APRIL

It's hard to remember what exactly happened. How I got here.

One minute, I had been driving down the highway, listening to the news. I hadn't noticed anything abnormal, even with how paranoid I had been lately. The paranoia was inevitable. I hadn't noticed anyone following me or any weird driving behavior. I mean, cities were cities. Everyone who drove here was crazy. It was practically a survival mechanism.

And in the next minute, the trick had been moving beyond my own control as another had slammed into it, the sound of screeching tires and metal crunching other metal. The sound echoed in my ears.

The smell was the worst part of it, though. Spilled gasoline. He must have hit the fuel tank on the other side which meant… fire. Fire was a dangerous risk. Yet despite that, I can't move. I don't know if it's the shock of a more physical sensation. Either way, I'm stuck in place, a sitting duck just waiting for another car to not be paying enough attention to its surroundings and slam into me.

"You gotta get out of the car!" Someone's voice yelled at me.

It makes sense, of course. I do need to get out of the car before the worst could happen. I let out the breath that I'm holding onto and realize just how sore my entire body is from the force of the impact. My back hurt the worst of all. Instinct told me to look around but the medical degree insisted that I stay still just in case things aren't right. Despite that, I turn my head.

A male was peering in the window, probably a decade younger than myself. Maybe a little more. Strawberry blonde hair and freckles, but he was standing far too close to me. Or perhaps the circumstances had just made me more claustrophobic than usual.

"Right…" I mumbled, not sure what to say for a minute.

The door of the truck is finally yanked open and two arms wrap around my frame, yanking me out of the vehicle. I expected my feet to meet the ground, but they don't.

Instead, the male helping me lifted me up and over his shoulders, roughly twisting my arm so that he had me in a firefighter's hold. My head spun for a moment with the quick movements and the rush of blood in the opposite direction, trying to figure out what was happening.

"What are you doing?" I questioned, squirming against his tight grip slightly.

He doesn't answer me. I give it a moment, thinking that maybe he's out of breath or not capable of holding me and talking at the same time, but no such luck comes. Instead, he hustled back to what appeared to be his car. It's damaged. He hit me, I realize. The front grill of the truck is a mess, but the rest of it appeared in decent enough condition. It must have been an accident.

The assumption is very quickly eradicated from my mind when the back door of the truck is open and he tossed me down inside of it. It took me a minute to flip back over the right way.

"What the hell are you doing?" I repeated the question, my voice rising up.

A hand rooted in the length of my hair, slamming my head back into the center console. I black out.

Time doesn't quite pass while unconscious. It's not the same as sleep – there's no dreams or sense of security for any of it, no heavy ease to pull me out of it. Instead, it's a constant and dull throbbing in the back of my head that continues to persist even when my senses began to come back to me.

Even when my eyes do finally open to try and remember what had happened and figure out what was going on, it's still dark all around me.

I'm laying on my back and I try to sit up only to realize that I'm bound. My hands are above my head. Handcuffs, maybe. Something metal and cold. But they're tight. They barely make noise when I rustle and pull because there's little slack. I'm not on a bed. It's too hard. The floor was tile or cement, maybe, far too cold to be anything metal. The smell is musky. Basements aren't common in this part of the state, but… I think I'm in a basement.

"Hello?"

The simple word echoed quietly in the walls. It must have been mostly empty. It's too quiet.

Even though no one answered me, it still felt like I was being watched so hard. My eyes barely adjusted to the darkness around me. There's no light, really. I can barely see an outline of myself, my legs, the floor that I'm on. Squinting in the darkness only made the throbbing behind my head hurt even more, like looking at a laptop in the midst of a dark room.

Giving another pull at the restraints around my wrist, I realize that the rest of my body is still in pain, too. This position only accentuated the soreness between my shoulder blades. I yank and yank until my shoulders are in agony from the attempts. I slumped back, momentarily giving up.

"It's useless." A woman's voice croaked out.

I froze for a moment. There was someone else here. I wasn't alone. Why hadn't she answered me before? Thinking back, there hadn't been a woman there. Just a man. Had he taken her too? I realized I had no idea what to say to her.

"Hi," I breathed out unsteadily. "You're– you're down here too?" I questioned.

"Have been since the morning." She replied. "I don't think it's been more than one day, at least. My name's Serena."

"I'm April," I answered. What do you say in a situation like this? "I'm… I'm sure we'll have someone find us soon. I'm a medical examiner. My… my best friend will come looking for me. We'll be out of here soon." I echoed, hoping that I could make myself believe the words.

A quiet moment passed between us, but it doesn't last for long.

"So you're the one he's been talking about. The one who's going to kill me." Serena responded.

This time, it's my fault for the silence, caught off guard by the words that she said. I was going to kill her? I didn't know what his guy was or what he had told her before, but now at least I knew that it was utter bullshit.

"No. I'm not going to do anything like that." I cleared my throat, trying to add a little strength and clarity to my words for both of our sakes.

"You say that now," her tired voice replied.

"I mean it," I replied quickly. "We'll get out of here. Jackson will come looking for us, I promise. He'll notice that I'm not at his place and he'll come looking. I… I was driving his truck. He'll know that something's wrong." I quickly rambled on, cuffs around my wrist jingling once more as I shifted against them.

When Serena doesn't reply, I'm not sure if she believes me or not. The silence is suddenly that much heavier knowing that it's not just me in the room. I don't know how to stand it, so I keep talking.

"Jackson's a good man. He's a police officer – a homicide detective, actually. Not that he's going to find us dead. He's new at homicide. So, you know, he's more experienced at finding and dealing with the living, not the dead. He'll find the both of us and you'll see that I'm right." I continued nervously, clearing my throat again. It's intentional this time but my voice sounds the same. "He's a really good man. I'm sure he's been calling and texting me, trying to figure out where I am. I think, uh, I think that he likes me. Really likes me, you know?"

"You talk a lot," Serena responded with a hoarse chuckle.

"I've been told that before," I admitted, catching myself smiling softly. "Quiet is a little awkward when I have no idea who you are. Or what you look like. Or anything about you, really. You're letting me do all the talking."

"Am I?" She responded, this time not missing a beat.

I let out a slight laugh. "Fair enough," I breathed out. "Tell me about yourself."

"I'm a doctor. A mother. I was going to the grocery store to pick up some cupcakes for my seven year old's birthday party today," she said sadly. My heart ached for her. She was here because of me.

"I'm sorry," I admitted for more reasons than what she could probably understand. Or maybe she did. Who knew what all he had told her before I had gotten here?

"I'm sure that you will be."

Whatever he had told her, apparently the bitterness had already set in. I can't really be mad about it. Tables turned, I probably would have been pissed off, too. Hell, I was. About everything that had already happened. But this was my fault. My reasons for being angry are different. It's just as much anger at myself as it is at him, for better or for worse.

Not sure what to say, the quiet fell over between the two of us. This time, it's less unsteady than before. It's tense, instead, angry. I was at my core, and it practically radiated throughout the room.

Minutes pass. Maybe longer. It's hard to keep up with time when there's no indication of anything. The only thing that was steady at the moment was the pulsing inside of the back of my head, no doubt where it'd been smashed in to knock me out. But that's not reliable. I know it's slower and longer than a second, than two. It's no rational way to keep time. I can't keep up with it beyond ten pulses at a time. It's too difficult to focus on. It hurts too much.

A sudden light streamed in from above and my gaze jerked up. It's coming from above a staircase – I can see it illuminated now. It was a basement, judging from that alone. At the top of the stairs, there's an outline of a man standing there.

But there's no relief. It's not Jackson. Instead, it's the same man that I had seen before, peering in far too close to me. He's average sized as far as I can tell, hair looking lighter with the only light coming in behind him. But he reached over, flipping the light switch. My eyes burn for a moment to adjust to the sudden light, blinking a few times as my pupil adjusted.

There's something familiar about him. It's easier to tell now. The hair isn't the exact right share and his eyes are a little too dark, but the nose and the freckles are there, the build is right. He looks like my father, when he was young, the photos that had been shared by my mother and grandparents once upon a time. When I was nothing more than a child. But it's not the quite same. Instead, it resembled something that I had seen much more recently.

It's the boy in all of Libby's photos.

Both my shackles and Serena's shake as we adjust. I glance over at her now. She's about my age, the same bad dye job that I had seen on the other women since this case had started. There was no doubt in my mind that this was him.

"Good afternoon, April." That was the only thing that he said.

I don't respond, shifting and pulling myself back, flatting against the wall in expectation for him to come near me. Instead, he doesn't. He goes over to Serena.

Serena began to shriek and thrash as he slowly undid her from the binds on her walls, attempting to kick and thrash. But he hit her. Hard. It only took a few brief punches in succession for her to give up the fight that she was trying to display. He doesn't cast another look at me nor say a word as he slung her over his shoulder, carrying her up the stairs.

The lights go off and I'm alone again.

More time passes.

This time is longer, I can tell that much. Mostly because some of the throbbings in my head began to ease up after awhile, even if it's still there, just not quite as intense as it had been before.

There's no way to ease the passing of time or reduce the anxiety that quelled uneasily in my stomach. I want to throw up. Maybe if I'd been able to move around a little more and new that I wouldn't have to be stuck smelling it for a while after, I would have. But instead, I'm just there, shifting uncomfortably every so often. I don't want him to come back. I just want Jackson to find me.

Hunger and thirst strike eventually, but they both seemed to be the least of my worries. I can't hear anything going on above, I don't know how long he's had Serena or… if she's even still alive at this point. It must have been soundproofed down here. Or she was dead. I hated the latter option.

I drift off from a lack of other options, or maybe it's a concussion that I'm trying to ignore. I'm in and out for awhile, unsure of anything else happening. It's better that way, at least temporarily.

Light wakes me up again and I blink rapidly to try and process the surroundings, only to see that nothing has changed. Not really. He was there again, slowly descending down the staircase and staring right at me.

"I hope you didn't miss me too much," he said.

I don't respond, only glaring at him.

"There's no need to be like that, April. After all, we're family." He grinned at me, clearly too amused by the situation at hand. He walked closer to me, squatting down so that he was at my eye level. "C'mon, let's see a little smile."

Not wanting to gratify him, I do the only thing that I can think of – the nasty thing that they always do in the movies. I spit in his face.

He slapped me hard enough that my head spun again.

"Come on now! You're a Kepner, aren't you? You should know better than to behave yourself like that." He clucked his tongue at me. "Then again, you never were very good of one, were you? Betraying our father like that. You put a disgrace to the family name, pulling that little stunt." He continued speaking.

"You have no idea what it's like. You're not a Kepner." I finally uttered out.

"Oh, yes I am," he disagreed all too cheerily. "Mark Kepner, son of Joseph and… well, my mother was a whore. She's not important. Libby was kind enough to raise me just as I should have been before you took my father away from me."

So Mark was his name. Biblical, and yet there was nothing holy about this man, nothing Christian. Maybe he believed or maybe he didn't. My parents had – but they had perverted the faith so hard, twisted it so beyond the text of the Holy Book, that I found it difficult to believe in anything above. Certainly anything similar to what they did. He was just another guy, bastardizing religion for his own personal beliefs.

"I think it's about time that you got a better idea of what it really means to be a Kepner, April. You're just a girl… but, oh well. I hear you're a medical examiner. So you're plenty equipped to be doing what I'm doing." Mark rambled on, grinning at me like a maniac.

Trying to retain any sense of control and keep him from having any satisfaction, I fall silent. It seemed like my only option. It was clear that he was delusional.

But that doesn't get me very far. The chaotic expression on his face shifted toward one of anger and he lunged at me, but not to hit me again. This time, he takes the opportunity to undo the binds on my wrists that had kept me attached to the wall thus far. My wrists are still cuffed, but there's nothing to at least keep me in place for a few brief seconds.

I make the same attempts that I had seen Serena do, swinging my arms forward to try and claw his eyes out. I get a little success – nails meeting flesh, but not with as much force as I hoped. He snatched one of my arms and jerked it down, the other following in succession.

"Now, now, you'll be able to get all of that out. Just not on me."

Although I don't even begin to have a clue what he's talking about, I don't get the chance to ask – I'm not even sure that he wanted to. In the same way that he had with Serena before, he lifted me up and slung me over his shoulder. I'm not deadweight, though, even if it's hard to fight when he's holding both my legs down.

The second that we're out of the basement, I begin screaming with all of my might, hoping and praying that he would have some kind of neighbor to hear me. Just because the basement had been soundproofed, didn't mean that the rest of it had to be, right?

"No one's going to hear you, Duckie. I made sure of that."

Wrong.

Looking around the room the best that I can in the position, the house looks normal. Compared to everything else, at least. I can't see any neighbors. Wilderness was outside. No pool.

It's a quick turn around. When Mark sets me down, well, he doesn't. Instead, he throws me down, ensuring that it hurts every bit of the way. We're in a smaller room, what must have been a bedroom. Or was supposed to be one, at least. There's a table in the middle, hair draping over. I realize that it must have been Serena. I can't smell blood. I don't know whether that's good or bad.

"Now, here's what's actually going to happen…" Mark started, placing his foot on my throat so I can't move or struggle. I'm not sure if he's willing to kill me or not, and not willing to take that risk just yet. "You're going to take part of the family tradition, April. Serena? She's not here for me to kill. She's here for you."

All I can do is stare at him. He couldn't be serious, could he? This was why he had been targeting me all this time? I'd thought that he just wanted to kill me. But this… this was beyond all thought and possible rationale. I would never do something like that. He had to know that.

That had to be why he wanted me to do it. He had this distorted perception of who Kepners were meant to be and now he wanted me to take part in his delusion.

"No way in Hell." I breathed out. His foot tightened on my throat.

"Oh, yes you are." Mark grinned at me. He removed his foot, suddenly squatting down next to me. "We have a big family. You don't think that it's just me doing this, do you?" He questioned, interpreting my silence as doubt. Rightfully so. "I know all about that detective you like. You can either do what I say now or… I'll get a nice video of his death, nice and brutal, just for you. And then we'll be right here again, where you're going to do what I want no matter what."

The threat to Jackson's life made me freeze. He couldn't be serious, could he? My sisters wouldn't have been delusional enough to do something like. They were… well, they were something else. I didn't know what to say. But surely they wouldn't do something like that.

I don't say a word. I can't accept his word as it was. I don't want to put Jackson at risk, though. So many others had already been hurt because of me and I didn't want him on the list too.

"I have something for you." Mark fished his phone out of his pocket. It's a moment before he turned it toward me so I could see the screen for myself.

On his phone was a picture of Jackson. Then he swiped – more pictures of Jackson, then pictures of me and Jackson, right up to outside of his house. So the one spot the I thought was safe… he knew about. The one person that I had trusted, he knew all too well about. And he had known about. Was it him? Was it one of my sisters? Was it someone else entirely?

"Right now, he's at the police station. It wouldn't take me long to get there if I wanted. I'm sure I could lure him out easily. Tell him I found you. That'd be so simple, wouldn't it? He'd come running, just waiting to be your knight in shining armor…" He trailed on sadistically.

Of course, Jackson would be at the police station. He must have been working to find me. Hopefully, he saw the crash. He knew that I wouldn't be home. That I would have called if I was okay.

"Time to get up," Mark announced harshly. He grabbed my wrists, hauling me up to my feet.

"I'm not going to do this," I hissed out with a shake of my head.

"Oh, yes you are." He disagreed. My eyes darted around as I looked for an escape – no windows, there's only one door. Not a bedroom, then, an office. Which meant that maybe it was close to the front door. Maybe it would be a quick run. But I don't know if he has a gun or not. He hadn't used one on any of the victims before, but… it was Texas. The odds were there.

Mark began to hum some kind of tune and I barely scooted back from him. He's still between me and the door. I don't want to leave Serena behind, either. It's not fair. She was here because of me.

The drawer of a desk opened and I can't see what's in it. What I do see is the knife that he pulled out of it. It's a sharp edge. It looked like a professional chef's knife, something expensive. The kind that any rational person would have used a fingerboard for, just in case. With everything that he had been doing, it made sense.

"Now, originally, I was going to go through your entire name. But then I had a thought. I is the perfect letter for you to take part in, isn't it?" Mark laughed at what he thought was supposed to be some kind of joke. But there's no humor. "Oh, April. Sanctimonious, self-righteous, April. You've always thought that you were better than the rest of us, haven't you? But I know you'll do this. And I know that you'll enjoy it, too. You'll even be good at it. You've got all the practice in the world with that job of yours. This is something that you were meant to do. So you can stop with the obnoxiously condescending glare and just accept your fate."

When I fall silent at the proposition that he was given me, he only has one more thing to add. The one thing that twisted the knife in the wound, and he knew it.

"Or, you can let me kill Jackson, and then you can accept your fate. The choice is yours."

The dangerous look in his eyes terrified me. It showed that he was serious, that if I didn't do this right now, he was going to go through with every single threat. He was going to kill Jackson. He was going to have someone else kill Jackson. It didn't really make much of a difference, did it? The end result was the same. And it was one that I couldn't live with.

Unable to say what he wanted to hear, I held out a shaky hand.

"Atta girl!" Mark encouraged me. Before he handed over the knife, though, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a revolver, aiming it at me. Predictable. Of course. He had to have some kind of back up method, some way to make sure I didn't just go after him.

The knife is placed in my hand and it shakes there. With the now empty hand, Mark gestured toward Serena, on the table. She was tied down and gagged, stripped, but she's awake. I hadn't noticed it before, but I do now. There's a pair of wide blue eyes, staring at me with nothing short of absolute terror.

It clicked. This was what he had been talking to her about. This had been her nightmare.

"I'm so sorry," I sobbed out, stepping toward her. I don't want to look at her, but it's impossible not to see those eyes staring back at me. I'd read interviews with serial killers – this was the part that they loved. This is how I knew that I wasn't like him, or my father.

The blade of the knife met her flesh, shaking. The shake was what caused me to nick across her pale skin, stronger than any conscious free will.

Before he or I could go any further with what was going on, there's a loud bang and the sound of scuffling followed. I flinched at the noise and nearly dropped the knife, jerking my head toward the door. This might have been my only chance. I had to go.

"Dallas Police! We know you're here!" A male's voice called out.

I make the mistake of dropping the knife and lunging toward the door. Before I can grab the knob, Mark grabbed me and yanked me back against him. I can feel cool metal pressing into the side of the temple and realize that he's got the gunpoint right into my frontal lobe. The police are here, but I'm not free yet. Instead, I'm a human shield. My brother's human shield.

"You don't have to do this," I tried to beg him as he backed himself up into the wall, realizing there was no other way out. "If you turn yourself in, you can get a plea bargain. They won't execute you." I tried to reason.

"Do you think I'm stupid enough to make the same mistakes as our father?" Mark scoffed.

Before I had the chance to answer or try to reason with him any further, the door to the office was kicked in. Serena began to scream and resist the ties on the table, but I know that I can't move. Not without the risk of him quite literally blowing my brains out. That was a wound that I wouldn't survive.

Looking up to see the officers there, it's Shepherd and Avery. It's a relief to see Jackson standing there, even when I'm currently seated between a multiple of guns. Theirs and his.

But Mark is a few inches taller than me, a few inches wider. I'm a poor human shield for any male from size alone, and there has to be some kind of advantage of that. I barely manage to get Jackson's eyes, and I can tell that he's a mixture of enraged and terrified. I understand it completely. At the moment, I feel the exact same way.

"Take the shot," I begged him, unable to find anything else to say at the moment. I'm desperate. I trust him. I trust him more than anything else, more than anyone else on the planet. He was the only person that I had been able to trust in a long time. I hadn't expected to have to utilize that trust so soon, to have to put my life quite literally in his hands... but it's something that I find myself willing to do, even when I've got death staring at me from multiple different angles. If anyone could do it, he could do it. "Please, just take the shot." I reiterated.

Jackson gave me a slight nod of the head, taking a deep breath, and his gun goes off.