Page 12 of Not Her Day to Die

“Agent?”

“Ex-agent,” Axel snarls. “Are you even on the force anymore? Did your superiors approve you coming down here to interrogate a gunshot victim?”

Jane’s eyes darken before she plasters her face back into place. An impressive mask. She is both a concerned woman and a bullheaded agent.

“This doesn’t concern either of you two. Axel, you still have a few years left on your probation. Do you want me to put in a call to your PO?” The woman’s voice, which had been so gentle withme, turns stern. “I am here on official FBI business. Due to her injuries, the public outrage, and the suspicious nature of the sheriff’s response to the man that has been taken into custody, a case has been opened. Didn’t you wonder why she was placed in a private room? Why the reporters have been kept at bay?”

Axel’s jaw clenches, but he remains silent.

I am surprised when it is Grayson who speaks. “You mean our brother. Our brother’s half-cocked arrest. His lawyer will have him out at the trial. I mean, the entire case should be thrown out! He didn’t even have a weapon, nor was one found anywhere nearby.”

The woman’s eyes widen in shock. “You don’t know?”

Axel breaks his silence. “Know what?”

I open my mouth to speak but then that familiar flicker flashes, and I close it. This time I try to follow the light, but it’s almost as if as soon as I do, it disappears.

Am I going crazy? Have all of these deaths caused me to lose my mind? Did I meet this woman in a past life? Is that why she’s so familiar?

The agent rolls her shoulders, flattens her lips. She places her hands on the rail at the foot of my bed, levels me with her stare. “Darius was released just a few hours ago.”

Grayson falls back, away from me and towards the nearby wall. My attention catches on the movement, the way his eyes dull, his mouth opens in shock.

“No!” Axel yells, lunging himself towards the woman.

My hand moves on its own catching him, he lets me.

“Isn’t that good?” I whisper. Nothing is making any sense, even less than before.

Darius has been sprung, he’s free, we don’t have to worry about him. We escaped the loop. Everything is okay…

Nobody answers, but Jane examines me with a critical intensity.

“Where is he?” I ask even softer than before. The urge to cough presses against me, but I swallow it down.

“With hisfather.” Jane continues to stare me down.

Axel jerks under my hold. She pauses for a few beats.

Jane cocks her head. “You don’t know who his father is?”

My head twists on a swivel, looking between Axel and Grayson. “What’s wrong with your dad?” I had never met the man, never heard of him. But Tripp had mentioned him once, he was a deadbeat that disappeared before Darius was born.

“Shedoesn’t.” Jane stands back to her full height, her tone evolving, her eyes darkening until they are nearly black. “What else are you keeping her in the dark about?” She raises a hand to push a strand of hair that has escaped her neatly pulled back bun.

And that is when I see it.

“What is this?” I jerk back in the bed, my hands shaking. “Who are you?” My mind falters between reality and somewhere much darker. A nightmare I can’t escape. A loop I wasn’t even aware I was thrown into.

A picture of a girl.

On a bed.

With a matching tattoo.

Yin and yang.

“This is the girl’s mom. From the photo,” Axel provides. “She is the reason everything bad has ever happened. She is the reason Tripp and Auggie are dead. She is the reason you are in this hospital bed.” And he believes it. It is in the cadence of his voice, the way he grits his teeth, narrows his eyes.