Page 98 of Thorns of Silence

I jumped out of the car, pulled out my gun, and started shooting.

Alexander and Cesar were behind me, River and Darius too, bullets flying in every direction from machine guns. I jumped behind the car and started aiming. I shot two men, but I also missed a few. I was low on ammunition, but in the next second, Alexander opened the trunk and threw me a grenade.

A car revved in my direction, but I shot the tire. It swerved to the side, approaching us at a maddening speed. So I shot the other three tires.

“It’s the Brazilians,” Darius shouted. “The Cortes cartel.”

Returning my gaze to my brother and his woman, blood roared in my ears.

My eyes lowered to the grenade. Fuck it.

“Heads down, fuckers! I’m resorting to drastic measures.”

Then I threw it through the air.Boom!

THIRTY-EIGHT

PHOENIX

Istared up at the white ceiling of my hotel room in upstate New York. I’d been to five different cities over the last few weeks. After leaving Grandma, I went to the airport, colored my hair auburn, bought a decoy airfare ticket, and took the train to London where my two million dollars awaited me.

From there, I flew to New York City where I checked into a hotel for a night. I found the address of the family who adopted my baby girl, only to learn they moved to Connecticut. So, I bought a used Jeep Wrangler and made my way there.

My next stop was a disappointment. The family died in a tragic accident two years prior, and just as I was about to have a major breakdown, the old man remembered that the baby girl survived because she’d been at home with a nanny.

Then I found the nanny who lived in a little town called Victor, New York. She was a sixty-year-old woman with laugh wrinkles I had never seen on my own grandmother. The old woman fed me cookies, tea, and love-filled stories of the little baby she got to watch for eight months. According to her, the family had loved her too.

“Skye,” she mouthed. My heart stilled in my chest before it resumed its chaotic drumming.Skye. Skye. Skye.My daughter’s name was beautiful. Perfect. I couldn’t wait to meet her. “That’s her name. I sure hope they kept it.”

I pulled up my burner smartphone and typed a note.

Do you know what happened to her after her family died?

The old woman pushed her glasses up her nose and read my question, her shoulders slumping.

“They took her back to the agency.”

It was how I found myself back in upstate New York in the same little town where I had given birth almost five years ago.

My hope flickered and dimmed with each breath.

I hadn’t anticipated so many obstacles. It was probably childish, but somehow I thought I’d find my baby at the first stop and we’d be happily reunited. Yet here I was, alone in a hotel room on Christmas Day, longing for my sister, my friends, and most of all my baby.

I reached for my phone.

I sat up, groaning, and scrolled through it, wrapping the blanket tightly around myself. I checked my phone every day despite the fact that I knew my friends didn’t have my number. I couldn’t be traced. Yet, today, I had to fight the irresistible urge to call my sister and talk to her. I hadn’t seen her face in weeks.

I really hoped she found happiness. One of us should.

Rising out of bed, I made my way to the window seat, still wrapped in my blanket, and pulled my knees to my chest. It was almost noon, and very cold despite the heater running at full blast. A blanket of white stretched outside as far as the eye could see. I searched up Spotify on my phone and pressed play. I couldn’t hear the soft tunes, but I read the words, letting my imagination run wild with the music in my head, hoping it’d erase this loneliness.

I lifted my head and stared out the window, chanting Lana Del Rey’s words to the song “Chemtrails Over The Country Club” in my head, playing the melody the way I imagined it would sound.

My heart trembled, loneliness gripping my chest. Sobs I desperately tried to choke down burned my throat and the tears in my eyes burned.

The last Christmas I spent alone flickered in my mind. I tried desperately to chase it away, but unlike other times, it refused to recede. Instead, it powered through, tearing at my heart once again.

My room that had been my home for the past two months was decorated in gold and green colors. Grandma hired a crew to come and put up a tree and set gifts under it.