Page 171 of Untouchable

And it might have been the most painful thing Kelly could ever remember saying, ever remember experiencing.

It was worse than running back down the trail in the woods to find her father dead.

She saw Reese’s eyes widen as the truth sank in.

And that was it.

The excruciating force inside her surged up, out, ripped her apart. “Oh God!” Kelly gasped, strangling on an agonized sob. The first sob seemed to slash open her throat, but another one followed. Then more. They wouldn’t stay down. And each one hurt more than the last.

Kelly raised her hands to cover her face, as if her fingers could somehow hold back her painful rasps.

“Oh, Kelly,” Reese said, her voice softer than it had been. “I’m so sorry.”

The sympathy was worse. Even worse. And Kelly couldn’t possibly handle it. She cried even harder, in harsh, grating sobs, and her eyes burned without tears.

Reese sat stiffly as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do. After a minute she asked, “Caleb wasn’t involved?” Clearly she couldn’t quite believe it.

Kelly couldn’t believe it either. Except she knew without doubt it was true.

“No,” she wheezed between the sobs that kept tearing through her throat. “He only found out… later.” She was barely coherent.

“But that’s… good, right? You didn’t want him to be guilty.”

Kelly forced herself to nod. Felt like her throat was closing up. She was choking. Sobbing frantically. But managed to spit out, “Except… now… there’s… nothing to do.”

It was all she could say. But she started choking, her sobs were so wrenching and overwhelming.

The tears had finally come now, blinding her eyes. Kelly couldn’t hold her head up. Leaned forward, over her lap. Wept into the hard floor with desperate jerks.

“Oh, Kelly,” Reese soothed, stroking her back. “Hon, don’t.”

Kelly didn’t want to, but there was no way she could stop. Her sobs were loud and painful, and they kept getting worse and worse.

“Kelly, I know it’s terrible for there to be no way to get justice now, but isn’t it better to know?” Reese was clearly grasping for any comfort she could. “Isn’t it better to know one way or the other? Isn’t that what you set out to do in the first place?”

“Yes. But now it feels… worse.” Her hair was falling all over the place, shielding Kelly’s face like an ineffectual curtain.

Reese kept stroking her. “Why is it worse now?”

Kelly’s whole body was convulsing, and tears, sweat, and snot were smearing her face. “Because it felt like it meant something, like there… could be justice,” she choked out. “It felt like there was a purpose.”

There was no purpose now. No answers left to find. No justice left to seek. No way of understanding the murder of her father.

Just a good man dead on the ground when he shouldn’t have been.

She’d thought she’d gotten to the lowest point before, but this was so much lower than anything else she’d experienced.

Kelly wasn’t sure she could survive it.

“It’s all… just…meaningless.”

The sobs kept coming, ripping, ripping her apart, ripping through her from her gut to her throat.

Reese scooted over on the floor until she was holding Kelly’s upper body in her lap. It sounded like Reese was on the verge of crying too. “Kelly, please. I don’t know what to do.”

There was nothing to do. No help. No fix. No answer.

Nothing but the absolute injustice of the universe.