Time to Bounce (Carter Brothers #6)

Prologue

Sunny D tastes like someone made a bet that they could make orange juice without oranges.

— Athena’s secret thoughts

ATHENA

12 years old

“ Mary Beth ,” I whispered fiercely. “ What are you doing?”

“ I’m literally asking you not to follow me, Athena ,” my sister grumbled.

Mary Beth was twelve and a half to my twelve and three-quarters. My brother, Gavrel , was nineteen.

I was what my sister liked to call an ‘oops baby.’

Which is honestly quite hilarious seeing as we were adopted.

Mom liked to call me her miracle.

Dad liked to call me his pain in the ass.

“ But Daddy said we had to stay inside,” I said. “ He literally said ‘stay inside, Athena and Mary Beth .’”

“ Daddy won’t know I’m leaving, if you mind your own business and go inside,” she grumbled.

I wouldn’t.

We both knew I wouldn’t.

Yet , I would act like I was going to go inside, then follow her anyway.

She should’ve known better when I went inside and waited. She stood there for a long moment before she was assured I’d gone inside. Only when she disappeared around the corner of the long hotel hallway did I dart out and head for the stairs.

I took the stairs two at a time, using my long legs— Dad liked to call them runner legs—to propel me as fast as possible down the narrow staircase.

When I got to the bottom, I carefully opened up the stairwell door and peeked out.

No one was there, so I tiptoed out of the narrow corridor into the main lobby.

We were staying in some fancy hotel in Hawaii .

We were right on the beach, and Daddy said the hotel cost six months of mortgage payments to stay at. But Mom wanted to renew their vows, and the beaches of Hawaii was where she wanted to do it.

Dad said he humored her because “ What else can I do?”

I hoped my future husband gave me the moon and the stars like my dad did my mom.

A flash of white-blonde hair had me hurrying toward the exit to see Mary Beth out in the hallway that would lead out to the beach.

Daddy told us we couldn’t go out at night because of the wall.

But there she went, and there I followed.

“ What’s there to be done?” I heard my dad talking.

Something had happened today.

Something bad.

Dad saw a little girl get taken, and he and Mom had been talking to the police ever since.

That was why Dad told us to stay in the room.

He was scared.

Heck , I was scared.

More because I thought I would get in trouble, not because I was worried I’d be taken.

“ It’s happened twice now in three days,” I heard another man say. “ Something has to be done. You have hundreds of people coming here, a lot of them with families. You can’t have them coming here if it’s unsafe.”

I hesitated, wanting to hear more about what was being said, but more curious about what it was that Mary Beth was doing.

In the end, I chose Mary Beth .

I followed her out and found her standing at the wall looking over at the black ocean.

I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but I joined her at the wall, saying, “ Whatcha lookin’ at?”

She gasped and turned, about to yell at me for following her, but she didn’t get the chance.

“ Mary Beth ?”

I looked over Mary Beth’s shoulder to see a man standing there.

“ Oh , Octavian .” She smiled. “ What are you doing here so early?”

His eyes went from her to me, and his eyes seemed to shine.

“ I …” I started to back away, but I bumped into something hard.

I turned to find another man standing behind me.

“ Mary Beth ,” I whispered, scared for my life now.

“ Attie ,” she murmured quietly. “ Jump .”

I didn’t question it.

I jumped.

I hit the water with a splash, and the waves immediately started to pound into my face.

But , like my mom, I was an excellent swimmer.

I did my first open lake competition last month and won the entire thing for the sixteen to eighteen-year-old division. Mom had to fib and tell them that I was sixteen.

A wave of water hit my face, and I coughed as water went into my mouth and filled the tube it wasn’t supposed to fill.

Distantly , I heard a scream, and I just knew in my heart it was Mary Beth .

I swam harder, determined to get to the stairs I’d seen earlier.

A rock hit me in the knee, and I reached out desperately, hoping to haul myself on top of it.

I made it, scrambled up to the rock, and gasped in gulping breaths of air.

And with the bare amount of air left in my lungs I screamed my sister’s name. “ Mary Beth !”

No one heard me.

The waves were probably too loud.

I screamed again.

Still nothing.

Terrified , I sat on that rock, and I waited.

I don’t know how long I waited, though.

The first hints of light were coming over the horizon when I saw a beam of light.

It was a bit longer when I heard the screams of my name.

My dad.

He sounded desperate.

Scared .

As scared as I felt.

I whipped my head around in the direction I thought I heard his voice, then cupped my hands over my mouth in a funnel shape and screamed, “ Daddy !”

A lot happened after that.

My dad’s light finally caught my face, and I started to cry.

“ Baby , hang on!” he yelled. “ I’ll get you!”

He couldn’t get me, though.

I sat there for another half an hour with my dad telling me it would be okay when a big boat with US COASTGUARD emblazoned on the bow pulled up beside me.

I had no clue how I’d gotten so far from the wall.

But the hotel was so far away that I realized how lucky I was to be alive.

I’d swum really far.

The moment I was in the boat, I was bundled in a silver space blanket and then shoved into a life vest.

I put it on, allowing them to snap up the buckles.

My eyes must’ve been as huge as they felt, because the woman buttoning my life vest said, “ It’s gonna be okay, baby.”

It didn’t feel like it was going to be okay. It didn’t feel like anything was going to be okay ever again.

She pressed her hands against my cheeks and pressed a kiss to my brow.

I leaned into her, and stayed leaned into her, until we motored around the bay back to my parents.

I found them standing at the dock, looking anxious.

The moment the boat was close enough, Dad catapulted himself on board.

He had me in his arms moments later.

“ Baby ,” he breathed. “ God .”

I felt my throat tighten.

“ I’m sorry,” I breathed. “ I’m so sorry.”

He ran his hands over my body, checking for injuries.

“ Are you okay?” he asked. “ Are you hurt anywhere?”

I was already shaking my head. “ No . I’m okay.”

I mean, about as okay as I could be after being scared out of my mind all night.

“ Sir ,” one of the men who rescued me said. “ We need to get her to the hospital.”

Dad picked me up and walked me to the ledge, then easily carried me over the ledge.

He didn’t hand me over to my mom, who was reaching out to me.

“ Honey , she’s too heavy for you,” my dad told her bluntly.

She was right.

I’d been too heavy for my mom for a long time now.

“ Please ,” my mom pleaded.

My dad ignored her and caught me up on his hip, like he used to carry me when I was a baby.

I hadn’t been a baby in a really long time.

“ Let me see her,” my mom ordered.

I hated when they fought.

“ I can walk,” I whispered into my dad’s neck.

He squeezed me tight before saying, “ Honey , let’s go. You know we can’t be out here.”

That was also something I’d learned not to argue about.

Dad was a US senator.

From the first moment I could remember, Dad had practically forced us to have security.

“ Is it your job, Daddy ?” I asked, scared.

He’d always told us, if we were taken, that we needed to know our names, phone numbers, and any other pertinent information that he deemed necessary.

We couldn’t go to school with the public because Daddy was apparently on a couple of foreign countries’ hit lists.

Dad was also a Navy SEAL .

He’d done some really bad stuff, he said, that put him at enemy number one to some people.

He’d said, since he was already on people’s ‘shit’ list, that he might as well continue the high-profile thing he had going on and advocate for the men willing to sacrifice their lives for our country.

Truthfully , I didn’t care what my daddy did.

I loved him no matter what.

He was my favorite of my parents.

Nothing against Mom , but she expected too much from us. Even at twelve, she expected me to be this perfect little doll for Daddy .

Mary Beth liked to say that Mom wanted the picture, not the family.

But the way she was holding onto my hand let me know that she cared.

Though , when I peeked out of Daddy’s neck, I saw the photographers at the front of the dock, right next to the ambulance.

“ Daddy ,” I whispered softly.

“ Yeah , baby?” he rasped.

“ Where’s Mary Beth ?” I asked. “ Where’s Gavrel ?”

He swallowed. I felt his throat bob against my nose.

“ Your brother is at the hotel, secure,” he rasped.

I waited for what felt like forever before I said, “ And Mary Beth ?”

“ She’s gone,” Dad said. “ Mary Beth’s gone.”

My stomach bottomed out. “ Those boys, men. They were there to meet Mary Beth .”

“ They what?” He stopped and looked at me, his eyes wide. “ Tell me what happened.”

The order had my body trembling.

“ The boys that Mary Beth met,” I whispered. “ She was there to see them. I think she went with them.”

He was already shaking his head. “ She didn’t go with them, baby. They took her.”

I opened my mouth but closed it just as fast. “ No . That’s not what happened.”

“ I saw the video, baby.” He smoothed my hair out of my face. “ I know what happened. When you jumped, they took her.”

I blinked. “ She told me to jump.”

“ I know,” he whispered, voice breaking. “ I watched the video. I heard what she said.”

I looked down, my fingers playing with his shirt collar.

I was staring at the part in his shirt, comparing my tan skin to his white skin, and didn’t hear what he said next.

My eyes became focused on the red bloom of color just to the right of his shirt collar. The red started to spread, and soon it was taking over his entire shirt.

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

At least not at first.

My dad fell with me in his arms, and I banged my knees hard on the concrete.

When my dad fell, he landed beside my mom.

My mom had a red bloom forming on her forehead.

And all of a sudden everything started to make a sick sort of sense.

“ Daddy !”

“ I have you, Athena . I have you.”

I woke with a start.

The dream of my sister’s kidnapping, which had morphed again, was repetitive, but not consistent.

The ending, though, where my parents were shot?

That was real.

That always stayed consistent.

The therapists said that my changing dreams on how my sister was kidnapped was normal for a child so young.

According to my parents, the kidnapping did happen.

It just hadn’t gone down exactly the way I thought.

Gavrel’s face was soft when he reached for me, and I threw myself into his arms. “ They’re d-d-dead.”

“ They’re okay, sugar plum. I promise. They’re both still very much alive.”

“ They were s-shot,” I disagreed.

“ They were,” he agreed. “ But they are okay now. They’re all better.”

I deflated in his arms.

“ How was she taken?” I whispered.

I always asked him, and he always told me.

I tried to separate the dreams from reality, but sometimes it was so hard. I just needed a little reminder.

“ Mom said y’all were playing outside near the wall. She had eyes on y’all the entire time. One second, she saw you and Mary Beth , and the next, y’all were gone,” he reminded me.

Mom , Dad and the authorities didn’t know how it’d happened—at least that was what they told me.

The kidnapping had taken place near an area that didn’t have cameras.

Some of the officers had suggested that maybe she’d fallen in the water like me and died.

But there’d been a sighting of her getting on a commercial airplane a few days later, and then nothing.

“ I hate this,” I said to Gavrel .

He smoothed his hand along my hair. “ We’ll find her one day, Athena . I promise.”

We would.

I wouldn’t stop until we did.