Night Is Darkest

otherwise crisp uniform.
She stumbled backward, slamming the door in their startled faces as though she could bar the horror they attempted to deliver. This can’t be happening. Not again!
The two men, who spent nearly as much time in their house as she and Rob, forced their way inside. Their grim expressions distorted in her swimming vision. A roar in her ears blocked out their familiar voices. Tunnel vision narrowed her world to the sage green walls whipping around her. Then she marveled at the intricate pattern of the well-worn hallway runner speeding toward her until strong arms plucked her from mid-air, crushing her against a solid male chest.
The surreal sensations faded as she clung to Mason, floating into the living room cradled in his arms, before he lowered her to the practical microfiber couch. He knelt on the plank flooring in front of her, urging, “Breathe, sweetheart. Come on, take a deep breath.”
Lacey inhaled, drawing razor sharp pain along with oxygen into her lungs. A ragged gasp split the tense silence. Their lack of urgency to escort her back to the hospital answered all the questions she couldn’t voice. There was no need to hurry. Tyler sank onto the cushion beside her, gripping her hand tight enough to fuse her fingers together but she couldn’t feel anything beyond the numb shock coating her gut.
Her unfocused gaze latched onto the maroon crust of congealed blood beneath his trimmed fingernails. This time she couldn’t muster the disassociation she had perfected in the ER. The sinister smudges were the only part of her brother that would make it home tonight.
“What happened?” The hoarse whisper pushed past her trembling lips, which refused to allow her wails to escape the devastation taking up residence in her heart.
Mason and Tyler looked to each other, ice blue and forest green eyes exchanging the silent communication they had mastered during a lifetime of friendship. Mason gave a short nod then met her broken stare head-on.
He cupped her free hand in his and cleared his throat once, twice, before the heartbreaking news tainted his rich baritone. “I’m going to give it to you straight, Lace. We’re not sure what went down but it looks like Rob came across a mugging in progress. He called it in but didn’t wait for backup. Said he heard a distressed cry for assistance. The victim must have gotten free and made a break for it but, by the time reinforcements arrived, he had taken…” He hesitated. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “…several knife wounds to the chest and throat.”
“How many?” The nurse in her asked before she associated the damage Mason detailed to her brother.
He ground his teeth then growled, “Twenty-seven.”
Beside her, Tyler choked on a curse.
“You caught my brother’s murderer?” She clung to the rage enabling her to function. To say the unfathomable words.
“Fuck. Not yet. But I swear it to you, doll. I won’t stop until I get him,” Mason vowed.
She nodded, not doubting his loyalty or tenaciousness for a second. The three men, and Lacey by default, had been inseparable since the boys’ very first day at school when they’d shared a legendary bus ride that set the tone of mischief they’d indulge in over the years. A fourth-grade bully had met his match in the trio of kindergartners who took him out with a kick to the shin, a punch to the gut and a strategic whack to the nuts with a Voltron lunchbox. Ever since then, they’d been a unit.
The three amigos plus a spare kid sister.
A constant staple in her life, Mason and Tyler were all the family she had left in the world. She stared over Mason’s shoulder until her wandering vision landed on Rob’s pride and joy. Who would shout encouragement to the favored team making its plays on the behemoth 61” DLP rear projection TV now?
“He wasn’t alone at the end.” Tyler’s grief recaptured her attention. Unabashed tears tracked through the crimson stain on his cheek. He leaned forward, braced his forearms on his knees and refused to abandon his hold on her hand like a drowning man clinging to a lifeline. Several strands of his shaggy midnight hair feathered over his creased brow when his head bowed. “I got there just in time. I held him.”
His voice cracked but he didn’t attempt to conceal his misery from her. Instead, he turned his face toward her until she couldn’t avoid the truth in his agonized stare.
“Rob said, ‘I’m not afraid. Tell Lacey I-I love her. It’s okay.’” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I tried to stop the bleeding. I tried to hang on to him, to keep him here b-but he slipped away from me.”
By now, sobs wracked his massive frame. A sight she’d never seen in the twenty years she’d known him triggered her instincts to offer comfort even as her stomach cramped. She curled into his desperate embrace. His clenching fingers raked her back. Lacey attempted to shelter him from the misery she suspected would fester and infect his soul before it began to fade. She squashed the scream bubbling inside her, drawing on the barriers that had kept her sane during the aftermath of her parent’s death to erect a blockade against the encroaching despair.
She couldn’t let it drag her under.
“I’m sure you did all you could, Ty. With that amount of trauma… He wouldn’t have stood a chance.” The reassurance faded into the room as her voice trailed off. It seemed like a hypothetical discussion rather than an account of reality.
Mason grasped her knee, shaking her as if to snap her out of a trance. “We’ve got you, Lace. It seems unreal but…”
“Stop.” She held his bewildered stare with her cheek still tucked against the defined pecs of Ty’s heaving chest. “I’m not going to freak out. I’m not going to shatter. There are things that need to be done.”
“Not tonight, Lacey. For God’s sake, it’s after four o’clock in the morning and you need some time