Sorrow (Cape Frost #1)

3

The first night without Boo here is harder than I thought it would be. The fridge hums, the walls creak, the animals skitter just outside my window. All noises I’ve grown up hearing, and yet... they’re somehow more sinister when you’re alone.

When I was a kid, maybe seven or eight, my father told me that the best way to beat my fears was to embrace them. If I told him I had nightmares, he told me they were basically free scary movies. If I told him there were monsters under the bed, he told me to sing them to sleep. That they were my friends, and they just wanted a little company.

Every night for years, I sang those monsters a lullaby. It seems silly now that I’m grown. The real monsters aren’t supernatural beasties who hide under children’s beds or inside closets, they’re human. They walk and talk just like the rest of us. People like The Sons. Like the man who killed my parents. Like Hayes. While he may not be as violent as the others, he’s just as cruel. He simply has a different medium.

Ugh, I need to stop thinking about him. Rolling over, I stuff my thin pillow up under my chin and snuggle a little deeper under the blankets. It’s just the wind, those sounds. Just the mark of an old, old house, suffering from years of neglect. Just a product of a girl who has always been afraid.

Nothing changes, nothing moves.

Not even me.

––––––––

“Sam, where you at?”

Snapping my head toward my brother, I utter “huh?” before my brain processes what he said. “Sorry. I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Are you okay?”

Boo’s eyes look darker now, sadder. I can tell I’m not the only one struggling with sleep. “Two more buildings burned down last night. I missed those motherfuckers by a hair. ”

Anxiety twists in my gut. I know he’s a good cop, I do. But when you’re up against three untouchable, never-leave-a-trace psychopaths, is there even such a thing as good enough?

“What do you mean?”

“They burned the old distillery down, and something told me they were doing it to punish Old Man Hanson. So, I went to Hanson’s house to warn him and found that on fire too. Pretty sure I saw Madoff’s truck speeding off.”

“You didn’t go after them?”

“Nah. I had to make sure Hanson and the dogs got out. Those things are practically Cape Frost mascots.”

He’s not wrong. Brutus and Reina are jet black Belgian groenendaels, which look like a supernatural cross between a malinois and a collie. They’re large, powerful creatures who basically have the run of the place since Hanson always knows they’ll come home.

“Did they get out?”

The knot in his jaw ticks. “Reina did. Brutus is okay, but he won’t walk right for a while. His left paw got burned pretty badly when he dragged Hanson out by his collar. ”

Tears fill my eyes and tension coils in my gut. “Who would do such a thing?” I ask. It’s hypothetical, but he answers anyway.

“The fucking Sons. I’ll get ‘em though, Sammy. They’re bound to leave something behind at some point. Their daddies can’t protect them forever.”

If they don’t, I have a feeling Hanson’s sons might just come up with a little vigilante justice of their own.

“Just be careful,” I beg quietly. “Promise me you won’t go after them on your own.”

“I can’t promise that. It’s my job. You know that.”

No, what I know is that he took up the mantle of some heroic cop when our parents’ bodies showed up in Bleak River eight years ago. He dropped out of school to go to the police academy and had his own beat when he was younger than I am now. He had no business being a cop then, and no business being one now. They caught the bastard who murdered our parents. Why wasn’t that enough?

“Don’t look at me like that,” he warns.

“Like what?”

“Like you pity me or some shit. I know what I’m doing. All I’m saying is that if backup is too far away, I’ll do what I have to do. Have a little faith in your big brother.”

I’ve never had faith in anyone, at least not that I can remember. So him sitting here asking me to trust him not to get killed when he’s all I have left is... almost as cruel as his friend.

“Why can’t we just move? Go to Saint City, or somewhere else that isn’t here. Somewhere I can get a job that doesn’t involve taking my clothes off. Somewhere you can do a safer job. Somewhere we can start over.”

It’s his turn to look at me with pity.

“It doesn’t work like that, Sam. This house is ours, this land is ours. It may not be much, but leaving is harder than it sounds. We grew up here. Our parents are buried here, our pets, too. Our friends are here. Even if we had the means to move, I don’t think I’d want to. Can we be done now?”

So he lives here and he’ll die here, too. I can’t imagine anything I’d want less.

“Sure. Do you want dinner or are we waiting for a certain unwanted guest?”

“Enough, Sam. Christ. I know you two don’t get along, but Hayes has helped us out more than you know. He gave me the money to hire lawyers so I could keep you after mom and dad died. Did you know that?”

No, I didn’t. It feels a little like a knife to the chest. The reminder of how close I was to being ripped away from Boo during the worst weeks of my life, the interviews I had to sit through, the packing and unpacking after every roadblock...

Is that why Hayes resents me so much? Because he had to pay to basically make his best friend a father, making it so he couldn’t go out and party all the time anymore? It seems like a stupid reason to bully a traumatized little girl until she cried, but I wouldn’t put anything past Hayes Sarro.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. So maybe cut him some slack, okay? Just make him some food when he comes over and don’t goad him.”

Anger flashes that I have to shove down. I don’t goad him, he goads me. I simply respond in kind. “So he is coming over then?”

“No, not tonight. Just whip up some burgers or something, I gotta head out again. At least all this overtime means I’ll finally be able to afford to fix the furnace soon.”

That would be nice. It’s been insufferably cold in here, but I haven’t had the heart to complain out loud. My brother can be callous sometimes, but he does his best. He always has. “We’re fine,” I say softly, pushing myself up to head to the kitchen. “Don’t work yourself to an early grave just for a little heat.”

From the scoff he lets out, I think he took that the wrong way. Like I was saying fixing the furnace isn’t good enough or something. That’s not at all what I said or what I meant, but I know better than to try to tell him that. Like all men, once he makes up his mind... there’s no changing it.

I just hope that stubbornness doesn’t get him killed.