Free The Thieves of Darkness by Richard Doetsch

and looked at the painting. And without a second thought she snatched it from the wall.
    And all hell broke loose. The alarm screamed as dead bolts slammed home in all of the doors. She raced to the windows only to find them all locked, their seals impossible to break. She was suddenly trapped. A fifteen-year-old girl with a bag of stolen goods in her hand, she would have no explanation, no way of talking herself out of being sent to a girls’ home or worse, prison.
    Her mind began to race. She tried every door and window to no avail. She soon heard the police siren’s whining approach and within moments there was a pounding on the door. She collapsed to the floor, shaking, terrified, the tears streamed down her face. What would her mother say?
    And then it came to her. She wasn’t sure from where the thought arose, but her mind became suddenly focused and resolute.
    She tore her shirt and screamed, she screamed as loud as she could. She threw the bag of valuables into the closet and put the painting back on the wall. The police pounded the door again and KC answered with another scream.
    And the door exploded open. Two cops barged into the room to find KC on the floor crying. She cried harder as the woman officer leaned down to her, asking who she was, and she simply answered, “I could never do those things he asked.”
    “What things?” the woman asked.
    And KC said, “Ask Bonnie.”
    The man was arrested the next day; he had preyed on countless teenagers and was found to possess a cache of child porn in his closet. And no matter how much money he had, it would never buy him out of prison for crimes against children.
    KC arrived back at their apartment that night to find her sister sitting with a middle-aged, gray-haired woman. Cindy looked up, her face streaked in tears, and raced into KC’s arms, sobs racking her nine-year-old body. KC held her tight, rubbing her back to calm her; she crouched and clutched Cindy to her chest.
    “Hey, kiddo,” KC said. “It’s okay. What’s up?”
    But as KC stroked the auburn hair out of Cindy’s face, as she wiped the tears from her cheeks, she could finally see into her blue eyes. She saw the pain; she saw the suffering that no nine-year-old should ever know.
    And KC’s world spun. She knew what had happened before the gray-haired woman had uttered a word. Their mother was dead. Jennifer Ryan had “fallen” from the Langate Tower.
    Their mother had battled depression for all of her thirty-four years, but it had become acute in the last twelve months. Jennifer Ryan had taken to wearing false smiles under lying eyes, her conversations with her children growing distant and odd. And every night, KC heard her mother’s gentle sobs as she lay in bed clutching the Bible. She was a God-fearing woman who never missed Sunday Mass, who lived her life by the Good Book and never would have knowingly condemned hersoul by taking her own life. So, as she sat there with Cindy, two sisters suddenly alone in the world, KC knew her mother had finally gone insane.
    KC sat on the floor, rocking Cindy in her arms.
    “Your sister will have to come with us,” the lady said. “We will place her with a family.”
    “But I’m her family,” KC said through her tears. “Her only family.”
    “I know this is hard—”
    “Do you?” KC exploded. “Do you really or is that some line they teach you at Child Services?”
    KC stopped herself, reining back her emotions, in a matter of seconds maturing into adulthood. She held tight to Cindy and looked at the older woman. “Imagine that someone you love dies and then you are ripped away from the only other person in the world who cares for you and you’re dumped with uncaring strangers. I can take care of her.”
    “How old are you, child?”
    “Nineteen,” KC lied. “I work, I can support her,” she lied again. Convincingly. She had a knack for it.
    The woman looked at the two sisters clutching tight to each other. She looked at the