“What did you find out?”
I closed the front door behind me and forced myself to meet the expectant and frightened gazes of my parents. They were staring at me like they didn’t know whether or not they were ready to hear what I had to say. And, at this point, I wasn’t sure they ready to or not either.
But I had to tell them. No one else seemed to be willing, and they had the right to know.
“Skylar,” my mom whispered when I took too long to answer. “Skylar, what is it? Did they tell you anything?”
I let out a long sigh, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. “Yeah,” I said, letting my hand fall. My throat felt thick, and for a moment I wondered if I was going to be able to tell them after all. “Well, the lead detective on the case didn’t want to tell me anything, but Brandon did.”
My mom blinked in surprise at the mention of Brandon’s name, but didn’t comment on it. Instead, she grabbed onto my dad’s hand and gripped it tightly, a deep-set frown on her face as she demanded, “What did Brandon say?”
I nodded toward the living room, chewing on my cheek. “Let’s talk in there, all right?” I said softly.
My parents nodded, but from the expressions on their faces, I knew that they were just itching to yell for me to get on with it. I wanted to just tell them—I really wanted to. But I needed these spare few seconds to find a way to say what I needed to say.
All the way home, I'd struggled to find a way to tell them what I was about to tell them. I had to; I knew that. But how could I word it in a way that didn’t sound as awful as it really was?
There was no way.
“They have three suspects,” I began as my mom and dad settled onto the couch. They stared up at me. I swallowed when I saw the teary expression on my mom’s face.
“Who are they?” my dad demanded. I glanced down and saw his hand clenched into a fist. What was he going to do when he found out his daughter had been stolen by serial killers?
My eyes burned as I fought back tears. My sister had been kidnapped by serial killers. Serial killers. What were they doing to her right now? Had they already finished what they planned on doing?
“They don’t know their names.” I crossed my arms over my chest, my nails digging into my skin. “But they have a general idea of who they are.”
“How do they know who the suspects are if they don’t know their names?” my mom asked. I inwardly winced as her voice shook. “I don’t understand.”
I took a moment to answer. How was I going to say this? There was no real way to sugarcoat it. And my parents weren’t the type of people to appreciate sugarcoating anyway. “They believe that the people who stole Serenity are serial killers,” I said finally, knowing that being blunt was the only way to go. I sighed shakily. “They kidnap twenty teens around the state, bring them to an abandoned building filled with their earlier victims’ stuff, and then they kill them all one by one.”
For a moment it was silent.
And then my mom began to sob.
“My baby,” she cried. “No, no, no, no; not my baby.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“It’s not your fault, son.” My dad glared at the far wall as he wrapped his arms around his wife and pulled her to him. She collapsed into his chest easily, her body shaking as the tears streamed down her cheeks. “It’s not your fault.”
