“What the hell is going on here?” Sheldon yelled from her bedroom door. Her face was contorted with fury as she took a look around the room. When her gaze landed on a large dent in the wall, she bound forward. When she stood in front of me, she poked her finger in my chest. “Where the hell do you get off on trashing my apartment?”

“You should ask your brother. He started it.”

“News flash—you aren’t sixteen anymore, and you cannot just fight in my apartment. What if someone calls the police? We are supposed to be looking for my daughter, not picking fights. Whatever issues you two have with each other needs to wait until Kennedy is home safe.”

“Watch your tone, girl. I’m here, aren’t I? If you were a good mother, she wouldn’t have been taken in the first place.”

“Keenan!” This time it was Lake to raise her voice.

Where the hell had that come from?

I didn’t want to mean it, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t. Somewhere out there, my daughter, whom I’d never met, was out there suffering because her mother didn’t protect her, and not only that, but she didn’t fight hard enough. She gave up.

“You have no idea what kind of mother I am to her.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Bro,” Quentin interjected as he came between us. “Now is not the time. We’re so close to finding rugrat. You two can fight over who’s the better parent when we get her back.

Sheldon stepped back and disappeared into the kitchenette where she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and chugged it.

When she finished, I watched her plentiful chest heave up and down from exertion before ripping my gaze away to face Dash. He glared from the other side of the apartment while Jesse stood in front of him. Did he think he was protecting him or me?

Dash’s duty was to his sister, and if it were mine, I would have reacted the same. Even so… if he insisted on standing between Sheldon and me, I was prepared to do what was necessary.

“There’s this older boy at school who keeps picking on me. Today, he took my lunch and I was hungry all day because I was too afraid to tell. What should I do?”

“You kill.”

“Kill?”

“Yes. You hurt them before they hurt you.”

I heard Keiran’s voice in my head from when I was eleven and he was twelve. He had just gone to junior high that year, leaving me alone. I had never had to fend for myself before because I’d always had Keiran by my side, but that was the year I learned.

After he had told me what to do, he taught me how to use a knife and showed me the gun he mysteriously had hidden in the backyard. Whenever my father wasn’t home, we’d practice with the knife on snakes or whatever we could find.

But all that changed the day Keiran had dared me to use the knife for real. I’d come home with a black eye courtesy of Tommy. Keiran had said it was time to teach him a lesson, and at school that next day, I did.

I didn’t kill him, but after he’d gone home with his face mutilated, his parents no longer deemed the area a safe place to live.

I made sure he would never talk before deciding not to kill him. Unlike Keiran, I couldn’t kill as easily, but it was safe to say we weren’t all that different after all.

“I think I’m going to take off,” I announced unnecessarily because I had nothing else to give.

Once her apartment door closed behind me, I placed a phone call.

“Get everything ready.”

Once I gave the order, I ended the call.

* * * * *

“Don’t look so surprised to see me, brother. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need your help.” I took a seat in the plastic orange visiting chair, facing Keiran.

“I figured as much. I’m just surprised you’re here at all.”

“Well, the daughter I never knew I had is missing. I feel a certain obligation to stay.”

“And after she’s found?”

“Look, I’m just taking this one fucked up situation at a time. I can’t see that far into the future,” I lied.

“You would leave behind your kid?”

“She’s been doing okay so far without me.” My words came out bitter, which was unexpected. The thought of leaving them behind again made my blood run cold, but I wouldn’t allow my feelings to ruin me again.

This time I would be the one doing the ruining.

“She could do better if she had you.”

“Why are you so sure about that?”

“Because you know what it’s like to be without a father.”