Page 44 of The Way Back Home
The next page had a slew of articles dated from about ten years previous.
“Oh, man,” Daniel said on an exhale. He read the titles over his brother’s shoulder: “Spring Break Bash Almost Turns Deadly,” “Teen Nearly Beaten to Death by Stepfather,” “Local Girl Missing, Presumed Dead.” The list went on and on, each article more horrifying than the one before it.
The tension around the table grew thicker with each one, the silence more profound.
“What the hell’s going on?” Brandon asked, striding into the kitchen. “Kinsey’s upset, and she won’t tell me why. She’s due in two weeks, guys. She doesn’t need the stress.”
“You have to see this, man,” Adam said, lifting his eyes from the laptop.
Scowling, Brandon moved closer to Alex, skimming the articles.
“Ah fuck,” he muttered a few minutes later.
The back door opened, and Noah entered, bringing a blast of cold air with him. He took one look at them gathered around Alex’s laptop and said, “Did Eli download porn onto Alex’s PC again?”
No one laughed. Several pairs of eyes looked at him, their shell-shocked expressions clueing him in to the tension in the room.
“What’s going on?”
Alex closed the lid of his laptop and stood. “We need to talk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NOAH
Noah glared at his stubborn, cynical twin accusingly, knowing that he was behind whatever this was. “Goddamn it, Alex,” he hissed. “I told you to back off. What did you do?”
Alex met his gaze with a steely one of his own. “Not here. Let’s go into Dad’s office.”
Noah followed Alex silently, aware of his brothers in his wake. Hannah remained in the kitchen.
“Close the door,” Alex commanded.
As the sounds of kids laughing and playing became muted, Alex put his laptop on the desk and opened the lid. The others stepped back, forming a protective semicircle behind and around Noah.
Dad’s office. His brothers at his six. Whatever Alex had found, it was bad.
Noah braced himself and looked down at the information displayed on the screen. Pictures of a youngerbut familiar face, barely recognizable beneath the damage that had been done to it, looked back at him.
The breakfast he and Teagan had shared earlier threatened to make a dramatic reappearance. He wanted to reach out and slam the laptop closed, but that couldn’t erase the images from his mind’s eye, where they would live rent-free for the rest of his life. Those pictures made the injuries she’d sustained at Hopewell look like playground bumps and bruises. No wonder she was so adept at handling pain.
Noah’s hands clenched into fists at his side. He felt a hand on his shoulder, then two. “Why?” he asked.
Eli was the one who answered, his expression grave. “It wasn’t Alex’s fault. Kinsey recognized Teagan as someone she had gone to school with. She was surprised that she’d come back, alluding to some bad shit that had gone down. When she realized we had no idea what she was talking about, she backpedaled and beat feet.”
“That was when Alex did some searching,” Adam added.
The words took a moment to register. Teagan was from the area?
Like a puzzle piece falling into place, the words Teagan had quietly whispered on the way here came back to him.“It’s been a long time.”
At the time, he’d thought maybe she’d visited the area at some point. He’d never considered that she’d grown up here. That made her decision to accompany him even more surprising.
And then, suddenly, he knew. Teagan’s returnwasn’t random. She was returning to her roots. But why? Was she seeking closure? Or vengeance?
Noah looked at Alex, then at each one of his brothers. Concern was in their eyes, right along with sympathy and barely concealed rage. They were a protective bunch, raised by a man who had paddled his sons but never raised a hand to his daughters.
“However you want to handle this, we’re here for you,” Eli said quietly, his tone sincere.
