Chapter 6

But when Martha saw the blood beneath me and the bluish color of my face, she finally realized something was wrong.

"C-Clive... Why's he barely breathing?" Her voice trembled.

Clive hesitated, then prodded my arm with his stick.

"Hey! Quit fucking playing dead!"

I didn't move. My half-open eyes stared past them, already losing focus.

Panic finally caught up with him. He threw the stick aside, reached toward my face to check my breathing, and jerked his hand back.

"Shit! That businessman never said the kid was terminally ill! If he dies in our house, how the hell do we explain it to the cops?"

Martha sank to the floor. "Then what do we do? We have to take him to the hospital!"

"Like hell we do!" Clive roared. "Who's paying for that? What if they turn around and accuse us of beating him? We'll say he died of his own illness. Lock the door and keep your mouth shut!"

They hurried out. The heavy lock clicked into place again.

The darkness swallowed me. I stopped struggling and waited for the end.

Then, from the corner where I'd thrown it, my phone lit up.

DAD.

I used what little strength I had left to inch across the floor like a worm and answer.

"Miles, what is this tantrum about now?" Dad's voice was cold and commanding. "Your mother says you called this afternoon pretending to be sick. Is that supposed to be funny? Conditions out there may be rough, but those are your biological parents. Who are you to complain?"

I opened my mouth, but hardly any sound came out. My throat was full of frothy, sickly sweet blood.

"Nolan's piano recital is tomorrow," he continued. "We were going to bring you home to watch, so you could see the difference between the two of you. But with this attitude, you can stay out there and think about what you've done. Your birth parents wouldn't dare let you come back without my permission."

A tear slid down my face. It mingled with the blood on my cheek.

This was my father.

Even now, he had no idea the people he'd hired to punish me were in the next room discussing what to do with my body.

"Dad..." The word barely escaped my throat. "I'm... going... to die..."

He fell silent for a beat, then exploded.

"How dare you say something like that to your father! You're beyond help!"

The call ended.

That angry disconnect tone was the last sound I heard while I was alive.

My arm went limp. The phone slipped from my hand, and its screen went dark. At the same moment, my body suddenly felt weightless. The pain vanished. So did the cold.

I opened my eyes and found myself floating near the ceiling of the shed.

Below me lay a painfully thin body with blood on its face.

My body.

I was dead.

Hundreds of miles away, back at the Voss estate, Mom was laying out Nolan's outfit for the recital when she received a call from the local sheriff's department.

"Hello, is this Graham Voss? This is the Briar Hollow Sheriff's Office. Your son, Miles Voss, has been confirmed dead."