Page 50 of Coup De Grâce
“What about the panic room?” Jason asked. “You fixed it up, right?”
For seconds, nobody moved. Then Johnny was tearing through the house for the basement stairs. Hope fluttered through me as I followed them downstairs. If they made it to the panic room, they could be just fine.
It took way too long for Johnny to get the door open. His fingers shook as he tried and failed to punch in the code over and over again. Finally, I stepped in and gripped his hand, squeezing gently.
“Tell me the code.”
He murmured the numbers to me, then took a deep breath.
“Okay.” I carefully put in the code, then stepped aside for him to scan his thumbprint and use the retinal scanner.
The door hissed as it opened partially. I took his hand in mine, feeling it tremble slightly. “I’ll look.”
He nodded again, unable to see for himself if they were alive. With a steadying breath, I stepped forward and opened the inner door to the safe room. Not a sound filled the air, which told me all I needed to know. But I looked through the large expanse anyway, finding it empty.
When I stepped out and shook my head, Johnny leaned heavily against the wall, hanging his head. “Fuck. I should have been here.”
His shoulders shook as the gravity of the situation washed over all of us. We were too late. His brother’s family had paid the price because of something that never should have touched them.
I grew angrier with every second that passed, pissed that an organization that had nothing to do with these people would come after an innocent family. And for what? What had Johnny’s brother ever done?
“What do you want to do?” Jason asked.
Johnny shook his head. “Where would they take them?”
Take them?If they took them anywhere, I thought. For all we knew, they could be buried in the yard. There was nothing to go on. None of us had any clue where the Shadow Government would take anyone. We didn’t know where they met or how they operated.
What we needed was Michael, but I had the feeling that he wouldn’t be able to tell us anything at all, if he was even willing to. Still, it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.
“Jack,” I said softly. “We should contact Michael.”
Johnny shoved past us and stormed up the stairs. I rushed after him, praying he didn’t go off on his own and do something stupid. That would definitely be something Johnny would do.
“Johnny!” I shouted, taking the stairs two at a time as I ran after him.
He was marching out the door and across the lawn by the time I caught up. But instead of heading to the car, he was striding toward the barn.
“Johnny! What’s going on?”
“I have to take care of the horses,” he called over his shoulder.
Okay, that was not what I was expecting, but then again, I didn’t have any siblings that I’d lost to psychopaths, so I was unfamiliar with the correct response to have.
“Johnny, wait! We need to figure out what to do!”
“About what?” he snarled, turning on me suddenly.
I nearly ran into him, stopping just short of plowing into his body. “About your family.”
“They’re gone,” he snarled. “Didn’t you see the fucking mess in there? That’s their blood, and it’s on my hands because I didn’t protect them.”
“You don’t know that,” I argued. “You don’t know for certain they’re dead.”
He tossed his head back and laughed, but nothing about this was funny. I could feel the pain and loss coming off him in waves, the desperation to be able to do something. But what? The Shadow Government was not something we had any hope of going up against.
Not if we wanted to win.
“I fucking killed them,” he said, his voice cracking. He bowed his head, the tip of his cowboy hat covering his eyes. But I could see the sorrow marring his face. The devastation that he hadn’t gotten here in time.
