Rushing In (Bailey Brothers #4) - Claire Kingsley Page 0,14

for his injuries and takes it upon herself to visit him in his convalescence. Interestingly, as soon as the man is laid up in the hospital, the string of terrifying murders that plagued the town abruptly cease. Did she mow down the killer? Or is the killer the doctor who treats him, using the man’s unfortunate accident as a way to frame an innocent for his crimes?

Sucking in a breath, I jolted back to reality. That wasn’t a bad story idea.

My fingers tingled and words swirled in my head. A warm spark of creativity flashed to life.

Feeling a sudden burst of panic, I ran outside to my car. Must get laptop. Must type before it’s gone. I grabbed my laptop bag out of the passenger seat and flew back into the house.

I took my laptop to the kitchen table. I sat, then pulled it out and logged in. Opened a fresh document.

Don’t be scared, Skylar. Just type and the words will come.

Except, they didn’t. I wrote a sentence. Deleted it. Wrote another. Deleted it. I tried just writing a synopsis, but even that was too much.

I couldn’t do it, and I had no idea why.

5

Gavin

The grass in Lumberjack Park was wet from the rain that had finally come to the mountains. Two solid days of it, like the sky had saved up all the moisture and dumped it on us in one continuous deluge. The wildfire wasn’t completely extinguished; hot spots could last underneath piles of ash for weeks. But it had done a lot to calm it down so it no longer threatened Tilikum.

That was good news. But walking in wet grass on crutches was a royal pain in the ass.

They squelched in the muck, getting stuck in the particularly squishy places. It had been about a week since the accident, so my armpits were toughening up. But I could have lived without the constant need to pry the rubber ends out of the wet soil.

Of course, I didn’t really need to be here, either. I could have stayed home.

My brothers and a handful of other Bailey relatives ran formations, practicing for the upcoming flag football season. Tilikum took its traditions seriously, and the annual flag football league was no exception. There had been a Bailey team since the beginning. The Havens had a team, too, the assholes. So did the Montgomerys, the Pines, and the Saxons. There was also the town team, for anyone who wanted to play who wasn’t related to one of the family teams. It had been that way for decades.

And I’d played every year since I was sixteen.

I fucking loved flag football. I loved sports in general, but football had that gladiatorial thing going for it. You couldn’t tackle anyone, which was kind of shitty, but chasing a guy down intent on subduing him—even if it was just by pulling a flag attached by Velcro—was pretty awesome.

And this year I couldn’t play.

Stupid broken leg.

They had Asher at quarterback, which was a good call. He had a crazy good arm. Evan and Logan were playing wide receiver, and Levi was lined up behind Asher as running back. We had some cousins on the line—big guys—along with a dude named Paul who’d married into the family. My cousin Gena was out there, too. She was a kick ass receiver.

Half the team was on the other side, playing defense for the scrimmage, and Jack had taken over for my great-uncle Wendell as coach. Jack wasn’t a Bailey, but Grace was now, and Jack was her stepdad, so we’d decided it counted.

I leaned on my crutches and watched Asher execute a play. He attempted a pass to Evan, but it was incomplete.

“You gotta get open if you’re going to run that one,” I called.

Evan glared at me. He probably growled, but he was too far away for me to hear him.

I’d come for the first practice of the season tonight because… well, because I was bored as fuck. I was on leave from work, so I had all kinds of free time. But I couldn’t do any of the cool shit I usually did. I was starting to realize that all my hobbies required two legs. Rock climbing, ice climbing, hiking, swimming in the river, jumping in the river, swimming in the lake, jumping in the lake, mountain biking, baseball, dirt bike riding, martial arts… and of course, flag football. Two-leg activities. And I only had one.

Could have been a lot worse, of course. I was going to