🚨 After the Shot — Interrogations, Accusations, and a Key Decision (Chapter 13 Free)

 The sirens fade. The questions don’t. In Chapter 13, Olivia sits beneath flickering fluorescent lights while a detective circles the same insinuation—again and again.

Grief hardens into anger. Help arrives from an unexpected place. And when she steps out into the cold, one truth remains: there’s no going back to the life she had. Only forward—into danger.

👇 Read Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

Traverse City, Michigan

            Liv sat in the back of the squad car, its red and blue lights painting surreal, flickering patterns on the snow-laden ground. She was encased in a disbelieving silence, her gaze fixed on the battalion of crime scene investigators scurrying in and out of her family home. The scene took on a dreamlike quality, unreal, incomprehensible.

Later, an ambulance would pull up, its personnel performing the grim task of transporting Blake Streeter's body to the county medical examiner's office. Liv's eyes would follow the gurney, her heart entombed in a fortress of shock and grief.

Downtown, at the police station, she found herself in the cold confines of an interview room. Across the table sat a detective, his face inscrutable, his eyes uncomfortably probing. Over and over, he circled back to the discharge of her .22 rifle, the insinuations hanging in the air like an unspoken accusation.

"Do you normally keep firearms in the house?" the detective asked, his voice laced with skepticism.

Liv's patience, already threadbare, snapped. "You're wasting time while my father's murderer is out there, probably crossing state lines by now! Do your damn job!" she exploded, her voice ricocheting off the sterile walls.

The door to the interview room burst open, and a uniformed female officer entered, her eyes meeting the detective's. "I'll take it from here," she said curtly, her voice tinged with a subtle reprimand.

The detective got up, his chair scraping loudly against the linoleum floor, and left the room with an air of reluctant deference.

"Do you have somewhere you can go?" the officer asked, her voice softer, yet colored with professional detachment.

Family was out of the question—all out of state, miles and hours and a lifetime away. Liv nodded, eager to be anywhere but here. She needed isolation, a cocoon where she could begin to process the incomprehensible events that had unfolded.

The officer nodded and began the paperwork to release her. It wasn't long before Liv found herself standing outside the police station, the chill of the night air cutting through her like a scalpel. Her car, still parked at the crime scene that was once her home, was inaccessible for now. A rideshare dropped her off at a nondescript hotel a few blocks from downtown.

As Liv checked herself in, her eyes met those of the hotel clerk, who offered a sympathetic nod, as if sensing the weight of her sorrow. Liv gave a half-hearted smile and took the room key, her hand trembling ever so slightly as she gripped the plastic card.

Inside the hotel room, Liv sat on the edge of the bed, her mind oscillating between moments of paralyzing shock and flickers of rage. She was alone, adrift in a sea of chaos, her anchor cruelly ripped away.

As she lay down, her body still in a state of adrenal overload, her mind began to race. Questions with no answers cascaded through her consciousness, a torrential downpour of doubt and confusion. Who would want her father dead? Why?

You’ve reached the turning point. The next pages hit like a hammer.
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