CHAPTER 28: PAY THE PRICE

Chapter 28: Pay The Price

Theo was laying on a blanket under the tall oak while the medic worked fast and and professionally.

"Careful, mister," a girl doctor who looked no older than twenty-nine, couldn’t stop stealing glances at Theo’s well-maintained abs.

But to Theo, each breath was hurting more and more. The bandage at his side was tight and warm with blood. He watched the doctor move like a shape at the edge of his sight.

He could hear Frank’s voice in the distance, giving orders, loudly and very much commanding.

The doctor pressed and wrapped and spoke in short sentences. "Stay with me. Don’t pass out." Theo tried to answer but every word hurt his body. He felt small and very tired.

Footsteps came closer...

"You can’t die here, mister. We’re almost done with cleaning the poison..."

Frank walked up with mud on his boots. His face was hardened and filled with visible veins on his forehead. For a second Theo thought he had found Danielle.

He held his breath.

"We lost her," Frank started. The words landed like ice. Theo’s hand tightened on the blanket. "What do you mean lost?" he asked, growling at his cousin.

Frank did not look at him. "We followed the trail until the river. Then nothing. Her footprints stopped. There was a scent of a boat. Someone took her across the water. We could not follow. The men who chased us found a burned track. The hunters went deeper. We tried to pick up a scent but it was gone."

Theo felt the world get crushed like it was an old leaf on the ground.

He tried to sit up and pain cut the air out of him. "No," he whispered. "You are wrong. You did not look hard enough. You did not go where he wanted you to go."

Frank sighed and crouched near him. Rain had made his hair slick to his forehead. "Theo," he spoke quietly, "you cannot make me chase ghosts. We searched everywhere. We will not find her if we keep pretending."

Anger and fear rose inside Theo like a wild and unattended fire. He pushed his hands into the dirt. "You do not say that! You do not say she is gone. You do not leave her to him. Go back now. Take ten men. Search the river with lights. Search the sheds. Do not stop."

Frank’s face was soft for the first time. He looked at Theo like a man who studied danger and then looked again at something personal. "You are bleeding out," he lowered his head. "You are not thinking clearly."

Theo spat a little blood. "I am fine. I am not fine, but I can still stand." He tried to sound brave. He was not brave.

Frank put a hand on his shoulder. The touch was not friendly. It felt like duty. "Why are you like this?" he asked. "Why are you willing to throw everything away for her?"

Theo’s eyes found the trees. He tasted metal in his mouth. "Because she is alive," he replied while lowering his chin. "Because someone hid the truth from her and used her life as something so cheap. Because I promised to keep her breathing."

Frank’s eyes narrowed and he furrowed his brows. "Or because you need to save your image. Or because you cannot forgive the man who hurt you. Or because this is more about you than her."

The words hit Theo’s heart pretty hard. Theo felt shame and heat and memory. He remembered Ethan laughing in a kitchen while a girl cried. He remembered Bae’s tiny hands. He remembered the nights he had woken to keep a small body from shaking.

He had not come this far to let her become a tool.

"Don’t make this about me," Theo’s voice started to break. "Do your job. Find her."

Frank looked at him long and then seemed to decide something. He stood and called two men close. "Leave two here with him," he ordered. "The rest of you, come with me. We sweep the river. We sweep every shelter in three miles. Move."

The men moved like clockwork. Frank crouched again. He wrapped a fresh bandage around Theo’s side with hands that did not tremble. "I promised you I would find her," Frank said. "I will do everything I can. But if you die here, I cannot go on to finish this. I need you alive."

Theo let out a breath that was half laugh and half cry. "Then stop saying I am selfish." He closed his eyes for a moment. "Bring her back," he clenched his teeth.

Frank stood up. His face was set like an alarm. "We will." He walked away fast, not looking back.

When the men were gone and the forest settled like a held breath, Theo lay very still. Pain came and went like waves.

He thought of Danielle laughing badly in a dorm, of her hand on his arm when a bullet screamed past. He thought of Ethan’s voice taunting him.

He wanted to get up and run even then. He had never learned how to stop wanting what he could not control.

The woods were quiet. The men were moving like a small storm. Far off, water kept its slow course. Theo let the dark come close and held on to one hard thought.

"Find her...Bring her back...."

It wasn’t about Danielle only...Theo was a man of his word, and he had to keep it.

"You know," the lady doctor murmured. "She sounds like someone you love."

Theo didn’t expect these words from someone he just met, but his goal was straight. "I don’t love her...I just don’t want to fail her like the rest of the world did."

The doctor kept attending to his wound, "and yet...you’re acting like a lover."

He was not...

"What do you know about a lover’s act?"

"I can feel it...if you do find the girl...My, I’ll pray to all the Gods out there to make you show mercy to the ones who took her away from you."

Theo looked at this lady, and wasn’t sure if what he was about to say would sound convincing enough, "I will let your Gods witness the death of these people if I’d find a single scratch on her face."

"This is love, mister."