Page 13 of Fighting Shadows
I would lose her, and I can’t take the risk.
So I do the only thing I can do, and I look after her.
I stay by her bedside day and night, wetting her lips with a wet cloth to keep her hydrated and her temperature down as much as possible.
Chapter 7
Atlas
‘Take This Pain – Jake Banfield’
Five days…
I’m lost.
It has been five days since my soulmate was stolen from me.
It has been five days since my world fell apart, and I can’t seem to find a way back, not without her by my side.
My mind won’t stop as I play every scenario that Autumn could be suffering right now at his hands.
She’s strong, stronger than she was when we first found her, but are any of us ever strong enough to face off against our first monster?
I never thought that I would lose her again or that she would be taken from me and delivered to him by someone we considered a close friend.
Hopelessness crashes over me as I watch Parz lay by the front door, his whines echoing through the silent house.
No one speaks unless it’s about her. How could we possibly talk about anything else? I have no interest in anything other than bringing my girl home where she’ll never be away from us again, one of us always with her.
Some might say it’s overbearing, but my anxiety would never be able to allow me to let her out of my sight unless she was with one of the others or her brother.
No one else is trusted anymore, not even her dad.
“Have you heard anything from Tobias?” Dominic asks from his seat by the door. His eyes are sunken, and black circles shadow them.
We are all looking similar nowadays. Sleep evades us all as we search tirelessly for her and only fall into the pit of darkness for an hour at a time when exhaustion finally pulls us under.
“Nothing. He’s been MIA for two days now, and his phone’s off,” Sebastian mutters. His eyes are bloodshot from not taking his eyes away from the screen. His only break from it is when he needs a toilet, and then he’s right back to it.
He’s convinced he’s close to finding something, though, as he searches the surveillance in the surrounding streets for Charlie’s every move.
He has managed to evade us so far, but he is not very clever and is working alone.
We catch glimpses of him every few miles; a camera even picked up Autumn’s unconscious form in the back seat.
Kelvin’s house now has a few more holes than it did before that.
Seeing her like that with Charlie’s determined face in the driver's seat nearly sent us all into a blind rage, Dominic, worst of all.
He blames himself just like he blamed himself when his bio mom’s dealers attacked Kathleen. He believes that if he never left her alone, even with someone he thought we could trust, then none of this would have ever happened.
He’s wrong, but until we get Autumn back with us, I see no way that we can convince him otherwise.
His hands are now littered with cuts from his knife, his thoughts clouding his mind too much for him to focus on the balance of the knife. The motions no longer relax him but are just pure reflexes.
“We’ll find her. We need one tiny lead, and we can get there,” Zander says. His communication with his parents is now constant, as they have teams out searching for her, with orders to let us know immediately if they find something, whether it be big or small.
“We’ve been searching for days, and there’s nothing!” I explode.
