The Forsaken by Estevan Vega Read Free Book Online

would bring her back here, but somehow those trips had never happened.
    Rachel stared down at the ring on her finger, the ring her ex-fiancé, a man she didn’t even want to name—not even in her thoughts—had given her as a token of his love. But it was a cheap, noncommittal love that had ultimately resulted in calling off their engagement. She aborted the whole thing after catching him in bed with his ex. But it wasn’t like she was going to give up the three carat diamond just because he’d had a change of heart. She’d put too much into the relationship to be left with nothing.
    After a dozen nervous blinks, Rachel’s mind returned to the present, to the city. This bastard child her father seemed to protect more than he’d ever protected her. She remained haunted by some of those terrible memories. It was true, though, that she never had the guts to ask him which he loved more. His actions spoke rather loudly in lieu of meaningless words. Long nights spent in his cruiser, days like eternity used up in meetings and courtrooms opposing low-lives he’d put behind bars time and time again.
    Her mother was strong in spite of it all, strong enough to survive a man who may have loved her with young passion once upon a time but who eventually died in the arms of lonely street corners. Rachel’s mom and dad had never resorted to courtroom wars as a means of solving their struggles or ending the marriage altogether. To them, it had been best just to separate for a time. But even back then Rachel wasn’t naïve enough to think her father would ever really come back.
    Her eyes fell back into tired, dreary focus. She fought the invasive hues of light that pierced her windshield. The afternoon sun added to the misery of rush-hour traffic. But it was an emergency that brought her back, however reluctantly, to a city at war with itself. In her eight years as a detective, she’d never encountered anything like what Mike Harrison had described to her on the phone. And he’d forwarded a digital image to her cell to convince her he wasn’t bluffing. For an old friend of her father’s, she had to at least hear him out.
    She fought to keep sweaty strands of hair away from her face during the drive, and it was easy when traffic was smooth, but the last few hours she’d been sandwiched between taxis, SUVs, and Volvos. Her crappy, rusty Civic didn’t have a prayer.
    “Relax, Rachel. You’re almost there. Just a few more exits.” She knew a few more exits could mean another hour, especially when stuck behind a parade of gawkers hoping to catch a glimpse of human remains on the side of the highway.
    “Why did you stay here, Dad?” she asked aloud. Normally, that thought always chose to hide in her brain, but today it wanted out. The incessant honking, the pig-headed drivers fighting for their status amidst highway division, the breeding filth of the streets—all of it becoming so relentless she wished she were numb. She never got it. Why would he sacrifice his marriage, the affection of his daughter, for a city with no moral code?
    But then, as she slowly eased past the accident to her left, it became a little clearer. What she saw was a car flipped over, blood matting the webbed windshield and crunched front hood. Distraught faces screamed into the dusk, and she wondered if anyone really heard the screams but her. There was such distortion then, such dissonance, even on the side of the highway.
    Paramedics were still arriving on the scene, trying to help. Trying , that was classic. They wheeled two people away on stretchers while one person lay sprawled on the pavement, unmoving. The person looked dead. Still, there was something else moving on the highway. Apathy. Indifference. Slow, agonizingly slow, and almost painful. Nothing could stop a city’s heart from beating, not really.
    “You knew you couldn’t save it, but you tried anyway,” she muttered, wondering if her father could hear the sound of her heart