"John McBain you got in our way too many times."
"Where is she?" John hissed into Natalie's phone. In his hand he still clutched the cloth from her shirt.
"Turn around. Look underneath the third step of the bleacher."
Then the phone call ended and he heard a beeping as the phone's battery was drained. He knew they were on the call too short a time for his men to triangulate the call.
He dropped the phone on the ground and walked over to the bleachers. He pretended not to notice that his hands shook.
He knelt down and felt around under the third bleacher from the bottom as he couldn't see in the dim light. His heart pounded as he felt something. Crisp tape. He shimmied his body underneath and took a closer look. Something was taped there. It looked like the back of a photograph. He held back his first instinct to tear the item down and see what it was and took out a pocket knife and carefully pried it from its place. He wanted to preserve any evidence they might have left – fingerprints, DNA. Something.
His stomach was in knots as it came loose into the handkerchief he held over his palm.
He put his head down on the dirt and took a deep breath before looking.
Something in his body clicked off. Something else sped up. His head swam and he broke out into a cold sweat.
It was her. Natalie. His Natalie.
She was lying on concrete. Her face was bruised, blood dribbled from the head wound she had gotten in the woods.
The day he told her he loved her. Out loud.
Before he took it back.
Denied it.
And now.
Her eyes were closed.
She was pale underneath the blood and bruises.
Her shirt was torn open.
Her right hand lay palm up at her side. Her fingers were half closed into a fist. Her nails were ragged. Their tips bloodied.
Her other hand was clenched over her stomach.
It was so pale against the maroon stain spreading over the white skin underneath.
Blood.
A gun shot wound.
At the bottom of the photo were the words, written in marker. "Bang, Bang. She's dead."
"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
John didn't feel the hands pulling him out from under the bleachers. He didn't notice Bo's terror as he knelt down next to Detective Paglino and his brother Michael McBain.
Detective Paglino took the photo from John's unresisting hand and put it into an evidence bag before handing it over to Bo.
Michael put his arm around John's shoulders.
"John. John. Come on bro."
John couldn't hear or see him. All he could see was Natalie's lifeless body. The blood. Caitlin. Another one lost.
Michael had gotten a glimpse of the photo, but he put his own pain aside as he brought John to a standing position and guided him towards the police cars in front of the school.
They left Bo standing in the field next to the half dug hole in the ground holding the picture of his niece's lifeless corpse.
Lights from the police cars flashed over the faces of the McBain brothers as they got closer.