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My nod was short. It was difficult to fathom. To understand. While a whole different piece of me whispered in awe.
He’d been seeking these men out. Ending them before they could inflict the type of pain that had been inflicted on us.
Kane hugged me tighter. I didn’t know if it was an apology or a promise that he would never regret what he did.
Standing for the vulnerable.
I clicked into another folder, and I shivered when I saw what it contained. It was like the open folder I’d found before with the journal-like letters she’d written then saved and printed.
The same type that had contained the letter she’d written me about her wishes for Maci.
Though there was only one here. It had been written and saved two days before her death.
Obviously, it was private. A secret she was keeping.
Tyke’s horrible words filtered back through my mind. The way he implied that he’d killed Emmalee because of what she’d known, and I had to imagine these were secrets she’d planned to share.
I opened it to her handwriting forever imprinted on the screen, and the tears only thickened as I began to read.
Emery,
I can’t sit still as I’m writing this letter to you. It’s the middle of the night, and I can’t force the fear away.
They’re coming for me. I can feel it. I don’t even know how I know, but something in the air has shifted. The peace that I found with Maci—with all of you—my amazing family—no longer exists. Unrest keeps sweeping in to take its place.
Even now as I write this, I don’t know if I would take it back. Because I had to try. I couldn’t give up like the authorities had done.
And most of all, through the twists and turns that I’ve followed for the last years, I got my daughter out of it.
How could I regret it?
But God, it’s terrifying, being sure that someone is watching me. The police took a report, but they wrote it off since I have no evidence of anything other than a feeling.
Other than knowing I’ve gotten too deep.
A tear streaked down my cheek. “I wish she would have told me. Wish she would have let me in.”
Kane snuggled closer, his mouth buried in my hair. “She was protecting you.”
“And it cost her life,” I quietly choked.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I wish I would have known. I—” He clipped off.
“It’s not your fault, either,” I whispered.
“Sometimes it feels like it, though. Like I haven’t come close to doing enough.”
“You give your life for them. Forus.” I breathed it before I turned back to reading my sister’s words.
I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was doing from the beginning, but I couldn’t not do something.
Jana was gone, and my soul burned with the desperation to find her. To know what happened to her.
I knew where to start. I had to find the man I would never forget from that night.
I never told you this, but the entire time we were held, I could see through the sack they placed over my head. I witnessed it all. The horrible things they did to us. The fiends that came and went.
But I also saw him.