Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

Cosima

The trip was like a day spent in the outskirts of hell. Nothing bad happened, nothing dangerous. Merc seemed to remember things—which was good? Or bad? Debatable—and I met the infamous Ross, black sheep of the family and bully extraordinaire.

Who looks like Merc’s twin brother.

And who pushed him into the stream and went on to wrestle with him until the guys had to intervene and pull him off Merc before he could drown him.

Seeing Merc fight with the monsters in his mind was so hard. I don’t like seeing him struggling, in pain, mental more than physical, but still.

I hate it. I want to fix this for him.

I wonder if that’s how my sister feels when Griffin is hurting.

It blows, I think, standing at Merc’s bedroom door, that a childhood memory should affect someone so hard. Of course, as memories go, this takes the cake of horrific events.

A murder. That’s bad enough.

Unless of course there’s more.

And for some reason, it feels like there’s more.

I walk into the room and sit on the bed, stroke sweaty hair off his forehead. He’s running a fever. It started as we drove back this morning, and now he’s tossing and turning, mumbling in his sleep.

It makes my chest ache.

Why did I think that by visiting the place of his memories this would be over? It seems we all thought that.

Gigi takes my place at the door. “It has happened before. It will pass. He was never a sick kid, but from time to time he’d get a weird fever out of nowhere and toss and turn like that. That’s when I realized something had happened to him.”

“He says he doesn’t remember anything after the man left with the body,” I mutter.

She shakes her head. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she whispers, then laughs and claps a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. “Oh God. As if all this isn’t bad enough. But at least he’s talking about it, at long last. It will get better after this. It has to. It’s like lancing an infected wound. That’s why shrinks make you talk and talk, right? Get it all out?”

God, I hope she’s right.

“Did Matt manage to contact his cop friend?”

“Yeah. John Elba. He promised to look into it. I don’t have to tell you what a shock that was for the police. Destiny is such a quiet place. Our family keeps stirring up trouble.”

“It doesn’t sound like you were the troublemakers. More like you were caught up in it.”

“True.” She smiles at me. “Thanks for coming along today.”

“You kidding me? He needed me there. Of course I was coming with.”

Her smile widens. “He really likes you, you know. Never seen him like this before.”

“How was he as a kid?”

“Super cute. Girls kept falling in love with him from kindergarten to college.”

“I believe it.”

“They all wanted to marry him.” She giggles. “And he teased them. Teased all of us so much. Though he had his quiet and serious moments. He studied hard. Spent endless hours in his room listening to music.”

“A heartbreaker,” I whisper.

“Yeah.”