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ZANE

S creams ripped through the night, echoing down the hallway and rattling my brain from sleep.

It took me a moment to identify where I was. Couch with the spring that stabbed me in the back. Living room painted sunny yellow but currently cast in shadows from the TV playing an old episode of Law and Order with the volume all the way down. Dirty work pants and shirt. My boots weren’t even unlaced, mud still clinging to the soles. I’d clearly fallen asleep as soon as I’d sat down.

The screams came again, and this time I was awake enough to register them. I pushed to my feet and crashed my way down the hall, knocking a photo frame off the wall but leaving it to hit the floor behind me.

The glass cracked, but it could be replaced. It wouldn’t be the first one I’d broken in a hurry to get down here.

I slowed when I hit Mom’s room. It was small enough I only had to take two steps before I was at her side, shaking her bony arms, trying to wake her from the nightmare that had her features twisted in pain and fear, even though her eyes were closed.

“Eddie, no!”

My stomach tightened, and I shook the small woman harder. “Mom. Wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered open, and she sat up quickly, gnarled fingers twisting in the bedsheets. She cringed away from me. “Eddie, please…”

I realized my mistake and leaned over to flick on the lamp. “Not Eddie, Mom. Me. Zane.”

She instantly settled. “Zane?” A tear leaked from her watery blue eyes, and she reached out a hand for me. “Oh, Zane. What are you doing in here? You did such a long shift, you must be tired. Do you want me to make you some dinner?”

“It’s the middle of the night. You were having a nightmare…”

She pursed her thin lips. “No, I wasn’t. I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

We both knew she wasn’t fine. She always tried to convince me the dreams didn’t upset her. Or that they hadn’t happened at all. She never wanted to be a bother.

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” I said softly.

Her shoulders slumped, the trembling in her body too bone-deep to hide any longer. “It’s my fault. He’s the way he is because of me.”

I shook my head, picking up her hand. “Eddie is the way he is because of no one but himself. He’s a monster because he chooses to be.”

She shook her head. “I did something wrong with him. I just know it. He was a sweet boy once upon a time…”

He was once a boy who’d killed cats for fun. There’d never been anything sweet about my older brother. Mom just had rose-colored glasses. Or maybe a heart that still held hope there was something good in my brother.

I sighed heavily. “You should go back to sleep.”

But she stared at me with fearful eyes. “I can’t sleep. He’s going to come for us. I know it.”

I hated Eddie with every part of me. Because this wasn’t the first time Mom had woken screaming. It wasn’t even the hundredth time. Ever since I’d moved her out of my childhood home and taken her as far from Saint View and my psychopathic brother as I could get, she’d had nightmares. She barely slept, fearing the images and thoughts her mind conjured up. The memories of the abuse she’d suffered at his hands. The abuse he’d inflicted on others.

My chest tightened, and I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to remember the women he’d held captive.

The woman he’d killed.

“He’s dead,” I assured her.

She gave a sharp shake of her head. “You don’t know that.”

I didn’t. I just hoped it with everything I had. “We’re safe here,” I promised her. “It’s been five years. If he’s even still alive, which I doubt, considering the life he lives and the people he associates with, then he’s lost interest in us. Go back to sleep, okay?”

She didn’t seem convinced, but what else was there to do in the middle of the night, when the perceived safety of daylight was still hours away? She huddled beneath the blankets, breathing still too fast.

I hated that I couldn’t take her fear away. Hated the constant threat we’d lived with our entire lives because my brother was unpredictable and cruel.

I went around the house, checking every window and door. I checked the security system I’d installed and replayed the day’s footage in 4x speed, searching for anything new that might have set my mother off.

But there was nothing. And when the sun rose, Mom emerged from her bedroom fully dressed and with makeup attempting to cover the bags beneath her eyes.

I pretended not to notice them. And she pretended the nightmare hadn’t happened. She made breakfast for the both of us, and I sat and ate it dutifully, even though I had no appetite.

“We’re out of eggs,” she said quietly around mouthfuls of food. “Shame we can’t have a chicken coop here. Did I ever tell you I had chickens when I was a kid? It’s so handy to have fresh eggs every day.”

“I’ll get some more on my way home from work.”

Mom cut her bacon carefully and glanced out the kitchen window. “A sunny day. Hopefully the worksite is a bit less muddy for you after all the rain we had last week.”

I chewed my toast and swallowed. “Sorry about the mess I made of the floor last night. I didn’t even get my boots off before I fell asleep. There’s probably dirt everywhere.”

She waved a hand around. “The floors needed mopping anyway.”

That wasn’t true. She mopped them daily and kept the house pristine. Anything to keep herself busy. She rarely left it, though, and never without me by her side, so her days were long and quiet, with little to do other than cook and clean.

There was an easel and a whole array of painting supplies in the corner of her bedroom that I’d bought in the hopes of giving her something to do while I worked, but though she’d once loved art, her fingers now shook too much for her to paint a steady line. So the supplies sat untouched, and Mom filled her days scrubbing a home that was already spotless.

I knew it wasn’t much of a life. For her, or for me. But it was a life. One I doubted either of us would still have if we hadn’t left Saint View and my brother behind.

I managed to sweep up the dried mud before she batted me away from the mop, and I took a quick shower, ignoring my reflection in the steamed-up mirror. I pulled on fresh work clothes and yelled a goodbye to Mom. She stuck her head out of the kitchen, rubber gloves covering her fingers.

“Are you going out tonight?” she asked, hope in her tone. “It’s Friday, after all.”

I walked back over to her and kissed her cheek. “You know I don’t go out. I’ll be home right after work. As always.”

Her face fell. “You can’t spend your entire life here, babysitting an old woman.”

“You aren’t old.”

She patted my cheek. “You’re a good liar.” But she flinched at the word, and I knew she was thinking about my brother. How he, too, had been a good liar.

But while my lies were limited to flattering an old woman, whose rough life had aged her well beyond her years, my brother’s lies were of a whole different caliber.

I hated that even years after we’d left him behind, he still haunted us on a daily basis. “I’ll think about going out for a beer with the guys after shift, okay?”

Her expression brightened. “I hope you do.”

We both knew I wouldn’t.

But some of the stress slipped away as I got behind the wheel of my truck. It was new, one of the few things I had to spend my money on, besides the rent. The jobsite wasn’t far from the house, only a twenty-minute drive, but it was twenty minutes of freedom I craved every day.

Where for just a while, I got to be my own person. I wasn’t my mother’s caregiver. I wasn’t my boss’s employee.

I wasn’t Eddie’s brother.

I rolled down the window, letting cool morning air buffer my face, and sang along with the radio to an old Rascal Flatts song. The hard, manual labor of my job kept me busy all day, setting up framework and pouring concrete when the truck arrived. I lost myself in the thoughtless work, and the hours passed quickly, morning sun sinking into the afternoon, until Paul, the foreman, called the job done for the week.

I picked up a level and a few other tools the guys had left scattered around the site, putting them away.

Paul clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Coming to the bar?”

On autopilot, I went to shake my head no. Paul asked every week, just because he was a good guy, and every week I declined. So he was just as surprised as I was when the word, “Yes,” slipped out of my mouth.

He stopped. “Seriously?”

I hadn’t even realized I was going to say it myself. But it had been a good day. The sun had shone after a week of rain, and I knew what waited for me at home. I loved my mother and I didn’t resent her for a second. But being her caregiver had meant sacrificing my own life.

For one night, I just wanted to be a single man who had no responsibilities. No baggage. No weight sitting so heavy on my shoulders it was nearly impossible to walk at times.

I lifted a shoulder. “Just let me make a phone call and I’ll meet you all there.”

Paul’s regular, easygoing smile turned into a grin. “First beer’s on me.”

I grinned back, walking to my truck. “I’m holding you to that.”

Paul got in his vehicle, starting up the engine and tossing a careless wave in my direction.

I returned it and leaned across the center console to pull my phone out of the glove box where I’d left it that morning. It was empty of messages and calls. Unsurprising, since Mom was the only person who had the number. When we’d fled Saint View, I’d left everything behind. My car. Our house. Clothes. Phones. I’d replaced everything when we were far away from that hellhole.

I called Mom, checking she was okay and she didn’t need anything. She didn’t, not that she would have told me if she did. She never wanted to burden me. But she sounded happy, and so I convinced myself she’d be okay alone for an extra hour or two.

I started up my truck and navigated my way out of the jobsite and back onto the road. The phone rang through the car’s Bluetooth system before I was a block away, and I turned the truck around without even looking at the caller ID.

She always managed when I was at work. The daylight brought her peace. But as much as she encouraged me to go out and have a life, I knew the fall of night brought out the demons in her mind. All of them shaped like her eldest son.

“It’s okay, Mom. I’m coming home.”

There was a long pause and then a deep chuckle.

My foot slammed on the brake.

The car behind me swerved to avoid a collision, and the driver leaned down hard on the horn.

But I barely heard it. I didn’t pull the truck to the side of the road, despite the Friday afternoon traffic having to divert around me. I didn’t fully register the confused and angry shouts from the other drivers as they passed me by.

All I could hear was the laughter of a monster.

“Not Mommy, little brother.”

Like I didn’t already know.

“How did you get this number?”

Eddie clucked his tongue. “Is that any way to greet your big brother after five years of avoiding him?”

I wanted to hurl the phone out the window. Pour bleach in my ears and pray that cleaned out the sound of his voice. One I’d spent years trying to forget.

“Cat got your tongue, huh, Zaney boy?”

I’d always hated when he’d called me that. “What do you want?”

“Can’t one brother just call up another brother for a Friday afternoon chat?”

“No.”

He let out an overexaggerated, disappointed sigh. “You don’t have to be so disagreeable, Zane. All I need is one small favor. You do owe me one, after all.”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I owe you nothing. I’m hanging up. Go to hell, Eddie.”

Eddie’s voice, that had been sweet as molasses a moment earlier, suddenly turned sharp. “You don’t want to do that, Zane. Don’t piss me off.”

I wanted to do it anyway.

But I’d learned, a very long time ago that crossing my brother never ended well. So I forced my fingers to stay where they were, strangling the steering wheel I wished was Eddie’s neck.

“I need you to come pick me up. I’m in the hospital.”

“Dying, I hope.” Though I already knew the universe wouldn’t be that kind.

“I’ll forgive you for saying that when you’re here to take me home.”

“Guess I won’t ever be forgiven then.” I bit my tongue, knowing I was goading him, and it wasn’t smart, but I couldn’t help it. Every word spilled from my lips like lava exploding from a volcano. I couldn’t stop it if I’d tried.

I could practically hear the darkening of Eddie’s mood. “I asked you nicely.”

My temper got the better of me. “And I told you to go to hell. Rot there, Eddie. I hope it fucking hurts.” I slid my finger to the end call button, already mentally planning everything that would need to happen now. New phone. New IDs. Another move to another state. I cursed my brother mentally. I was happy here. I had a job I liked with men who were good people. Who had families and kids and normal lives I envied with every beat of my broken fucking heart.

“Check the little surveillance cameras on your house.”

I froze, my finger grazing the button but not pressing down on it. My hand shook. “Why?”

Except I already knew. I scrambled for my phone, sitting on the passenger seat, and frantically stabbed at the app I’d installed, along with cameras that covered every inch of my mother’s house.

It took too long to connect. But when it did, I scanned the feed quickly, searching for my mother. I found her on the footage from the kitchen. She sat at the table, eating a meal prepared for one. She cut dainty bites of whatever it was, putting each one into her mouth slowly, chewing thoroughly and then taking a sip of water to wash it all down.

Relief flooded me.

Until I noticed movement on another of the feeds.

“You see him yet?” Eddie asked. “My friend with the knife at the door?”

My blood ran cold as the masked man looked up into the camera, grinned, and brandished a long, steel knife that gleamed in the weak glow cast from the streetlights.

Another stood at the back door, holding an identical weapon.

Both mere feet from where my mother sat with her dinner, no idea of the danger she was in.

Blind fury mixed with fear coursed through my body. My heart beat too fast, my fingers ached from the punishing grip I held the phone with.

“They’ll stay outside, and Mommy will never even know they’re there. As long as you turn your pretty blue truck around and come pick me up.”

I swallowed down bile, knowing he had me exactly where he wanted me. He knew where we lived. What sort of truck I drove.

He knew everything.

I forced myself to speak. “Let me organize a caregiver for her first. She can’t be left alone too long.”

“You always were a Mommy’s boy, weren’t you? The old bitch is fine. And she’ll continue to be fine as long as you do as you’re fucking told.” He laughed again, the sound as evil as snakes slithering across my skin. “You don’t get to say no to me, Zane. You never did.”