Beyond Broken (The Bay Boys #3)
Author: Emilia Winters
PROLOGUE
The rain soaked through his black suit and plastered his hair to his forehead. But Caleb Montgomery didn't notice. All he noticed was the numbness and the after taste of beer on his tongue.
He'd bought the suit, since he hadn't owned one. Caleb hadn't even blinked at the $976.84 receipt as he'd signed it. It was for his uncle, not him. Caleb still remembered the moment when John Montgomery found out about his lungs. All those years of smoking had finally caught up with him. Caleb had been with him in that sterile room. His uncle had joked about death even then, mere minutes after he'd received the news from a very solemn looking doctor. He'd told Caleb that he better not show up in jeans and a grease stained t-shirt to his funeral. No, he wanted Caleb in a 'fancy suit.'
Caleb supposed $976.84 was fancy enough. He'd had the suit specially tailored and dry-cleaned. Ready and waiting.
And now it was soaked through. Typical October weather in the Bay Area.
But as Caleb took another pull on his beer bottle, he thought that it wasn't so typical. It wasn't normal. It was all wrong. Because John Montgomery was six feet under, unable to feel the rain he'd loved so much.
Caleb slid his eyelids closed, shutting out the world, feeling the icy droplets lash his skin as if punishing him. His uncle's backyard fell away from his sight. All the shit he'd have to deal with tomorrow fell away. The faces of all those people who came to the funeral fell away. Their sympathy and words fell away.
Everything fell away until Caleb could feel no more.
ONE
The night had just gone from bad to worse.
"Shoot, shoot, shoot! No, please don't," Madelyn Ashby pleaded under her breath. She tried not to panic, even as her old Volkswagen pathetically sputtered and slowed.
She ran through a mental checklist as she maneuvered off to the side of the road. Her brother had taken her car in to be serviced less than two months ago. Surely it wasn't … mechanical? Was that the right word? Could it be the oil? Shoot, she didn't know. She knew nothing about cars. Nothing was blinking on her dash, so she was truly at a loss.
Her car gave one last shudder. And then the engine cut out completely. She tried starting it again with no success.
Quickly flipping on her hazard lights, Maddie took a deep breath, already fiddling with the hair ties on her wrist. She assessed her situation. She was somewhere between Benicia and Concord. And it was already dark. The last time she remembered glancing down at the clock on her dashboard, it'd read 9:40.
Pulling her phone out of her purse, she prayed that it wasn't really dead like she thought as she attempted to turn it on. Her finger trembled as she pressed the slim button on the top, holding it down with unnecessary force, as though the harder she pushed the more motivation it had to power up. The screen showed no signs of life, as expected, and she let it drop back into her purse.
Maddie sat there for a few minutes, trying to control the panic that started to take hold. She was on a dark road in an unknown location with no means of contact. Her overactive imagination conjured up multiple scenarios, each one more horrifying than the last. What if she was kidnapped? Or drugged? Or killed?
You're being stupid, she chided mentally, inhaling a calming breath. But she still had to do something. She couldn't very well sit in her car all night. She needed to stay positive. She was always the one who looked on the bright side. That was what her friends had always told her, at least.
Making up her mind, Maddie pushed open the car door, feeling the biting chill of the late autumn air even through her black jeans. With dismay, she remembered she'd worn heels tonight. It had felt wonderful to dress up a little for dinner with some of her fellow grad students, but now she regretted it.
Stay positive.
With that mantra in mind, she tried to tell herself that there had to be a convenience store or a gas station nearby. Then, she could ring up a tow truck service and then ask her brother to come pick her up, even though he'd be furious at her. It would all be okay. But the longer she walked, the more she remembered that she'd always been good at lying to herself.
She must've walked for at least two miles-at least that was how far it seemed with horror movie scenes wreaking havoc on her control-before she spotted lights. A thrill of relief coursed through her when she saw that it was the border of a town, with a gas station right at its edge. She hurried towards it as fast as her heels would carry her. Once she entered the station's store, the clerk standing at the counter eyed her with indifference even as she beamed at him.
"Hi, excuse me, I was hoping that I could use your phone, if you don't mind. My car broke down and I need to call a towing service," she told him.