Deep Waters

Chapter Two

I carefully snuck the letter out of my jean pocket and slipped it into the bottom of my backpack without my brother noticing. We had just checked into the hotel about twenty minutes before and was going through all of our bags, looking for our pajamas, phone chargers, and our other nightly essentials. After getting the keys to four rooms, we split into pairs: Kason and Holden, me and Gavin, Aria and Marla, and then the two officers, Chad and Brandon.

"What do you think would happen if Charles were to contact us?" I asked my brother, looking up at him from my backpack.

Furrowing his dark eyebrows, he just glanced at me. "What do you mean?" he was standing beside the king size bed, pulling everything out of his duffle bag as he looked for his phone charger.

I shrugged and pulled out my toothbrush and toothpaste. "Do you think he would contact us if he had the chance?" I altered my question.

His hazel eyes stared into mine, looking a little curious as to why I would ask. "I don't know; I guess he would try to in order to see if he could lure us toward him," he said, finally finding and pulling out his charger.

I pushed everything that was overflowing out of my bag back in and zipped it up. As much as I fought the thoughts deep down in my head, more kept surfacing. "Do you think he actually loved mom?" Surely, he didn't lie in that letter. Or maybe he did. But why? He claimed that she was the love of his life.

My brother didn't look at me, instead kept shoving all of his belongings back into his bag. "If he loved her, he wouldn't have killed her."

My eyes remained on him and I know that he could feel my stare. He was just choosing to ignore it. "Do you think he at least misses her?"

"He'd have to regret his actions in order to miss her," he replied, his tone a little sharper "And the last time I checked, he still wants to kill us, so I don't think he's regretted shooting his wife in the head."

There was a big part of me that didn't believe Gavin. Charles' letter seemed to contain his heart and soul in his words. Sure, he did say that he would find me and that he would definitely kill me the moment he did, but he also said he loved and missed Mom. He even said that there was a part of him that still loved me—it was just complicated. "Do you think he ever loved us?" I asked next.

"Delilah, what is with all the sudden questions?" he snapped, not too harshly.

Shrugging, I exhaled. "I don't know," I lied. I couldn't exactly just blurt out that our dad had written me a letter and somehow got it delivered. I mean, I guess I could, but I really didn't want to. Not at that moment, anyway. First, I wanted to figure out what Charles' intentions were.

"It sounds like you're stuck in your head," he observed.

"It's practically impossible not to when our dad is running around, trying to kill us as we speak." With that, I stood up and walked to the bathroom, with my toothbrush and toothpaste in hand, ending the conversation.

#

The next morning, I sat down on the floor of our hotel room and was in the midst of straightening the frizz out of my hair, while Kason sat on the bed and watched me. My brother and the rest of our friends were together in another room, getting themselves presentable for the day. This was the first day of our trip where we were actually going to stop at places and explore the area around us. We had already planned on playing mini golf and stopping at a nice Italian place later on in the evening. "How did you sleep?" Kason asked me, his eyes remaining on me the whole time I was getting ready.