Page 95 of Corpse Roads

My two brothers.

My best fucking friends.

The four of us were a messy, imperfect family, but we made it work. She brought life out in Hunter’s weary soul, forced Theo from his anxious shell and quieted my mind enough for me to sleep.

“I’m sorry, Lys,” I whisper to her memory. “We’ve fucked everything up. You’d kick all of our asses.”

Her eyes stare back at me, radiating love and acceptance. She didn’t give a damn about our sharp edges, the quirks and flaws that made us ruthless enough to run a company like Sabre.

Alyssa was our partner. The glue that bound us together, making us equals. Without her… we’re nothing. Like Theo, I’ve been filling the void with whatever I could to survive.

“Theo will come back.”

“I highly doubt it,” Hunter replies from the window.

“He didn’t mean what he said.”

“Yeah, Enz. He did.”

Placing the photograph on the console, I make it to the conference table and collapse into an empty chair. Hunter’s gaze is fixed on the heavy rain clouds outside.

“I should go after him,” I finally say.

“Don’t.” His forehead rests against the glass. “I’m not going to force him to stay. This is his decision. We have to respect it.”

“This isn’t right.”

“Nothing is right anymore,” he snaps, turning to face me. “Nothing has been right for a very long time. The one good thing in our lives right now… and we have to give her up.”

I stare at him, disbelieving. “Wait, Harlow?”

“You know who I’m talking about, alright? I won’t say it again.”

“Jesus. You need to get over yourself.”

Scoffing, he fists his long hair. “You think I don’t know that? Goddammit, Enz. We all figured out our own ways to survive.”

Sighing, I walk over to him, throwing an arm around his tense shoulders. We face the sprawling expanse of London together.

“We have to do this, Hunt. Harlow has a whole other life that she knows nothing about.”

“What if it breaks her?” he asks, biting his lip. “All that time she spent suffering and being tortured… she has no idea that those monsters weren’t her real parents.”

“We will keep her safe, even from herself.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” I squeeze his shoulders. “We can win this fight. The answers are there. We just have to find them.”

Hunter watches the flash of ambulance lights passing on the busy road below us. Several police cars follow, parting the morning traffic.

“You want to reopen her old case,” he guesses.

“Nobody gets kidnapped without someone noticing. It’s been thirteen years, things have changed.”

Considering, he nods. “We can recall the evidence, maybe get in touch with the old investigators. See what they missed.”

“We already have the evidence here.”

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