As my distance grew heavier, they brought in a counselor to provide additional support. I ignored their attempts as well. Having a therapist ask questions only made me long for Marcel. I succumbed to tears, their silent rivers tracing a path down my cheeks.
Throughout the day, they would periodically try, but again, I ignored every attempt. I wanted to talk, but words wouldn’t form, and I sank deeper into my self-imposed hell. Inside, a war raged. Fragments of their conversations reached my ears, and I overheard the doctor confiding in a police officer.
“The cut on her cheek and hand are fresh, while the others are in various stages of healing. I think she was raped. There was some tearing, but from the look of it,I’d say it wasn’t within the last twenty-four to thirty-six hours. She fought back. The amount of blood on her would suggest you should be looking for a body.”
Indifferent to the fact they might find him and I could be thrown in jail, I simply blinked. It held no sway over my thoughts. Even when they tried to confront me with that knowledge, I remained quiet. I realized how lost I truly was, because any looming threats failed to ignite any flicker of concern. A gradual descent into the abyss awaited me, and I surrendered to it.
Over the next few days, I let the familiarity of darkness consume me. In sleep, it enveloped me, drowning my senses in suffocating waves. It was one endless nightmare after another, blending reality and fiction in my head.
When I was awake, the reality of the bone-crushing loss eclipsed any semblance of hope. Once again, my life had become a series of pain and loss, and there was no end in sight. I had no one and no way to get home, so I sought solace in the sanctuary of my mind. I’d spend the day with my eyes closed, curled up in a ball.
Vivid images of my season sister bears danced in the recesses of my thoughts. Locked inside my head, I had whispered conversations with them, their presence a comfort to my aching heart. Occasionally, my yearning for them spilled forth into words spoken aloud.
This only intensified the concerns the attending physicians had. They scrutinized my every move with mounting apprehension and then, finally, with no other choice, they had me transported to a psych hospital.
Chapter 6
Aleksandr
It’s Time
I glared as themorning light spilled across the table. The sun had no right to shine. Not when her chair sat empty. Not when every desperate lead, every dead-end call, every fucking hour spent trying to find her had come up empty. I couldn’t touch the food before me—could barely stomach the smell of it. So I sat, jaw clenched, replaying our efforts once more, hoping something would click.
She hadn’t returned to Skagit; we’d taken dogs and combed the entire area. A second cabin sat farther back on the property, but it looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. We even confirmed that she hadn’t been to the bank.
The days turned to weeks, and still nothing. With each passing day, I lost a piece of myself. Ivan looked like complete shit. Nik kept to himself, and I pushed myself in ways that sickened me.
Killing had taken on a whole new level of madness. The demons feeding off all my fears had me spinning out of control. Nothing was the same without her. She had permeated every aspect of our lives, from work to home and everything in between. The huge gaping hole created by her absence wrecked me, reducing me to inhumane almost.
I rubbed my head, wondering how the hell we’d gotten here. My brothers and I practically avoided each other now. Each of us trying to deal with the situation and failing miserably. The only thing that brought a respite was our work, and even then, it was tainted with her wording for it.Soul snatching. She had snatchedoursouls, and without her, we were nothing. Empty and without purpose, we drifted.
“I spoke with Sebastian this morning, and I’m heading back,” Ivan said at the dining room table. These were the first words spoken to either Nik or me in four or five days.
The dark circles under his eyes testified he wasn’t sleeping and something was eating at him. Something big. There was a struggle raging inside my baby brother, and I had no way of helping him. Whatever had happened between them, he was carrying a shit ton of guilt.
The first few days, he adamantly insisted she left because of him. When pressed, he’d storm away, take his bike out. I feared he would do something stupid, so I stopped asking. Slowly, that guilt shifted to anger. I knew far too well from my own issues with Kinsley that the only thing I could do was let it play out. He seemingly vacillated between being angry at himself and then at her, certain she had walked away.
Marcus swore that nothing in their conversation even remotely sounded like a woman hell-bent on leaving. She had confessed she wanted to apologize to Ivan, so she wouldn’t have left. But I hated that every attempt to locate her came up a dead end. With her grandfather released from prison, I thought maybe he had taken her. It was a real possibility. One we had to consider. We had feelers out in Russia, but even those turned up nothing.
“If you think that is best,” I said, as the anger flared in his face.
“Don’t fucking look at me like that,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “I’ve got my end of things here all worked out. Jake will take over as manager, and the gym will be in excellent hands. The two of you need to wrap shit up here as well. Mother and Father are even making their arrangements to go home too.”
“What about Kinsley?” Nik asked.
“She’s gone. She’s not coming back. We were all playing a fucking game and lost. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m done talking about her.” He stood and stormed out.
In the wake of things, Nik’s usually composed demeanor shifted. He wore a sense of uncertainty as he grappled with the loss, his eyes filled with bewilderment. When we were little, there were only a handful of times when he looked at me like this. He was waiting for me to decide.
“He’s right. I guess it’s time.” The weight of the world bore down on my shoulders.
Bringing Kinsley into our family was ultimately my decision. I was the oldest—they looked up to me. I made it a priority, and she became a part of us in ways I hadn’t prepared for. Now the repercussions were staring me in the face, and I hated it.
Nik sighed. “We have two unresolved cases. If we end those degenerates, I can wrap up everything with the agency.”
I was ready. Having appointed an acting manager at the club, everything was running smoothly and had been for the last two weeks. I hadn’t confessed to either of my brothers how much time I’d actually spent trying to find her.
“I’ll call Marcel and Sebastian. You can let Mother and Father know.” Nik rose and left me alone once more in the dining room. My gaze flicked to her empty seat.
