Chasing Adrenaline

04 | Zack

I remember the day that mom had died. It was so sudden and shocking that it broke us all. Rose was of course, the one who was hurt the most of us kids. The night that mom died, dad gathered us three in the living room and told us that mom had died, even though we already knew. Rose ran to her room crying and I wanted to follow her, but dad didnt let me.

At first I was mad. My sister is in pain and my dad didn't even want me to go comfort her. But then he told me and Luke the real reason why mom had died. When she was younger, she got into a bit of trouble with some dangerous criminals. She never talked about it much, but she only mentioned that she had to change her name and identity.

For years she lived like this. But eventually, her past caught up to her. The day she died, she told dad that she had something very important to tell him. She never got to tell him . Dad said that when the paramedic found her drifting in the ocean with a shark a couple hundred feet away, they were certain that she was attacked by a shark.

But upon a little further investigation, they found a small puncture mark in her neck, indicating that there was foul play. They told dad that it would take a few weeks to test her blood and see if she was poisoned. But dad already knew that she was murdered by the people she used to be involved with.

Four weeks later, the test results finally came back and confirmed that she was indeed poisoned. The poison, once injected directly into the bloodstream, kills its victim immediately, making it look like natural causes. But they had planned it perfectly. They shot her with poison, right at the moment when a shark was swimming nearby.

To everyone else it seemed as if she fell off the board and got killed by a shark. If the shark had bit her in the neck, then the paramedic might not have been suspicious about her death and we wouldn't have known she was killed.

Dad immediately made arrangements to get us out of there. We moved to an entire different state and promised to never tell Rose. Dad however, started getting protective over Rose. Like mom, she also used to love adrenaline, but after everything that happened, dad was too afraid to lose her. So he started taking me and Luke to defence training classes and after a while we even started doing some military programs. We basically learned how to be a bodyguard.

But we never told Rose. As far as she knows, we've been taking classes to help us with our basketball and football. I met my girlfriend, Lilith, when I was 16 at one of the military programs. She was one of the drill sergeant's daughter and wanted to be just like her mom. We went on a few dates before we became official. A few months later I told her about everything, after I got my dad's approval of course.

She then became part of our little group and even moved to our school a few weeks later. Everyone, including Rose, got to know her as the shy, kind girl who wouldn't even hurt a fly.

As the years went by; Luke, dad and I became very protective over Rose. She wasn't allowed to go anywhere without one of us, or her friends. And even then, one of us three were always nearby and making sure she's alright.

Everything was going great until today.

I had dropped Rose of at school and continued with my day like usual. Everyone around me had talked about the new kids but I didn't bother much with it. I hadn't seen Rose throughout the day but I wasn't too worried about it. We were in school and she's with her friends, so she'll be safe.

When school ended, I was a bit worried when I didn't see her. But then I saw that her friends were already gone and Luke's car wasn't in the parking lot, so I figured he was watching over her today. Lilith and I went to my house and decided to watch some movies.

Dad came home at 5 o'clock and Rose still wasn't home. I was a bit worried, because neither she or Luke had texted me, but thought nothing of it. Chances were big that she was at the movie theatre again. Luke was probably not texting to avoid possibly drawing attention to himself.