Read Online After It's Over by Michelle Alstead - Free Book Online Page B

have to operate. Her mother had been upset, but reasonable. At some point, Mr. Birch had arrived home. Paige motioned for Kade to listen in. Her father demanded her mother give him the phone. Mrs. Birch yelled back, refusing to hand it over. There was some ruckus and it sounded as if the phone had been dropped. A momentary silence followed, then came the sickening pop! pop!.
    Kade knew that was the sound of a gun being fired. There were no screams on the other end of the phone—just dead air. Paige, recognizing the sound too, became hysterical. Grabbing him, she begged him to take her home. But he couldn’t. She needed surgery. He stood frozen as the medical staff of Tacoma General Hospital wheeled Paige out of the ER and into the hallway. She was inconsolable and screamed that her father had shot her mother. He would learn later on that was an erroneous assumption on her part. The sound of gunshots echoed in his ears as Paige disappeared from view.
    “Can I show you to the waiting area?” a small female voice asked.
    Kade turned at the question and found himself face-to-face with a young candy striper. He shook his head.
    “Are you alright?” she asked. She reached for his arm, but he turned and ran away.
    I have to get out of here. Our baby’s gone. I wanted it to be a boy. I was going to teach him how to throw a baseball and cheer him on at every Little League game.
    Kade ran all the way to the parking lot, jumped in his truck, and took off. Grief-stricken and angry, he made his way to some unused back roads. Racing through the dirt and gravel, he sobbed and pounded his fist on the dashboard. He cried out to a God that he didn’t know, demanding answers for the tragedy that had befallen them. Eventually, he wiped his tears and drove to Paige’s house. Kade couldn’t go back to the hospital without answers about her parents.
    Thoughts of his loss ended abruptly when he saw his girlfriend’s house. The scene was organized chaos—several police cars were parked out front; their lights flashed as a coroner’s van pulled into the driveway. The area in front of the house was roped off with yellow tape; police officers questioned neighbors on the crowded sidewalk. Kade jumped out of the truck and ran through the bedlam to reach the house. A uniformed cop grabbed him as he stepped inside.
    “You can’t go in there. This is a crime scene,” the cop said. He pushed Kade backward onto the front porch.
    “Geez, what a mess,” said the solemn-looking woman who approached them. She carried a leather satchel and wore a black jacket that read Medical Examiner . “How many bodies are there?”
    The young cop looked at Kade who’d dropped to his knees, his face contorted in anguish.
    “There are two bodies,” the cop said quickly. He reached out to Kade. “Come on, I’ll help you up.”
    Kade pushed him away; his legs were weak to stand.
    “Is he the son?” the medical examiner asked.
    “I don’t know. Is this your family? Do you live here?” The cop squatted down to his eye level.
    The medical examiner didn’t wait for his response; she entered the house.
    Kade shook his head, trying to find his voice.
    “This is my girlfriend’s house. She’s in the hospital. She lost our baby and now, her parents are dead. Is that right?” He looked imploring at the officer.
    Please say I’m wrong. Please!
    “I’m sorry, kid. It’s a real bad scene.”
    “Deputy, we need you to block off the street,” a portly detective barked from the doorway. “The deceased male is one of our own. As soon as the press gets wind of this mess, it’s going to be a three-ring circus. Only blue gets past the barricades. Got it?”
    “Okay, detective,” the cop replied. He shot Kade an uncertain look and walked away.
    The overweight detective, dressed in a stained suit, stepped outside. He paused to spit tobacco juice into a flowerbed. The black slime landed on the head of a white daisy. The detective grunted at Kade, turned, and