The Sketcher's Mark (Lara McBride Thrillers Book 1) (30 page)

The cold night air was bracing and clean and as soon as she breathed it in, she doubled over and began to vomit out the taste of the barn.  Janelle was sitting up in the grass, about all she was physically able to do.  Lara wiped her mouth and went to Janelle, putting the blanket around her and holding it in place for her.  She snapped open the bottle of water and held it to Janelle’s lips, letting her drink.

“The Police are on their way.  It’s all safe now.  We’re going home.  All of us” Lara said, more to herself than to Janelle. She looked her in the eyes and saw that her sister at least understood her.  She was in mild shock, but she would get over it.  She would move her in to the farm house in a few minutes, after her heart stopped jackhammering in her chest.

Lara put her arms around Janelle and held her close, turning her back to the barn and sat down in the grass, looking out in the distance where the first glimmers of dawn broke in the sky ahead.   As she held her sister in the cold breaking light of morning, tears streaming down her face, she felt anything but victorious.  He had robbed her of that.  She thought about the young boy from Chicago and whether Janelle would ever see him again.  Or have any kind of normal life after this.  She hoped that Janelle would overcome the experience and become some semblance of the bright eyed young woman with hope in her heart and trust in her eyes who she was before this happened.  She hoped that Janelle would not forever find herself waking in the night, terrified that the man with the scars on his face was at the foot of her bed, reaching out in the dark with his paint spattered fingers, searching for her.  She hoped she, too, would not have such nightmares.

Janelle began to sing.  “Sunshine…you are my sunshine…” Weakly, Lara joined in, making it harder to hold back the tears now.

Last of all, she thought of her father, sitting in his chair, watching them both with a smile as they opened their presents under the Christmas tree one year.  She remembered a look on his face that had stayed with her and it was only now that she realized what it meant, what he was thinking as he had watched them; that the real gift the sisters had was each other.

As she closed her eyes and exhaustion began to take her, she knew that safety was an illusion she so desperately wanted to cling to.  She wanted to believe in it the way other people believed in it, people who had not seen the things she had seen.  She wanted to believe in a world without fluttering ribbons that led to the darkest places of man.  She wanted to believe in a world filled only with good people and wondrous things that people held dear which nobody would ever try to take away.  A world where good people were protected and safe.

She knew the only real certainty in life was that she would fight to make it so.

Forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in England, Chris O’Neill was raised in the UK, the Middle East and the Bahamas.  He attended Leeds Grammar School and began writing screenplays and stage plays in his early teens.  He was accepted in to the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain at fourteen and went on to study Film at the University Of East Anglia and San Francisco State University, where he also staged several original plays.  He has written feature screenplays for production companies in the UK and the US.  THE SKETCHER’S MARK is his first novel.

Website:  about.me/chrisoneill