brow furrowed again. Finally, she pulled out her second earbud and set it on her desk. “Is everything okay?”

Rick let out a breath. That one, he wasn’t going to lie about. He couldn’t, not to his little girl. He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of her bed, hands falling to his lap. “Bonnie’s mom came into the station not too long after school ended today. Bonnie didn’t come home tonight.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I know it’s a lot to take in, but I need to know if you think there’s any chance she would run away.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Not Bonnie. She’s mad at Pete, but that’s it, and that’ll pass. She loves her life. She loves here. She’d never run away from it.”

“That was sort of where my mind was too.” Rick cleared his throat. “What, uh… what’s the issue with Pete? How much about it do you know?”

“It’s stupid. He’s applying to other colleges that she didn’t apply to, and she thinks it’s because he wants an excuse to see other hot girls and cheat on her without her knowing. She’s just stressed out from semester one finals and all of that. But she wouldn’t run away. She’d go home and talk about it with her mom.”

“When was the break-up?”

“Uh… Monday, I think. But she’s been trying to talk to me about it since. I don’t wanna get involved and tell her how crazy she’s being about it and have her hate me forever because of it.”

“Okay,” Rick said, his voice soft. “She’s been her normal self outside of that? No strange behaviors? Paranoid looking over her shoulder or anything like that?”

Jennifer shook her head. “No, just… normal Bonnie.”

“Thank you, honey.”

Jennifer watched him stand up. “You’re gonna…? She’s gonna be okay, right? I-I mean, we’re in Ellepath. She’s okay. You’re gonna find her.”

Rick offered a smile. “That’s the plan, honey. We’re workin’ on it.”

***

After interrogating a second one of his own children, Rick stepped outside for some much-needed fresh air. Before he could even pull his phone out of his pocket to call Jeff, the man pulled into his driveway. Rick lowered himself to the stairs as Jeff climbed out of the cruiser. “What’d you find?”

“Ex-husband is nowhere near Iowa. Still in Florida. Was working today until about five-thirty,” Jeff said. He walked up the drive and sat down beside Rick. “How’d the convos with the kids go?”

“Both say there’s no way she would have run away. She was normal Bonnie today. Nothing out of the ordinary.” Rick chose to keep her and Peter’s fight to himself. Right now, he had no intention of adding fuel to Jeff’s ‘runaway’ fire. Everyone at the station would think she was just a teenage runaway. It was a small town. There was no way she could be in danger. But Rick knew better than that idyllic bullshit. Kidnappers didn’t stop kidnapping simply because they lived in a small town.

“Normal Bonnie,” Jeff echoed as he sat down beside him. “What does that entail for her?”

“I don’t know, what does it entail for any teenager?” Rick’s brow furrowed as he turned to look at Jeff. “Sorry, before you came up here, you said Tina’s ex was working today?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, the prison work camp?”

“No, he’s a mechanic. I talked to his parole officer.”

“Parole?” Rick echoed. “As… as far as I know, Tina believes he’s still in prison. Did the PO say how long he’s been out?”

“Three weeks.”

“We should talk to Tina about that.”

Jeff glanced down at his watch. “Tonight?”

“Her baby’s missing, Jeff. She’s not going to be doing any sleeping tonight, no matter what time we pay her a visit.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, his voice quiet. “I told her I thought Bonnie was a runaway. And I still… I still think that’s possible. But because she already knows that’s how I feel, I don’t know… if I should be there when you talk to her.”

Though Rick knew part of that reasoning was likely Jeff’s desire to get home to whatever sexcapade Mary had planned for him, it was still sound reasoning, regardless of the driving force. “I’ll handle it and let you know how it goes. You and Mary can pick up your plans for the night.”

“I called ‘em off. I don’t think I should go inside, but I’ll sit out in the cruiser. I…” Jeff cleared his throat, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck. “I think Bonnie’s a runaway. I’ve always believed every missing kid in Ellepath to be a runaway or a good hide-and-seeker, and I’ve always been right. But I can’t just go home, let you do all the heavy-lifting, and find out far too late that this time, I’m wrong. I don’t trust Tina enough to trust her gut, but I do trust you enough to trust yours. I’m tagging along, no matter how late of a night it is, or how many late nights it is. Okay?”

Rick smiled, reaching out to pat Jeff’s shoulder. “All right. Let’s roll.”

***

“He thinks I’m crazy,” Tina said as she set a coffee mug down in front of Rick.

“He doesn’t think you’re crazy. He’s just… like everyone else in this town. This is the only place they’ve ever lived. They’ve been lucky. Shielded from the real horrors of humanity. On one hand, that’s great. On the other hand, it makes people in small towns think crime in those small towns is impossible. That they’re immune.”

She nodded slightly, brow furrowed as she lowered herself into the chair opposite Rick at the dining room table. “Have you…? Have you found something?”

“Yes and no. Umm… your ex. Where is he these days?”

“Prison. Rotting in prison.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Rick said softly. “When there’s a missing kid, one of the first things we usually do is check out any estranged family members, and in doing that, we discovered that he’s been paroled.”

“He…? He what?” Tina asked, her voice breaking.

“He was paroled three weeks ago, Tina.”

“I-I never got a letter. I-I didn’t even know he was up for parole. Aren’t they s-supposed to tell me?”

“Usually, yes. I’m so sorry you didn’t know, Tina, and I’m so sorry that they let him out. What he did to you girls is… I don’t even think the man deserves to be alive, much less walking around in public. But, umm, I have to ask, and I’m so sorry that I have to. Has Bonnie ever shown any interest in reconnecting with him? I know she was young. I don’t know how much of the abuse she remembers versus what she just knows about because she’s been told.”

“What are you asking me, Rick?”

“Do you think there’s any chance Bonnie would leave to visit him? See him for herself? See how true the stories are?”

“She wouldn’t… I don’t…” Tina shook her head. “She wouldn’t, Rick,” she whispered. “She wouldn’t.”

“You’re absolutely, one hundred percent certain she wouldn’t? Bonnie intercepting a letter of parole notification is a damn good reason for why they didn’t tell you. They tried, but the wrong person opened the envelope.”

“She believes everything she knows about him. I-I keep the information limited. She shouldn’t have to know everything. But she has always believed that the abuse happened, was documented, and that he was imprisoned for it. She’s said more than once that she doesn’t have a  father or a dad, and she’s happy with that. She wouldn’t, Rick.”

After a moment, Rick nodded. “What about him? You think there’s any way he’s smart enough to track you down?”

“Yes, but not because he’s smart. Because he’s persistent. If he has an ankle monitor, he’s not smart enough to get around that.”

“I… will check into that. Jeff is the one who talked to his PO. I don’t know what the conditions of his release were.” Rick cleared his throat. “I’ll find out more about that and work from there. In the meantime, if you were to hear from him in any form, I want to know immediately. No matter the time of day. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Rick reached out and wrapped his hands around hers on the coffee mug. “We’re going to bring her home, Tina. If it’s the last damn thing I do, she’s coming home.”

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Chapter One

Chapter Three

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter One

**When I was in high school, I wrote the Kathy Baker series, which was an incredibly under-researched (often times written with no research at all) series. In addition to this, the first book only begins to feature Kathy about halfway through, if not closer to 75% of the way through. Because Rick has already been mentioned at the end of The Surgeon (Jamal refers to them as “that station in Iowa”, I believe), it seemed like a fitting time to finally rewrite the book in Rick’s full perspective. If you’ve read the original book, things will absolutely change. I’m only two chapters in and have already changed quite a bit. But I think it’s necessary to kind of try to get me back into the writing headspace. I’ll give it a real title and such down the road, but my brain doesn’t work that way anymore, where I always have a title first. So… here we go, and I hope you enjoy. ❤

NOT EDITED

Wednesday: January 29, 2014

For a third time in less than half an hour, Tina Young turned her wrist enough to look at her watch. Four PM. Bonnie should’ve been home by now. The high school was little more than two blocks from the house, and Bonnie had been out of class for over half an hour.

“Everything’s fine. You’re being paranoid,” Tina whispered to herself. Ellepath was one of those tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere, Iowa where nothing bad ever happened. On the rare occasion a child went missing, they were found within hours, usually hiding in a bathroom stall or on one of the lowest shelves in the grocery store. But Tina and Bonnie had been forcibly separated before, and him being in prison and them living unharmed in a new town in a new state for over a decade hadn’t taken away the trauma or the paranoia that came with it.

Something could be wrong. Something could be very wrong.

With a heavy sigh, Tina set her book on the end table and pushed herself out of her rocking chair. She hated bothering the office staff at the school, but what other choice did she have?

In the kitchen, she unplugged her cell phone and leaned back against the counter. The high school was on speed dial number one. As the phone autodialed the number, she pressed the device to her ear and waited.

“You’ve reached Ellepath High School. This is Lilly speaking. Is there anyone I can patch you through to?”

“Hi, Lilly. This is Tina Young. Umm, is Bonnie still there at the school?”

“She’s actually leaving right now. Just waved her through the door. She’ll be home in no time, Tina.”

Tina closed her eyes, her shoulders falling with a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Lilly. Bye-bye.”

“Uh-huh, no problem. Bye-bye, now.”

Tina ended the call and put her cell back on the charger. For about the millionth time since they had moved to Ellepath, she had been worried about absolutely nothing. Bonnie hung around the school sometimes to help teachers prepare handouts for the next day. It was totally normal. Everything was fine.

And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something just wasn’t right.

***

“Ma’am—”

“Don’t you ma’am me, Jeff. Bonnie is missing, and I want something done about it. I want to file a report.”

Deputy Jeff Biggs cleared his throat. “Ma’am—Sorry. Habit, I swear. Tina, school ends at, what, three-twenty? It’s been an hour and a half, give or take a few. Don’t you think she’s just… out with her friends? With her boyfriend? She’s still dating Rick’s boy, isn’t she?”

Tina had started shaking her head long before Jeff had finished talking. “She wouldn’t go out without talking to me first. I already called her friends. I already talked to Heidi. She’s not with anyone.”

“Have… you called her phone?”

“Do you think I’m stupid, Jeff? Of course I called her phone.”

“I’m not trying to call you anything, Tina. It’s human nature to forget the seemingly simple things in the midst of an emergency or an anxiety-fueled situation. I just want to make sure it got done, is all.”

“I called her damn phone.”

Jeff blew out a breath. “And?”

“She didn’t answer. Not my calls, not my texts. After the fifteenth or sixteenth call, it sent me straight to voicemail. Her phone’s dead.”

“Or off,” Jeff said. “Bonnie’s top of her class, isn’t she? Set to be valedictorian and everything? Maybe she just needs a break from everything, and this is her way of doing that. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing, Tina. This is a damn small town. Kids don’t just get abducted in Ellepath, for God’s sake. Especially teenagers.”

Tina leaned forward in her seat, as close as she could get to him with the desk between them. “Something is wrong. Bonnie was leaving the school and on her way home when I called them at four. We live two blocks away. You do the Goddamn math on that one. Something is wrong, and I would like to file a report.”

“Okay,” Jeff said, his voice soft. He pulled open the bottom desk drawer and grabbed a folder and a clipboard. After pulling a form from the folder, he handed it, the clipboard, and a pen over to Tina. “I’ll be back in a moment, okay?”

“Yeah,” Tina whispered.

Jeff rolled his chair back and pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed his empty coffee mug and made his way to the breakroom. His shift was supposed to end at five, but he had a feeling he’d be busy for at least an hour, maybe two, before everything could be filed away for tomorrow. Hopefully Mary was okay with pushing their plans back an hour or two.

***

“Hey.”

Jeff met Deputy Rick Downs’s eyes before going back to putting on his coat. “Hey.”

Rick jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Was that Tina Young in the parking lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Her ex-husband hasn’t made a reappearance, has he?” Jeff only shook his head. “What, then?” Jeff cleared his throat. There was no good way to tell Rick about Tina’s suspicions. He settled for handing him the clipboard. “Jesus Christ. Just since school let out?”

“Little after, but yeah. Not long.”

“I’ll talk to the twins, see if either of them has—”

“I think it’s pretty likely she’ll be back home tonight, Rick.”

Rick stared at him for what felt like an eternity. “You think Bonnie is a runaway?”

“I think ‘runaway’ is a strong word. I think she’s just… a teenager who needs a damn break from everything, even if only for a couple hours. She’s balancing about a million hobbies and afterschool activities, top grades, valedictorian speeches, probably class prez bullshit. I know I’d need a break. Get my mom off my back for a few minutes.”

“Tina isn’t some hounding bitch, Jeff. She’s—”

“I’m not saying she is. I’m saying she’s overprotective. She’s got a reason to be, but that doesn’t make it eat away at a kid any less. Especially the ‘talented and gifted’ type.” Jeff’s offered a smile he hoped was sympathetic. “This isn’t California, Rick. Kids don’t just go missing in Ellepath. They don’t get abducted. They run away, and then they come home.”

Rick set the clipboard on Jeff’s closed laptop before tapping his finger to it. “Ellepath or not, this is a missing child, and she will be treated as such. I will go speak to my kids and see how Bonnie was today. You will find out where Tina’s ex is locked up nowadays, and you’ll make sure it’s nowhere near Ellepath. Understand?”

Jeff blew out a harsh breath. Mary would be pissed, but pissing off his on again, off again girlfriend was a hell of a lot better than pissing off Rick. “You got it, partner.”

***

Bonnie Young struggled against her bindings. They were unreasonably tight on her wrists. When she tried to get her feet beneath herself to stand, they tightened around her ankles. The tug and pull on her skin felt like rope. She wasn’t going anywhere.

It was dark. Her eyelashes rubbed against the fabric of her blindfold. The roughness of it scratched her cheek. Wool?

Jesus. Wool. Who cared. She was tied up. Bound. Blindfolded. She didn’t know what was over her mouth, but something sure was. She couldn’t scream for help. Couldn’t run for help. Couldn’t look for identifying clues in case her captor let her out alive.

Rustling. Paper? Bonnie turned toward the sound, trying to slow her breathing to focus on it better. Paper shuffling. Shuffling was more accurate. And a fan.

“You’re awake.”

Bonnie whipped her head toward the voice. Heart pounding in her chest, she struggled against the ropes, tried to scream behind the gag or tape or whatever the hell it was.

“Hey, hey, Bonnie, hey. You gotta relax, sweetheart. You’re gonna hurt yourself. Hey.”

A man’s voice. Familiar. Clammy hands on her cheeks. She stilled, a stiff chill running down her spine. “If you settle down, I’ll take the blindfold off. Okay?”

Panicked, stilted breaths forced their way out of her nose, but she nodded.

The hands moved to the back of her head, working to untie the knot. The blindfold fell to her lap. The room was lit but not bright. Concrete walls and floor. Wooden stairs. Two small windows near the ceiling. They were… familiar too?

Her brow furrowed as she scanned the room a second time. The school’s basement? What the hell?

Her eyes shot over to the man as he stepped toward her again. A mask. He was wearing a damn mask. The mask covered the lower half of his face, leaving her staring at vaguely familiar eyes beneath the bill of a ball cap, familiar eyes she couldn’t quite place either. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, Bonnie, but I need to move you out of here, away from the school. If I untie you, will you walk with me to my car? Nice and easy?”

Bonnie whimpered behind the duct tape, her lazer focus blurring a unshed tear burned her eyes.

“It’s not a long walk, but it’ll be easier on you if you just work with me on this.

Her words were muffled by the tape, her lips barely able to move against the sticky backing, but she still tried to beg him not to do this, plead with him to let her go.

Though her captor couldn’t understand a single word of it, the crinkling at the corners of his eyes told her he was smiling. Smiling that she couldn’t talk. Or smiling that he knew what she was likely asking for. Either possibility made her stomach twist and flip, made her chest tighter than waking up blinded and bound had.

“I didn’t figure you’d make it easy, but I thought I’d give you the chance.” He wrapped his hands around her bound ankles and yanked her away from the wall. Her head thunked against the floor, but it didn’t stop her from screaming as loud as her lungs would allow. The tape muffled it. There was no way around that. But she knew it was still loud. It had to be. If someone was around, there was no way they wouldn’t notice.

Right?

She managed to pull her ankles from his grasp and drove them into his knee. It buckled, and he went down. His hands wrapped around her throat. Her pulled her up enough to bash her head against the floor. Once. Twice. Thrice. He let go of her throat. Bonnie threw her head back, fighting her body’s natural urge to try and breathe through her mouth. Her nose didn’t give her nearly enough air, but it was all she had now.

“Jesus. Not as meek as you seem, Bon.” He straddled her, hands pressed to the ground above either of her shoulders. “Rick teach you that?” He patted her shoulder before pushing himself to his feet. “Don’t worry, I’ve got something planned for us to teach him too.”

Bonnie blinked, slow and hard. Had she heard him right? Everything felt fuzzy. Sounded fuzzy. Looked fuzzy. She couldn’t have heard him correctly. If he was kidnapping teenage girls, what the hell could he possibly have against Rick Downs? What kind of lesson could he have to teach him? “Now, we’re gonna try this again. And if you fuck around a second time, you’ll have a hell of a lot more problems than a sore throat and a headache.”

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Highway Butcher – Chapter Nineteen

**I had most of this chapter written before everything happened with the animals and then my grandpa. I was actually in a Bo and Jensen mood last night, so finishing this chapter wasn’t too big of an issue, which was nice. I hope you enjoy ❤

NOT EDITED

Chapter Nineteen

8:45 PM; LOS ANGELES, APARTMENT COMPLEX, PARKING LOT

The drive to the apartment building had been silent, save for whatever songs had played on the radio. Jensen hadn’t been able to focus much on them. Bo had sat practically motionless in the passenger seat, head turned to the side to stare out the window. A time or two, Jensen had been certain the blonde had been sleeping, but the occasional check of his dimmed phone had served as proof he was awake. He had just been… far away.

Now, as Jensen pulled into a parking space, Bo undid his seat belt and leaned up enough to tuck his phone into his back pocket. “The place has been condemned for a few years, and before that, my little bit of sleuthing indicated most of the residents moved not long after your mother’s passing,” Bo said. “It’ll be empty, but if you don’t want to come with, there’s no shame in that. I won’t be long.”

“Is it… is it wrong to want to see it?” Jensen asked as he shut off the car.

Bo only shook his head. “No. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see the place your life began. But I don’t know what it looks like in there. Without trying to track down online records of the previous landlord’s contracts, I can’t say how many people have lived in that apartment since, before the condemned status began. I can’t say if anyone did, or if the landlord ever cleaned anything up. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Unfortunately, he did. For all they knew, the place still looked exactly as it had the day the police had finally found him and his mom in the apartment. It was possible her blood still stained the floor.

“Yeah,” Jensen managed to force past the lump in his throat. “Maybe… maybe seeing it will trigger something. Like, I’ll remember something. That’s possible, right?”

“Yes,” Bo said after a moment. “But it’s playing a bit of a dangerous game with your trauma and mental stability.”

“I call Kathy my mom. I haven’t been stable in years. Let’s roll.” Jensen slid out of the car before he could second-guess himself.

After a few seconds, Bo climbed out of the passenger seat. “The door to the main lobby is likely locked, so we’ll need to pick it.”

“Got it,” Jensen proclaimed, walking out ahead of Bo. At the door, he pulled a little leather case from his pocket and squatted down. He had the lock picked in record time — Jamal would be proud. Once he stood up, Bo flicked the hem of his shirt out of the way just enough to grab his pocket knife, the backs of his fingers grazing Jensen’s abdomen.

Okay. He clearly was not hiding his crush on Bo very well because that was very much not something you did to a straight guy who didn’t have a crush on you. Right? That or Bo just liked stealing Jensen’s shit. Given their track record thus far, that was admittedly a possibility too.

Bo flipped open the pocket knife and cut through the CONDEMNED sticker on the door. He held the knife back out to Jensen, who closed it and clipped it back onto his belt. The door creaked and groaned as Bo pushed it open, dropping out of the frame a bit as it went. Bo tilted his head back a little, pulling the door back and forth. Jensen followed his gaze, landing on the hinge at the top of the door that wasn’t quite screwed all the way in anymore.

Bo let out a breath and stepped inside. Jensen followed. He pushed the door back up into the frame, launching them into darkness. Jensen swallowed roughly. Jesus. How many times had Jamal made him train in the dark? Prepare for unknown attacks in the dark? Overcome his fear of the dark?

But now, standing in the lobby of an abandoned apartment building, he felt all his training unravel. What the hell was all that training worth if he couldn’t even move his damn hand to get his light? “Th-there’s a flashlight on my belt. I-I’m sure you’ve seen that too.”

“I have,” Bo said, his voice soft. He reached around Jensen’s back, hand patting his hip twice before landing on the flashlight. He clicked it on and held it out to Jensen. “If you can’t—”

“I can,” Jensen assured, snatching the light from his hand.

Bo’s expression only further softened. He grabbed Jensen’s arm. “But if you can’t, there’s no shame in that. If you need to leave, you can. If we need to leave, we can. I can come back alone or we can try again tomorrow, when the sun’s up. There’s nothing wrong with needing time or space. Okay?”

Jensen couldn’t help but look down at Bo’s hand, where his fingers were still gently wrapped around his bicep. His eyes flickered back to Bo’s face. “Okay.”

Bo offered a smile and gave his arm a squeeze. “Come. We’ll have to take the stairs.”

“A-are you sure you can handle that? We can wait until tomorrow, till you have a fresh dose of your pain meds.”

Bo shook his head, already on his way to the staircase. “I’ll be fine.”

Jensen hurried after him. He couldn’t help Bo’s pain, but he could at least illuminate the stairs for him. On the sixth floor, Bo stilled in the doorway, a hand pressed to the frame. “Do you need to sit? I-I can go break into an apartment and get you a chair.”

Bo chuckled, shaking his head. “No, I’ll be all right. I just want to make it to your mother’s apartment. If I need to sit, I can sit there. Okay?”

“Okay.” Jensen cleared his throat, turning as he shone his light down the hall. “Do you… know what apartment it is?”

“Six o’ eight.”

“Can I help you at all? Like, umm, give you an arm for support or something?”

Bo tilted his head back to smile up at him. “I’m okay. I have the wall.”

“Okay,” Jensen whispered. Still, he didn’t venture very far from Bo as they made their way to the fourth door on the left. Like the main door to the building, the apartment door had a sticker on it too, preventing anyone from opening it without tampering with the sticker. This one, however, had CORONER’S SEAL written in bolded letters. “What does… what does that mean?”

“Umm,” Bo cleared his throat, “someone died inside and… no one can enter without proof that they’re next of kin. Next of kin has legal claim to the victim’s property inside the apartment.”

“So they never found anyone? Not… not a sister or her parents? No one?”

“Not that came to the apartment.”

“What does that mean?”

“The, uh, file indicated that the police spoke to her mother.”

Jensen turned, wincing as his light shone right in Bo’s face. “Sorry,” he whispered, turning the beam toward the wall. “They found her mom?”

“Yes.”

“What’d she say?”

“The… the file doesn’t have transcripts from the interviews in it, just notes the officers and detectives wrote.”

“What do their notes say she said?”

“It isn’t relevant to finding who murdered your mother,” Bo said. “Are you… going to pick the lock?”

“If I wanted to work with someone who would hide shit from me, I would’ve asked Jamal for help. Or Kathy. But I asked you.”

Bo let out a breath. “She said your mom was a… homewrecker and that you were a bastard affair child, and in no world would she lay claim to you.” He cleared his throat, rocking back on his heels. “So, umm… Yeah. That, umm, that’s what the notes say she said.”

“I was practically a baby,” Jensen whispered. “H-how is it my fault that…? How? How am I a bastard she wants nothing to do with for something I didn’t do?”

“I know it’s easier said than done, but it’s better to try not to focus on why some people believe the things they believe. Why they are the way they are. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to rationalize it. Many people get stuck in their ways. And your maternal grandmother was one of them.”

“Their ways?” Jensen asked. “Their ways of abandoning babies when their moms are beheaded?”

Bo cleared his throat again. “I don’t… I don’t know what kind of answers you want me to give, Jensen. I-I’ve tried honesty and I’ve tried not giving you information that isn’t directly related to your mother’s death and I’ve tried softening the blow. I don’t know what you want. Just… just tell me what kind of answers you want. Please.”

Jensen closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t have the best… role models.”

Bo chuckled. “I know. You respond much in the way Kathy always has when I answer a question.”

“Yeah. I bet.” Jensen cleared his throat, forcing his eyes open. “I’ll be better about it. I promise. We can have, like, a code word or something for when I’m being an asshole.”

“A code word,” Bo echoed. “Sure. Let’s say that’s a reliable option. What kind of code word?”

“I dunno. Like, ‘hey, you’re being an asshole again’. Something like that.”

Bo snorted. “That would be a code phrase, and the whole point of a code is that it doesn’t say exactly what it means.”

“Gah, we’ll work on it.”

“Deal.” Bo nodded toward the door. “So?”

“Yeah. Here.” Jensen handed his flashlight over to Bo and squatted down, pulling his lockpick kit from his pocket again. Picking the lock for the main door had felt like just another task from Jamal, just another thing he trained for. Picking the lock to his mom’s apartment felt… distinctly different. He had spent the first few years of his life in there, happily oblivious to what the future held for him. For her.

Life had been a hell of a lot simpler back then.

With the final pin pushed into place, Jensen unlocked the door and rose to his feet. He took a step back as he tucked the small kit back into his pocket. “You, uh… you go ahead and open it.”

“Of course,” Bo said, his voice soft. He twisted the door knob and pushed the door open. Jensen was almost surprised that it didn’t creak ominously. It simply… opened. Bo stepped inside and Jensen followed, closing the door behind him. Bo held the flashlight out to him. “I’d like to request you stay here so I can take a look around first, check on the, umm… state of things. If that’s all right.”

“You mean seeing if her blood’s still all over the floor?” Jensen asked. Bo offered a nearly timid smile rather than a verbal response. “Yeah, I figured. I’ll… I’ll stay.” He grabbed the light. “You got a—?”

“I have my phone. I know what it’s like to hate the dark. You hold onto that one, and I’ll hold onto mine. I’ll be right back.” Bo pulled his cell phone from his pocket and tapped the flashlight on. Finding the kitchen was relatively easy. He knew what to expect on the floor, given the dead woman’s family affairs. But that didn’t make seeing the tiny hand-shaped voids in the long-since dried blood any easier.

How long had a toddler-aged Jensen sat next to his mom’s body, hands in her blood?

The little handprints led away from the rest of the blood pool, under the table. The notes in the case file indicated Jensen had been under there during the murder too. It was horrifically brutal, the whole damn thing. There was no way in hell Jensen had stayed silent the whole entire time the killer murdered his mother, beheaded her. No way in hell. But the killer had left him alive anyway. Some kind of code of conduct? It was okay to cleave a woman to death and behead her in front of her toddler, but killing the kid afterward somehow crossed the line?

It was impossible to know what truly went on in the minds of people like the man who killed Jensen’s mother, people like the killer the LAPD was after now. There would always be guesses and assumptions and probabilities, but the only person who would ever truly know was the killer themselves, and the liklihood they’d sit down and spill out their truth without any lies spilling into the mix was rather low. Bo never exactly held his breath for that.

“Mister Austen?”

“Bo. Mister Austen is my father.” Bo walked out of the kitchen and back to the entryway. “I need to sit for a moment. I think we should do that somewhere that isn’t the kitchen.”

“Yeah,” Jensen whispered. “So it was never…?”

Bo shook his head. “It normally isn’t, not unless the family or landlord pays for a biohazard crime scene clean-up. The shape most of these places — crime scenes — are left in is… Well, it’s not great.”

Jensen nodded, but he seemed a little further away than usual. Bo figured that was only reasonable. “I, umm, I think the bedroom is just past the kitchen there.”

“Excellent.” Bo walked alongside Jensen, using himself as some sort of wall between the man’s flashlight and the kitchen. In the small apartment, there weren’t many walls dividing each living section. If Jensen so much as turned his head and light at the same time, he’d be staring at the blood-stained wooden floor in the kitchen, the small dining table he’d spent days hiding under all those years ago. If Bo could prevent that direct visual contact, he would. Being in the same apartment was more than enough.

The kitchen, living room, and bedroom were all essentially one massive room, with only the bathroom and the small laundry room having actual walls. A long curtain rod stretched from the exterior wall to the short wall near the bedroom closet, and several long window curtains had been hung from it, acting as a partition between the bedroom and the living room. One of the curtains was pulled away from the others, tucked behind a small hook on the wall.

There were two beds aligned against the middle of the wall — a twin and a toddler, side-by-side. Bo sat down on the twin bed, and Jensen sat down beside him. Shining his light toward the nightstand, Bo grabbed the dusty photo frame leaned against the small bedside lamp. After wiping the glass with his shirt, he held it out to Jensen. “I can only assume that’s your mother and you.”

“Wow,” Jensen whispered, grabbing the corner of the frame with shaky fingers. “I-I don’t even remember what she looked like. O-or sounded like. She’s…”

“Beautiful,” Bo said, his voice soft.

Jensen nodded. Her eyes were the same emerald green he saw every morning in the mirror. Her skin was paler than his, her face painted with far more freckles than his own. Her hair was some sort of brownish-red. A beautiful, soft brown in some places and an auburn-red in the spots the sunlight in the photo touched.

She wore an off-white sweater in the photo, Jensen hiked up on her hip. They both looked so damn happy. Oblivious. Jensen’s little head resting on her shoulder. His chubby little toddler fingers wrapped around the collar of her sweater. Absolutely oblivious.

“You were probably two or three in this photo here. It looks like your freckles were beginning to come in,” Bo said. “You were very cute.”

“Were?” Jensen asked. “So I’m not cute now? Rude.”

“Oh, I definitely never said that.”

For the first time in his life, Jensen was thankful for the dark. Today, it hid the flush of his cheeks from the cute blonde seated beside him. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Bo grabbed Jensen’s free hand and placed it on the other side of the frame. “Do you mind if I go through the nightstand drawer?”

“That’s what you’re here for. I mean… right? Looking at stuff?”

“Yes, but it’s still your mother’s drawer. It seems polite to ask.”

“Go for it.”

Bo pulled open the drawer, shining his phone’s light inside. An small, empty notepad. A couple pens, a pencil. An MP3 player and a pair of cheap headphones. An uncashed check. Bo picked up the check. “Do you know a Luca Gutiérrez?”

“No. Should I?”

Bo handed over the check. “This is dated the day before your mother was murdered.”

“Six hundred bucks. The fuck for?”

“The… the memo line says ‘Jensen’. I… I think it’s child support.”

“The check with my dad’s name on it was right here in the damn drawer and no one found it?” Jensen asked.

“Well, the check I think has your dad’s name on it. Kathy usually did the picking around crime scenes. Sometimes with an analyst, sometimes not.”

“Because it allowed her to hide evidence if she deemed it… important?”

“Yes.”

Jensen stared down at the check, at the half-cursive words and numbers scrawled across it. “I want to ask Kathy about it. About him.”

“I would try to steer you away from that decision.”

“You could come with.”

Bo snorted, a hand moving to his abdomen. “In no world is that a good idea.”

“I’m gonna do it with or without you.”

Bo sighed. “How about you sleep on it and see how you feel after a couple hours of rest?”

“Sleep on it where? My dark, empty apartment?”

“I’m staying at David’s. I can… ask if you’d be welcome, as well.”

Jensen’s brow furrowed as he turned to look at Bo. “You’d do that”

Bo lifted his shoulders. “I know what it’s like to not want to be left alone in a dark room that doesn’t feel like home anymore.” He patted Jensen’s shoulder. “I’ll see what David has to say.”

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Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Twenty

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Lost Brothers – Chapter Three

**As always, thank you for your patience. In addition to everything else, I lost my Grandpa to Alzheimer’s shortly after finally receiving a diagnosis, and the decline was very rapid and very much completely out of nowhere. I took some more actual time away from writing instead of trying to force it to give me an escape like I usually do, and I think not forcing it, even only a little, has helped to some degree.

I got stuck on the end of this chapter for an eternity and rewrote it about a dozen times, so I hope you enjoy ❤

NOT EDITED

The ER was like an entirely different world from the one Riley had been in only hours before. There weren’t nearly enough chairs for all of the patients crammed into the waiting room. He could hear someone — a doctor, maybe a nurse, but definitely not Sian — barking orders somewhere. Something about isolation. Another voice calling for a crash cart. Another for Type O blood.

“Stay with Molly. I need to…” Riley cleared his throat. “I want to find Doctor Hopkins.”

“Okay,” Tara whispered, eyes scanning the waiting room.

Riley leaned back enough to peek out at the ambulance. Jamal still sat outside the ambulance’s closed door, his gun held in one hand between his knees. For now, their angry once-dead police officer was still contained and closely guarded. Riley squeezed Tara’s shoulder and hurried back to Sian’s office. Empty, but sorting through the mess of quick notes and memos on his desk indicated he was probably in the OR.

Riley ducked past the nurse’s station with ease — it was like its own disorganized ghost town — and stopped in front of the large whiteboard in the hall. Sian Hopkins. Operating Room Three. He made his way back toward the operating rooms, squeezing past abandoned laundry carts and half-closed med cabinets. A nurse ran past him, a bloody towel held over her forearm. Riley’s heart pounded in his chest as he shoved open the door to OR Three.

Sian was pinned in the corner, one hand wrapped tightly around the forearm he held to his chest. With his foot, he kicked back a woman in a hospital gown. She screamed, ran at him again. Sian called for help, kicking her back once more.

Riley ran through the door between the scrub room and OR. “Hey!” He smacked a hand against the window several times. The woman’s head whipped around in her direction. Her eyes were blood red, only a small black pupil in the middle. Her face was pale, blood around her eyes and mouth, running down her chin and neck.

She ran at Riley. He jumped to the side. Hands on her back once she was close, he shoved her to the ground. Across the room, he grabbed Sian’s arm and pulled him toward the OR door. As the woman ran back at him, he yanked the door open and into her face, knocking her down again. He pushed Sian through the doorway and pulled it shut.

Sian stumbled back into the wall, sliding down to the floor with a sob. Once Riley was certain the door would hold, he sat down beside the doctor, who collapsed against Riley’s chest, one hand still wrapped tightly around his forearm.

Riley wrapped his shaking arms around Sian, eyes on the woman in the OR. She stood at the window now, staring. She cocked her head to the side, pressed a bloody hand to the glass. He watched the soft rise and fall of her chest. She was breathing, just like the dead-not-dead cop from the intersection

“What do you got on your arm, there?” Riley asked, eyes still focused on their very pale friend.

“O-one of the nurses tried to stab her while I was pulling her back and g-got my arm instead.”

“Let me see?”

Sian pulled away with a sniffle. He lifted his hand enough for Riley to see the jagged cut on his arm, blood pooling in his palm. “Just that, I promise,” he whispered.

“I believe you. I just needed to see how bad it was.” Riley pushed Sian’s hand back over the wound. “We need to get you stitched up, okay?”

“I don’t know what the hell’s going on, Riley.”

“Hey.” Riley wrapped a hand around Sian’s chin, forcing the doctor to meet his eyes. “Right now, that doesn’t matter. Getting that stitched up so you don’t die on me is what matters. Okay?”

“I can’t, Riley,” Sian whispered. “I-I can’t. Sh-she killed two of my nurses, bit another. I—”

“Don’t think about that. Think about you. Think about your arm. You need it taken care of.”

“Whatever this is, I’m not made for it, Ri. I’m not.”

“You said you wanted me, right? You want me?”

Sian’s brow furrowed, but he nodded.

“You gotta survive today if you want me, Si. You gotta. For me, okay? We’re gonna get you back to your office. I’m gonna stitch up your arm, and you’re gonna call the CDC. Okay? For me.”

Sian sniffled again. With a protestant little whimper, he nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Riley whispered. “Okay.” He kissed Sian, long and hard, the way he should have earlier that day instead of letting the pager interrupt them. He leaned his forehead against the doctor’s, eyes closed. “Can you stand?” Sian only nodded. Riley pulled back and pressed a kiss to the top of his head before pushing himself to his feet. He helped Sian up and slowly opened the door to the hall.

Quiet. Or, as quiet as it could be. As Riley stepped out of the room, Sian grabbed his wrist with his non-bloody hand. Together, they made their way back down the hall, past the nurse’s station, and into Sian’s office. Sian dropped into his chair like a sack of potatoes, injured arm still held closely to his chest.

Riley closed the door and twisted the lock into place. He grabbed the small radio pinned to his shirt near his shoulder. “Pitman, you got your ears on?”

“Always do,” Jamal said a moment later. “What’s it like in there?”

“Don’t think it’ll be long before this place goes… feral. Like the intersection.”

“I assumed as much.”

“What’s the lobby look like?”

“About the same as when you went in. Tara and the injured gal headed back with a couple nurses not long ago.”

Riley tilted his head back for a moment, thinking. “Just… keep an eye on things, let me know if something changes out there. I have a doctor to stitch up.”

“Well, if he dies during that stitch-up job of yours, run,” Jamal said.

Riley turned away from Sian, as if that would impact his ability to hear Jamal’s less-than-helpful advice. “He can hear you, you know.”

“Well,” Jamal said again, “in that case, if Riley dies during that stitch-up job, run.”

Riley rolled his eyes and dropped his hand back to his side before turning to Sian. He had slouched down in the chair, a faraway look in his eyes. Riley knew that look all too well. He walked across the room and squatted down before him, hands moving to his face. Sian blinked, eyes focusing on Riley’s. “Waiting room still looks okay. I mean, in terms of it not being… like the operating room. So we’re gonna stitch you up and call the CDC, and then we’ll figure out what to do from there.”

“I already did,” Sian mumbled. “The CDC, I mean. I did that… I don’t know. It’s here somewhere,” he said, glancing over at his desk. “When the first instance of… this happened, I called. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“So they’ll be out soon?”

Sian lifted his shoulders.

“Okay,” Riley whispered. “That’s all right. Stitches. Do you just want some lidocaine?”

“Sure.”

“I’m gonna need your code for the med cart.”

“Umm… birthday,” Sian said after a moment. “Year, month, day.”

“Okay.” Riley pressed a kiss to Sian’s forehead as he rose to his feet. “I’ll be right back.” He left the room, closing the door behind him. He made his way back to the abandoned cart he’d seen on his way to the OR. “Jamal?”

“Listening.”

“I pulled Doctor Hopkins out of the OR. He was being attacked by a patient. Dead-not-dead, you know?”

“Is he all right?”

“Yeah. Stitches are for a scalpel wound on his forearm. Patient successfully killed two nurses and bit one of the others. I think the one she bit was who I saw running down the hall. Bite on her forearm. She had a towel she was holding her arm with. You see anything like that out there?”

“No,” Jamal said after a moment. “It’s crowded in the waiting room, yes, but it’s calm. People are antsy and annoyed, but it’s calm. Calmer than the intersection.”

“Yeah,” Riley whispered to himself rather than into the radio. He squatted down in front of the med cart and entered Sian’s code. “Still no sign of Tara?”

“No.”

“What about our dead-not-dead friend in the ambulance?”

“Still angry, but he’s not beating down the doors, so the restraints must still be holding him down.”

“Good.” Riley grabbed the vial of lidocaine and a syringe. He stood up and grabbed a suture kit from the jostled shelf near the wall. “Pitman?”

“Yeah?”

“What the fuck are we gonna do?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t know how to figure it out. I-I don’t know if there is anything to figure out.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Jamal said, his voice soft. Calm. “One task at a time, Monroe. Stitch up your doctor. I’ll hold down the waiting room and the ambulance.”

“Yeah, okay. Okay. Thank you,” Riley whispered.

“Mm. You’re welcome.”

Riley closed the medicine cabinet doors, lifting his head to the intercom as it crackled to life. “Code Black. Initiate lockdown protocol.”

Security threat. Riley’s eyes slowly shifting to the doors just before the nurse’s station. The doors that would be automated to close in a lockdown. “Shit.” Riley scrambled to his feet and sprinted down the hall, hugging the meds and suture kid to his chest with one arm, the other fighting to keep his balance on slippery tile floors.

He skidded through the doors just before they slammed shut, a single belt loop stuck between them. Riley reached back and tore the loop the rest of the way, freeing himself from the doors’ death grip. He leaned back against the wall, giving his shaky legs a bit of support for the rest of his body. He pressed the button on his radio. “Pitman?”

“Bit more chaotic in there. I was about to radio you,” Jamal said.

“They initiated a lockdown.”

“Get your doctor stitched up. I’ll see what I can figure out on my end in the meantime.”

“Thank you.”

“Mmhmm.”

Riley forced himself away from the wall and headed back to Sian’s office. The doctor was still slouched down in his desk chair, his faraway gaze staring through the wall. Riley closed and locked the door. With minimal verbal input from Sian, Riley cleaned away some of the blood and administered the lidocaine around the wound. Donning a pair of gloves, he prepared to stitch up the wound.

“Lockdown?” Sian asked, eyes still on the wall.

“Yeah. Code black.”

“Mm.”

Riley cleared his throat. “So… the woman in the OR.”

“Mm?”

“How did she…? What happened there?”

“She flatlined on the table before we even got her fully sedated. We started compressions, pushed epi, and we got a pulse. Slow, but steady and definitely there. Then she was up and…” Riley started a suture, allowing Sian to hold the silence as long as he needed. “She threw herself at one of my nurses, the one she bit. The one who ran out of the OR. She tackled another, and I was able to pull her off the nurse. I remember seeing the scalpel coming at us, and I yelled for her not to do it, and I moved my… my arm up over the patient’s chest to protect her heart from the blade. She wasn’t thinking. The nurse, I mean. She yanked the scalpel out, and the pain made me loosen my grip, and the patient jerked forward, and she just…”

“Dead-not-dead,” Riley said after a moment. “That’s what happened with the man we brought in. A cop. Dead when I arrived on the scene, suddenly no longer dead before I was able to get the living victim on her feet and into the ambulance.” He cleared his throat. “You said you called the CDC after the first instance of this. When was that?”

“This morning, shortly after you left. The page I got? That was for… for the first one.”

“The first one had already, uh, come back?”

Sian shook his head. “Had already arrived at the hospital, pre-death. He’d been bit by one of his sheep. Then he flatlined while we were debriding the wound, and then…” He stared at the wall for a moment before blinking himself back to now. “I thought it must have been some sort of zoonotic disease. I had no other explanation. I still don’t, not really. Something that temporarily overloads the heart, and the… the reboot of the system triggers the extreme aggression. Some variation of rabies or something. That was my first thought, rabies. But I don’t… I don’t know. It’s not like all of these people have been in contact with the sheep on the first farmer’s land. You know?”

The rumble of something outside interrupted Riley before he could get any further than opening his mouth.”

“Helicopters,” Jamal said over the radio. “Military.”

“Could you…?”

Sian nodded, reaching out to press the button on Riley’s radio for him.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Riley asked as he finished the final suture on Sian’s arm.

“Depends on who you ask, I suppose,” Jamal said.

“I’m asking you.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“So… bad then.”

“Well, you said it. Not me.”

Riley blew out a harsh breath. “How many?”

“I count three.”

“Heading toward the hospital?”

“Flying over it,” Jamal said.

“Tell me if anything changes.”

“I will.”

Riley looked down as his phone buzzed in his pocket. He finished up with Sian’s arm and stood up to toss the lidocaine needle in the sharps container on the wall. When he turned back, Sian was already wrapping his arm with the bandage roll in his good hand. Riley tossed his gloves in the bin and pulled his phone from his pocket.

Eli: Get out. It is not a lockdown, it’s a death strike. Leave. Now.

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Chapter Two

Chapter Four

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Lost Brothers – Chapter Two

NOT EDITED

Riley and Tara were in the middle of a call when Eli finally texted back. After dropping the patient off at the county hospital and taking a quick piss break, Riley found Eli’s texts gave him even more questions than the first one.

Eli: I’m fine

Eli: If you see something weird, trust your gut

Riley: You are NOT okay. What the hell is going on? Call me.

It had been almost three hours since then, and Eli still hadn’t read his text. Riley had even tried calling him in between dispatches, and he’d yet to get anywhere other than his damn voicemail.

Now, just a little after four that afternoon, Riley and Tara were sent out on another call: a squabble between roommates had turned violent, and they had both ended up falling out a window and onto the sidewalk below. One of them had gotten up, was aggressive, and was…

“Biting?” Tara asked. “What the hell does that even mean? You think it’s a typo or something?”

“Zombies,” Riley mumbled, his jaw tense. He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, trying to force himself to keep his hands loose enough that his knuckles stayed skin-colored.

Tara snorted. “Yeah, zombies. Zombies or somebody drugged up on who the hell knows what.”

With Eli’s ominous message that morning, and the two that eventually followed, for the first time in his career, Riley hoped for a violent drug addict.

***

By the time Riley and Tara arrived at the scene, the police had already barricaded all entrances to the intersection with their cruisers. Neither paramedic had much more to say than a whispered, “Jesus Christ,” as Riley parked the ambulance. The makeshift barricades were one thing. The presence of LAPD police chief Jamal Pitman was something else entirely.

Before Riley could even open his mouth, Jamal held a finger up to his lips, silencing any words before they could surface. A moment later, he stretched out his hand, gently patting the air toward the ground, signaling for them to get down. Riley and Tara crouched down low and hustled over to Jamal, who was down on one knee behind the door of a police cruiser, his free hand wrapped around his pistol.

“What the hell’s going on?” Riley asked, his voice hushed.

“It’s been a hell of a day,” Jamal said simply.

“With this?” Tara asked.

Jamal leaned up slightly and looked over the hood of the cruiser before turning his attention back to the EMTs again. “We’ve had a lot of disturbance calls today. Fights at work, fights at the park, fights at home. Disturbances. Someone’s ended up bitten by the attacker in almost all of them, save for the two where the alleged attacker was shot dead. In all but one of the disturbances with a living attacker, they had long since fled the scene by the time my officers showed up. This one, though…” Jamal lifted a shoulder. “Two victims, both alive and screaming when officers arrived. Pinned down the attacker, got one cuff on, he throws off the officer, takes a bite out of his throat.” A pause. “The officer was dead pretty quickly, I’m told. I arrived shortly before you did. The original two… One’s dead. He died soon after the original officers arrived on scene. The second one’s quiet now, but she’s alive. I can still see her breathing.”

“We need to go in and help her,” Riley said, already rising to his feet.

Jamal grabbed his forearm and yanked him back down. “Consider this an active shooter situation. EMS does not go in until the area is secured.”

“Fuck that. She’s dying out there.”

“The rules are in place for a reason. You, of all people, should know that.”

There were a lot of things Riley could easily detach himself from. Brush them aside. Ignore them. Not feel the impact of them.

That was not one of them.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Tara asked, the words fuzzy through the numbing static.

“I didn’t mean it like that, and you damn well know it,” Jamal said through his teeth. “I have lost three men today. Three. And I have seven in the damn hospital. With those deaths and injuries, new rules will be implemented, just as Colby’s death resulted in this rule being implemented. That is how I meant it.”

The fuzzy static dissipated a little as Jamal grabbed Riley’s shoulder and gave it a sharp squeeze. “I’m sorry, Riley. Are you with us?”

Riley nodded, teeth digging into the inside of his cheeks. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, I’m here. I’m with you.”

“Good. I want you take a peek over this car. Just a little one. Look at our suspect.”

Riley searched Jamal’s face for any sort of hint or indicator of what he was hoping to accomplish, but there was nothing there. The elderly black man had nailed down quite a few tactics in his years, but the absolute blankness he wore like a mask was certainly one of his greatest achievements. At least, as far as Riley was concerned.

Tentatively, Riley leaned up just enough to get a good look at the scene on the other side of the vehicular barricade. A man in a torn dress shirt staggered around in the middle of the intersection, his hands and face slick with blood that Riley imagined wasn’t his own. The dead cop lay a few feet away from him in the middle of the road, blood pooled around him. The two civilian victims were on the sidewalk, the man entirely motionless, the woman chest rising and falling. Every now and then, her hand moved or she dragged her leg up toward herself a little before it fell down again.

Riley crouched back down, gaze on the street beneath his feet. Was this what Eli’s texts were about? Had… this already happened in New York? And what the hell even was this? “Narcotics?” Riley asked, forcing his eyes back to the police chief’s face.

Jamal shook his head before offering a shrug. “I don’t know. If it is, it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Riley knew what the implication of that particular statement was. If the rumors about Jamal were true, and he was pretty sure a fair share of them were, then the man spent his free time working with the mob. If anyone would know about the drugs being pumped into Los Angeles and surrounding areas by thugs and gangsters, it’d be Jamal Pitman.

His lack of certainty wasn’t exactly any more reassuring than any of the other ‘comforting’ moments of Riley’s day thus far.

“I’m going.” Riley nodded off toward the street. “Whether you come or not, I’m going to her, and I’m going to stop the bleeding.”

Tara grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry, did you see the same shit I saw? You’ll get yourself killed.”

Riley pulled his arm from her grip. “Then they’ll make a new rule because of me, and I’ll finally get to see Colby again.” He grabbed Tara’s kit and slid across the hood of the cruiser before she could stop him.

“God fucking dammit,” Jamal said through his teeth.

Riley hustled over to the female victim, doing his best to stay quiet and low. It wasn’t until he knelt beside her that he realized Jamal had followed him. Riley raised a questioning brow in his direction.

“If another man is dying on my watch, I’m going down with him.”

Riley nodded and held out a fist, which Jamal stared at for a moment before tapping his own against it. Riley laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, her eyes closed.

“Good. What’s your name?”

“Molly.”

“Okay, Molly. My name’s Riley. I’m gonna get you taken care of, okay?”

Molly only nodded.

Riley pulled on a pair of gloves as he glanced up at their unsub, still wandering the intersection, bloody fingers twitching at his side. “Molly, where does it hurt?”

She licked her dry lips. “Everywhere. B-but my leg and my shoulder a-are the worst.”

“You wanna tell me what happened?” Riley asked as he dug through the kit for his trauma shears.

“When he fell from the window, I was walking past. H-he fell on me. I think I broke my leg. And then, he…” Her brow furrowed for a moment, eyes still closed. “He got up, and for a moment, I-I almost thought he was just gonna walk off the fall and help me, but he bit me. He threw himself at me, grabbed my shoulders, and bit me. A man yelled at him, kicked him off of me, and then he…”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to try and relive any more of it.”

“Thank you.”

Riley squeezed her arm. Shears in hand, he cut her pant leg. Her skin greeted him with visible bones. Compound fractures of the tibia and fibula. He glanced up at Jamal before leaning to the side for a look at her neck. Two fingers hooked through the collar of her shirt, he gently pulled it back. The wound was near the area where the shoulder and neck connected, a little closer to her shoulder than her neck. The man had ripped out a genuine chunk of skin and meat, his teeth marks distinct and curved on both sides of the wound. It wasn’t very deep, and placement-wise, she was about as lucky as a woman who’d served as a cushioned landing for a man could possibly be. The bleeding had already mostly stopped on its own, the blood clotting and congealing enough to be tacky, which had made peeling her shirt back a slow and thoughtful process.

But the skin around the wound was discolored, faintly gray. He had certainly seen his share of necrotizing wounds, but never one so quickly after the wound occurred.

“We need to get her stabilized and in the ambulance now. You have my back?” Riley asked.

Jamal nodded. “I’ve held worse positions.”

Riley couldn’t help but snort. “If even a third of the shit they say about you is true? Yeah, I’m sure you have.”

At that, the old man almost cracked a smile. Almost.

While Riley stabilized the bones in Molly’s leg and dressed the shoulder bite, Jamal kept a close eye on the wandering man, eyes occasionally flickering toward the dead officer in the street.

“Don’t think about him right now, Pitman,” Riley said. “I need you here.”

“It’s not… that,” Jamal said slowly. “He’s… started breathing. I can see his chest moving.”

“You’re imaging it.”

“I assure you, Monroe, I am not.”

Riley taped down the gauze on Molly’s shoulder before lifting his head, ready to tell the police chief he was simply reacting to trauma, whether he liked it or not. But there it was, clear as day — the dead boy in blue was fucking breathing. “Molly, we need to get you up. Chief Pitman and I are going to pull you to your feet, you’re going to keep all weight on your good leg, and we’re going to move. Are you with me?”

Molly nodded.

“Jamal?”

“I’m with you.”

Eyes flickering back and forth between Molly and the breathing officer, Riley and Jamal hoisted her to her feet. Halfway back to the police cruiser barricade, the officer pulled himself to his hands and knees. His eyes locked with Jamal’s, and as he let out the most horrific scream Riley had ever heard, he bolted upright, like a track star out of the starting blocks, and sprinted toward them. Jamal clocked him with the butt of his pistol, right in the nose, before driving a foot into his gut and kicking him down. “Run.”

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Chapter One

Chapter Three

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Lost Brothers – Chapter One

**This is the new zombie thing I’m working on. I don’t have an actual title for it yet, so ‘Lost Brothers’ is just a placeholder. I hope you enjoy ❤

Riley Monroe woke up with a faint metallic taste in his mouth. It wasn’t real — just a phantom memory that clung to his tongue some mornings — but that knowledge didn’t make the taste any weaker. He sat up slowly, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to shake off the lingering fragments of his dream. Blood. Sirens. Screams that warped and faded into static. He drew in a sharp inhale, blew out a slow exhale, and reached for the bottle of water on the nightstand.

His uniform was already laid out on the chair by the window: navy blue, patched with the city’s emergency medical service crest. Riley dressed in silence, except for the click of his belt and the creak of old floorboards beneath the shifting weight of his feet. Most days, he moved through the morning like a background character in his own life. Detached but efficient.

Most days, that was the only way to survive.
Riley passed a hand through his dark hair before grabbing his cell from the nightstand. The screen lit briefly, an unread text flashing at the top. Riley rubbed a tired hand near the corner of his eye, tapping the phone’s lock button with the thumb of his free hand.

Eli.

Jesus. He hadn’t talked to his little brother in months. Or Eli hadn’t talked to him. Their little tiff seemed so damn far away — he couldn’t quite remember who actually started it anymore, or who had given who the cold shoulder first. But there was a message from Eli regardless, cold shoulder be damned.

Eli: Please be careful today

Riley stood still for a moment, thumb hovering over the sensor to unlock the phone. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Be careful. Be careful of what? And why? And since when did Eli care if he was careful or not?

Riley unlocked his phone and opened the text message.

Riley: Are you okay?

He waited a moment for any indication Eli had seen it, but the little read checkmark circle remained unfilled, and the three dots for typing never appeared. Riley locked the screen and tossed his phone onto the counter.

Coffee. Cheap, bitter, reliable. Consistent. And unlike Eli’s ominous text, part of the detached and efficient routine.

***

The station was already buzzing with activity when Riley arrived. Two fire engines were rolling out — one north, one south — and an ambulance followed north before he even made it to the main roll-up door.

“Just in time, Monroe,” his partner, Tara, said as she tossed him a protein bar.

“We headin’ out too?” he asked as he snagged it out of the air.

She nodded, giving him a good once-over. “You look like hell.”

“Mm. Never gets old,” Riley said, pointing the bar at her. “What’ve we got? Fire?”

“Yeah, but not ours. We have a drunk guy who wrecked himself on a mailbox and then threw himself through the window of his neighbor’s living room.”

Riley nodded, peeling back the wrapper. “Excellent.” He took a small bite of the corner. It was the same bar every day. Same brand, same flavor. But today, something metallic snuck in there. He closed his eyes. He could detach himself from a lot of things, but the taste and smell of iron never ceased entirely. Somehow, they always managed to squeeze through the cracks in the walls he’d built up.

He cleared his throat. “You drive?”

“Sure.” When Riley finally opened his eyes, he couldn’t help but notice the glaring concern written all over Tara’s face.

But she did him a favor and didn’t mention it. Riley appreciated that. Cold, detached, efficient. Couldn’t move forward if you were looking back. Addressing the concern was looking back. Addressing the copper was looking back.

And he could only stand to move forward.

***

Midmorning, after dropping off a patient who’d been in a hell of a bar fight the night before, Tara gently backhanded Riley’s chest, pulling his gaze up from the spattered blood on the floor. “I gotta pee. Go get yourself a coffee or something from the vending machine. Better yet, go pay that cute doctor of yours a visit. Anything to get rid of…” she waved a hand over him “…this.”

“Rude. And he’s not mine. He’s just… a guy.”

“Mmhmm. Sure he is.” Tara smiled. “Well, a ‘guy’ is coming this way, so pretend to be alive for a few minutes.”

“Could you just go take your damn piss already and leave me alone?”

Tara snorted, patting his shoulder as she walked past him. Riley straightened himself out just a hair as she walked away, dusting his hands down the front of his shirt. Tara admittedly wasn’t right about most of things, but she was right about just this one — Doctor Sian Hopkins wasn’t just a guy.

A warm hand brushed against the back of Riley’s. “Missed you at trivia last night.” A pause. “Hey.” The gentle tug on Riley’s hand pulled his attention away from the floor once more and to the man standing beside him. “Where’d you go?”

“Last night?”

Sian offered a soft smile. “No. Now.”

“Oh.” Riley cleared his throat, forced a careless shrug of his shoulders. “Just tired.”

“Mm.” Sian nodded, pulling his lips into his mouth as he turned toward the TV in the corner of the waiting room. “What about last night?”

Riley’s eyes slowly drifted back to the floor. “Shift got switched. Needed to sleep early. Thought I texted you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Oh. I’m… sorry about that.”

Sian rocked back on his heels, shoving his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “Do I need to take a hint, Riley?”

“A hint for what?”

“Like… how you’re just not that into me?”

Riley turned toward Sian again. “What?”

That soft smile came back to his face. “I’m not stupid, Riley. But I’d just prefer… some communication. Something direct. Closure. Just tell me you aren’t interested. I won’t be offended, I promise. I won’t make anything weird if you won’t. We can just be friends, right? Friends… who have seen each other naked a time or two. People do it all the time.”

“Four,” Riley said after a moment. “Four times. I’d like a fifth.”

Sian raised a brow. “You would?”

“Desperately.”

Sian snorted. “Your desperation is much different than mine.”

Riley rolled his eyes. He walked past Sian, grabbing his coat sleeve on the way. He pulled him around the corner and down the hall, into Sian’s little office next to the lab. He closed the door and pushed him back against it, one hand on the wall, the other wrapped around Sian’s chin. He closed the distance between them, lips only a breath apart. “It’s me. It’s not… I come with baggage, Si,” Riley whispered.

“We all do,” Sian whispered back.

“Five or six times is when… when my dates start wanting to spend the night. Want me to start spending the night.”

“Yeah?”

Riley leaned his forehead against Sian’s, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to see that compassionate, understanding look on his face any longer. He’d seen enough of that to last him a lifetime. “I’ve got night terrors, Si. Kicking, screaming, thrashing. The whole shebang. My room’s a fucking mess, my house is a fucking mess. I am a fucking mess.”

Riley’s cheeks flooded with warmth as Sian took his face in his hands and pulled him back a few inches. Riley forced himself to open his eyes again. “Let me help you clean it up. The room. The house. You.” Sian offered a smile. “I want you, Riley,” he whispered, “even if you come with night terrors and PTSD, or late nights and early mornings, or skipped trivia nights and no-shows. I want you, and that includes everything you’re carrying.”

A smile tugged at one corner of Riley’s mouth. “You’re gonna regret that.”

“That sounds like future me’s problem.”

“I… think I can live with that.”

“Perfect,” Sian whispered. “Now, can you fuckin’ kiss me already? You drag a man down a hall and pin him against a door, and you can’t even kiss him?”

Riley rolled his eyes and muttered a quiet, “Always so damn dramatic,” before leaning in to kiss him. Sian let out a little hum of appreciation, one hand sliding back into Riley’s hair.

The beep of Sian’s pager pulled them apart with a groan. Sian stuck his hand in his coat pocket and pulled the offending device out for a look. He raised a brow, but the lack of immediate concern or hurry was, at the very least, comforting. Comforting compared to his brother’s ominous message earlier in the day, and comforting compared to the fact that Eli still hadn’t even read Riley’s response.

“I’d like to see you tonight. For real this time,” Sian said, tucking his pager back into his pocket.

“What’s tonight? Karaoke or something?”

“I was thinking… my place.” Sian reached up to comb his fingers through Riley’s hair, un-disheveling it a bit. “You, me, takeout, a movie, maybe we lose the clothes at some point. Just a night in.” He smiled. “You don’t have to put on a mask for anyone. It’ll just be us. Okay?”

Riley offered a smile, though he could feel his looked far less warm and far more tired than Sian’s did. “Okay.”

“Perfect.” Sian pressed a kiss to his lips. “I’ll text you a time. And if you stay the night or not? That’s up to you. I won’t be mad if you don’t, and I won’t judge you if you do.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course,” Sian said, his voice soft. His pager beeped again. “I need to go deal with this, and I’m sure Tara’s wondering where you headed off to. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Riley nodded. “Okay.”

“Be safe out there.”

Even though the words brought Eli’s text back to the forefront of his mind once more, Riley managed a smile. “I will. You be safe in here.”

“I will.”

***

By noon, Los Angeles was baking beneath one hell of a heatwave. After successfully loading their empty gurney back into the rig, Riley wiped the sweat from his brow. “You’re staring at me again,” he said as he closed the doors, doing his best to avoid meeting Tara’s gaze.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“You sure?”

Riley scratched his jaw. Tara knew more about him than just about any other living person. Telling her wasn’t going to hurt anything. If he believed his therapist, talking to Tara — or anyone, for that matter — was good for him. For his ‘trauma’. “My brother texted me this morning.”

“The scientist brother you haven’t spoken to in, like, forever?”

“The one and only. And I think he’s technically a researcher.”

Tara slashed a dismissive hand through the air. “What’d he want?”

“I… don’t know. He told me to be safe. It just felt… ominous, I guess. Out of the blue.”

“It is. Out of the blue, I mean. But I don’t think it’s ominous. He probably just saw the news, and it made him think of you.”

Riley laid a hand on the door, raising a brow in Tara’s direction. “What news?”

“The TikTok stunt thing?”

“You lost me at ‘TikTok’.”

“Some kid uploaded a video of a guy thrashing around in the middle of traffic, blood all over his mouth and around his eyes. When people started calling it fake, the user deleted the video, but because it’s the internet, someone else re-uploaded it, and now there’s like, two ‘sides’ of TikTok, where one side thinks it’s fake and one side thinks it’s the beginning of an apocalypse or something.”

“Like zombies?” Riley asked.

Tara shrugged. “Or something.”Riley was going to go back to not believing his therapist.

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Chapter Two

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Zombie book voting poll

I have succeeded in writing a small portion of the zombie book I talked about previously, as a way to escape some of the hellscape of my real life and give my brain and hands something to do for at least a few minutes a day. That said, I have two options here for you in regards to characters

  1. All brand new characters
  2. Alternate universe, featuring characters we know and some that we don’t

The main character of this specific book is a brand new character regardless, but the option that wins the poll will determine the people they meet along the way

An Update

Hi. It’s been a while, the last update was depressing, and I have gone dark on most of my socials, so I wanted to confirm for everyone that I am alive. I am, to be frank, not okay, and I will not be ever again. The long version of what happened can be read here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Bf9GcRSdb/

The short version is that, after an extreme abuse of implied authority, an animal shelter here in Iowa threatened me for hours in April until I “voluntarily surrendered” most of my disabled animals, and when I made it clear that I wanted them back, they retaliated by claiming I was an animal abuser and I was required to “voluntarily” surrender any of my remaining animals that they wanted or face animal cruelty charges. Basically, what the on-staff vet with this shelter said outweighed any proof I have, as well as the deputy who was there the first time and determined it was not a cruelty case, and because I am not a millionaire, I just had to let it happen.

My animals were and are my babies. They stole my babies from my home, which is now an empty, traumatizing shell I’m forced to live in, that I cannot escape because I’m disabled and homebound. They murdered at least one of my babies, permanently blinded two of them, and are continuing to intentionally prevent them from going back to the rescues, shelters, and owners they legally go back to if I cannot care for them. This has been nothing but a show of power and control, and they will continue to do it until, likely, the day *I* die.

With all of that said, I am still trying to write. I haven’t succeeded any yet, but I am trying. I have essentially nothing but free time now, which pains me to my very core, and I’m trying to do something useful with it instead of rotting away on the couch and dissociating my day away like I’ve been doing for over a month. I still don’t think writing Bo right now is a good idea, and I haven’t opened his book at all because of that. I’m trying to start something new. I’ve toyed around a bit with a zombie book, as zombies are oddly one of my comfort medias to watch and play, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to get actual words put down for it soon and start uploading chapters that will hopefully be enjoyable for some. I know zombie books aren’t everybody’s thing.

I will get back to Bo someday. He was the first character I wrote that I was actually proud of, and I have no intention of permanently leaving him behind. I just need a bit more time away from a character who is in the same place I am, even if that place was reached for different reasons.

I appreciate your patience during this time. I have not once been harassed or sent angry messages for the lack of chapters, which used to happen to me all the time on Wattpad, even when I was posting daily updates for multiple books at a time. “Appreciate” honestly doesn’t do it justice. You have all been very kind during every break I’ve taken, intentionally or otherwise, and it means a lot to me. Thank you.

I hope to see you soon with some zombies, and after that, hopefully with some Bo.

A Break

I will be taking an intentional break from Highway Butcher. I do not know when I will be in the headspace to write Bo in the same headspace I am in. I didn’t think life could get any worse but yesterday was the absolute worst day of my life, and how I force myself to live every day from here on out is… I don’t even know.

I know that’s heavy. And I’m sorry for that. I cannot in good faith write a character that is also depressed right now. I’ve been depressed for a long time, but it was somehow able to be worse, and it is now. And I just can’t.

I love and appreciate everyone who has read and loved the Bo Austen series. I desperately hope someday I will get back to it. My only request here is that I beg you not to tell me it will get better. I’ve been hearing that since I was four. It has only gotten worse. I cannot bear to hear it any further right now.