Chapter Club: The Shadowrunner Chapter 16
Happy Friday! I’m excited to bring you another excerpt from The Shadowrunner.
Want to start from the beginning? You can find Chapter 1 here!
Last Time
Luke is the chief police officer in a small Arizona town called Abeja
His daughter, Lucy, has magical abilities that she is keeping secret from her parents. Her mother, Jenni, doesn’t know about Lucy’s abilities
A Texan named Silvia Montes was murdered not far from Luke’s house. Lucy both met Silvia prior to her murder and saw the murderer the night of the crime. She has come to call the murderer a dragon
A conversation with a magical creature led Luke to the monster, but it got away
Jennifer sat in the living room, looking out the front window. She had a book open on her lap, but she hadn’t read a word. She was too busy mulling things over. Thinking about what she would say to Luke.
He was keeping a secret from her, and he would argue that secret didn’t matter because it was related to work.
She was a nurse; she understood the importance of secrets and confidentiality. But this was different. It was different because Lucy was involved, and she wanted Luke to see that. More than that, she wanted him to understand that, and then tell her what was going on. She had already made the promise to herself that if he did tell her, she would talk to Lucy about sharing her gift with him. It wouldn’t be right to tell him when she had specifically promised not to, but she could at least start the conversation.
She watched as the car headlights appeared at the edge of the window. Luke pulled up into the driveway and she heard him step out of the car. She closed the book in her lap and put it on the side table. She felt like crossing her arms, but didn’t want to be standoffish. She needed his help, not his excuses.
When the door opened, she stood up and rushed to Luke. He caught her and they embraced in the entryway. The front door closed behind them, leaving the couple in the lamp light streaming from the front room.
“There was trouble,” Jennifer said.
“A little,” he admitted.
The two separated and Luke kissed her on the forehead. “But I’m home now. I’m safe.”
“What was it?” Jennifer asked.
Luke walked past her into the front room, pulling at the black tie around his neck. Before he could say anything, Jennifer added, “And don’t say you can’t tell me.”
She could tell by the way he opened his mouth that he had thought of responding. But he must have reconsidered, since he didn’t vocalize the thought. He undid the top button of his shirt and sat down on the couch, facing her.
“Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t know?”
“How could you not know? Did it attack you?”
“Yes,” he admitted. His gaze was dark, as if he were remembering something unpleasant.
“What happened?”
He looked up at her. “There’s been another victim.”
Jennifer put her hand up to her head. Sure, she knew of people coming into the emergency room because someone tried to hurt them. Nurses talked, even if she didn’t work in that department. But it wasn’t that frequent, certainly not frequent enough for two murders three days apart.
“Except, he wasn’t dead,” Luke continued. “He was breathing, but I couldn’t get him to respond to me.”
Jennifer let her hand slip down her face. “How do you know he didn’t OD?”
She knew Luke wasn’t stupid. He would have already thought of that in the moment. What she didn’t know was why he would dismiss the theory.
“I just…” He hesitated. His gaze went from her to his side. “I can’t tell you.”
“Damn it, Luke, why can’t you tell me?”
“Because I told the others that this case needed to be airtight. I told them that if they started spilling the details of the case that I would have their badge.”
“And you don’t want to be the hypocrite,” Jennifer finished.
Luke leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. “I don’t want to lose their respect.”
“Are you willing to lose mine to keep theirs?”
Luke’s face flashed upward towards her. He looked shocked, as if she had just hit him. And she might as well have. She knew that what she said would have landed hard. While she hated to make it out as if it were a choice between her and his coworkers, she didn’t see any other option. Lucy was her daughter, not theirs.
“How can I keep both?” He broke eye-contact with her to look out the front window.
“You could have if you hadn’t been so insistent that the details not be leaked to the public.”
“What was I supposed to do, Jenni?” He barked, rising to his feet. “How well would people have responded to strange lights appearing in their city? How well would they respond to some Texas transplant bringing a murderer to their front doorstep? Or the police not being able to stop a kid from disappearing from his room?”
The way the light fell in the room cast most of his face in shadow. Jennifer found herself taking a step back from him. She had only seen him rarely like this and never with darkness like that covering his face. Despite herself, she felt fear rise from her stomach, clouding out her confusion about what he had said. She saw his eyes dart down to her feet and then he walked to the opposite side of the room.
“I’m sorry. I just…” He trailed off. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“You seem determined not to let me help you,” Jennifer said.
His shoulders started shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he said through tears.
“I am too.”
She retreated up the stairs.
Lucy knew something was wrong when the door opened. If things had been alright, she would have heard her parents coming up the stairs to their room. And those footsteps didn’t come until after she heard her dad yelling.
She hadn’t heard him yell in a long time. He normally didn’t, not at home at least. Maybe being a cop meant you had to yell at work, but at home, he almost never did. The sound of his raised voice confirmed her suspicions. Something was very, very wrong.
Lucy slipped out of bed and crossed to her bedroom door. She eased it open and peered out through the minute crack. She watched as her mom’s shadow crossed her view. She waited a moment, expecting her dad to come next. When he didn’t and she didn’t hear his footsteps on the stairs, she felt her heart well up in her chest. She closed the door and started to cry. She tried to be quiet; Mom and Dad didn’t know she had heard everything.
She didn’t know how long it was before she stopped crying. To her, she might as well have spent one hundred nights crying alone in the dark for how awful she felt. But when the tears finally stopped coming, she was left with one overriding thought.
It was her fault.
If she had just told Dad about her conversation with the lady, he wouldn’t have had to tell Mom that she talked to her and then she wouldn’t have worried. And if she hadn’t have worried, she wouldn’t have gotten angry. And if she wouldn’t have gotten angry, she and Dad wouldn’t have had a fight.
Or, if she hadn’t have told her mom about the monster, she wouldn’t have worried that Dad was out late. She wouldn’t have been scared and then Dad could have come home without having a fight. Either way, it was her fault.
Dad had told her that he needed her help and she hadn’t been willing to give it. She hadn’t known that she had had any help to give. And now she felt that any help she could give wouldn’t be enough to undo what had gone wrong.
Realizing the depth of her culpability, Lucy opened the door and padded out to the hallway. She checked the door to her parents’ room and saw there was no light coming from under it. Mom wasn’t expecting Dad to follow her.
Lucy turned to the staircase and made her way down, being careful not to make too much noise. Her dad wasn’t in the kitchen when she reached the bottom of the stairs. There was a light on over the stove, but nothing else. She crept her way down the hallway, finding that there was a lamp on in the front room too. And this one had a shadow.
When she turned the corner, she found him sitting on the couch. He was holding his head in one hand while the other hung limply between his knees. Lucy padded across the carpet and sat next to him on the couch.
He started a little when she did and when he looked at her it was with tear-streaked eyes to match her own.
“Hey, sweetie. I thought you were asleep.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She said it with all the sincerity her eight-year-old heart could muster.
Dad lifted her up so that she was sitting on his lap.
“What are you sorry for?”
How could he not know? It was so obvious how she had pit him and Mom against each other. How she had made them angry and worried and scared.
“I made Mom angry at you.”
His eyes grew glassy. “You didn’t make Mom angry at me, Lucy.”
“Then why is she angry at you?” she asked. She wanted him to take away the awful weight of guilt she felt in her chest. The chain that felt like a weight on her soul. All it would take was an explanation.
“It’s complicated,” he said. “But you have to understand that it’s not your fault.”
“But what I told her scared her.”
“I know,” Dad replied. “I know, sweetie.”
After a moment he continued. “Mom is angry at me because I didn’t make a very good choice. And now I have to face the consequences.”
“But I thought Mom told me we shouldn’t avoid consequences.”
“Her being angry is one of those consequences,” Dad explained.
He brought her close to him so that her head was cradled in his chest. She felt his weight shift as the two of them leaned back into the sofa. She felt the rise and fall of her dad’s chest as he went to sleep. Part of the weight shifted away from her, but there was still the nagging feeling she had failed her mom. She wanted to apologize to her too, but she couldn’t do that tonight. Not without waking anyone up.
So she let her mind rest and drifted off to sleep, safe in Daddy’s arms.
I hope you enjoyed this sneak-peak of The Shadowrunner. What did you think? Let me know by leaving a like and some of your thoughts in the comments below!