Page 138 of Prey

I struggled harder, but it was no use.

Roman was much stronger than me.

Always had been, but he wasn’t strong enough to give me back my dad.

“Dad!” I screamed when I felt myself being lifted off the floor. “Dad! Wake up. Wake up, please.

I screamed harder, louder.

It didn’t seem to matter.

My dad lay on the floor, motionless, with all the other dead bodies.

My dad…

He was dead…

Wasn’t he?

I turned and buried my face in Roman’s chest, crying out.

He tightened his arms around me and walked us out of there.

Out of the cabin and away from my dad.

24

RYLEIGH

It was raining.

How apt.

It seemed the heavens reflected my pain in the weather.

Cold rain pelted against my face as I stood in the cemetery. I was surrounded by people who didn’t feel even an ounce of the pain I was feeling, though they didn’t show it.

They all looked devastated.

Such good actors.

Their expressions were solemn as they watched the man who had died saving my life be lowered into the ground.

He wasn’t the best dad in the world, and for a while there, all I could remember were the failings in our relationship, like how he missed a choir concert at my school when I was ten because he had to work.

He always had to work.

I was sure he spent more time at work than he did at home, and that meant he spent more time at work than he did with me, his daughter.

But watching as they lowered his casket, all the memories came.

Like once, when I was five, he had come home early. Mom was cooking in the kitchen, and he sat on the floor in front of the coffee table with me on his lap, and we worked on a picture together.

I got to draw the people, because that was the best thing to draw, and he worked on the house and the sun in the background.

I added the clouds, and he outlined the grass for me to color in.

I remember coming home in high school, heartbroken because Rhett had broken up with me in front of his friends, calling me weird.

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