Page 13 of Double Shot
Chapter Four
Sadie…
I couldn’t sleep.
I stared at the ceiling of the canopy bed, Kyle asleep beside me on his stomach, his back rising and falling gently in the dark. Typically, his deep and even breathing lulled me into a security enough to sleep. In fact, Ineededhim to sleep, as much as I hated myself for it. I couldn’t fall asleep or stay asleep without him beside me… but now? Tonight? With the information that had just come to light? There was no sleeping.
I sighed softly and slipped out of the bed careful not to wake him. Padding barefoot in only Roan’s shirt, I went out into the house, to the pile of bags out in the living room, to the black tactical backpack I had carried since leaving theRum Runner.
I unzipped the narrow back pocket and slid the laptop I had liberated from the Daughton safehouse. It was set up so you didn’t need do anything special to log in to it. Or, it had been… I’d put a lock on it when I figured it out. I had found things on it. Could watch old footage from the mansion on Bootlegger Head’s security cameras. I had copies of the images from my past that Roan had put onto a flash drive for me… and the most precious thing about it? I had found Roan’s email address.
I’d signed out of it; I didn’t want to read anything. No, I created my own email address using the same service and I sent him things. I had been sending him things for the last six months. One, sometimes two emails a day depending on how I was feeling.
Lach didn’t know about it. I kept it from him. I was worried that if he knew, he would be angry, would destroy the laptop and my last link to Conan and I couldn’t bear the thought.
I was careful. As careful as I could be, and nothing bad had happened yet, so I didn’t think it would.
I opened the laptop and took a deep breath as I connected to the house’s Wi-Fi and waited for my email to come up.
Letting out a shuddering breath, my fingertips hovering over the keys, I let it out.
From:[email protected]
Subject:This can’t be real…
Message:
Dear Conan,
I’ve been writing you these messages for months, thinking they’ve been lost in the ether, and I guess they have been… except now I’m faced with the fact they won’t stay that way. We don’t know where you are. We don’t even know if you’re still alive, but I’m daring to hope. I’m so scared to dream, but the alternative is the yawning dark behind me. The pit of despair I’ve been living in since, well, since you died.
The only reason we even know you might still be on this earth is a complete fluke. Purely an accident, and I… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m more scared of. That you were still here and now you’re gone again and we might not know it, or that you’re still here and that you might find these emails… read them… I didn’t count on that. I’m not sure how I feel about it.
Scared, for sure. Not all of them have been kind, but they’ve always been what they are. Raw. Honest in the moment they were written.
Lach is asleep. I am trying to claw my way out of this void I’ve been living in, toward the light of possibility and I can’t sleep. I’m trying to be strong. To be more like Lach, and it doesn’t feel right. I’m trying to be strong in ways I’ve never contemplated before. I’m trying to adopt being more like Lachlan – not Kyle, but Lachlan, and I don’t know how I’m doing or if I’m even close. All I know is the more I tread that path, the less like me I feel and it already feels like I’m drowning.
Where are you, Conan?
It doesn’t matter, really. We’ll find you. We’re determined. We need you back. Wherever you are, dead or alive, we’ll find you. We’ll find you and bring you home or we’ll die trying and if you’re gone? That means that we’ll join you.
We love you. I know he might not ever say it, so I’ll say it for him. You know how he is; you know how he does… well know how I am, and how I do. I won’t rest. I won’t let him rest. Not until we find you and bring you home.
I realize now that home isn’t a place. Real home is with the people you love.
Just hold on a little longer. Trust us, believe us… we’re going to bring you home.
Yours always,
Sadie.
I swallowed hard, hitsendand closed the lid to the computer. I slipped it back into the pocket that it came from and made sure the charging cable was still in the bottom of the same pocket knowing if I lostit, I would lose my last link to him…
I closed my eyes and hugged myself, breathing carefully around the emotion swelling in my chest, pushing out my air.
I needed to go back to bed before Lach missed me.
