by Rachel Caine
“Keep rolling,” he says to the cameraman, and, oh Jesus, he sounds so normal, so like the man I married. The man who took vows to love and cherish and protect. “I’m just starting.”
I feel myself going away. It’s not a faint; I know I can’t make myself vulnerable that way. I feel my mind leave my body, drift up like a balloon only loosely tethered to this heavy, shaking sack of flesh. From this distance, looking down, I don’t feel the horror or the sickness. I don’t watch. Somewhere, I have to believe that my children are still alive. Safe. That somewhere, Sam is okay.
Somewhere, people still live in the light.
But here in the dark, I’m all that stands between Melvin and the people I love.
And I have to keep standing.
When I open my eyes, I’m still in that putrid, dying place, and Melvin Royal is turning toward me. His bloody face looks calm, and his smile looks hungry.
“Gina,” he says, “I’m sorry, but this is how it has to—”
I lunge forward, and I jam the sharp piece of wood into his eye.
It goes deep, rupturing the fragile surface, and I feel the warm fluid from within sluice over my fingers. It’s all I have. All I can do. It’s isn’t enough, I know. Everything inside me goes silent.
It’s almost peaceful.
The wood breaks in my hand off as he screams and twists away. He’s alive. Blinded in one eye, in agony, but alive.
Melvin pulls the wood out of his destroyed eye and screams in rage.
The silence inside me snaps, and the fear roars back in, black and silver and cold as sleet, and I know I have seconds, seconds, to save myself.
I’m already lunging forward. It feels like I’m moving in slow motion, every motion crystalline clear and too slow, and something inside me is screaming to hurry, hurry, God, run, go.
I’m past him before he realizes I’ve moved, but he’s only a step or two behind me, screaming my old name, my dead name, and I know if he gets his hands on me, there won’t be any carefully curated torture streamed out to enrich Absalom; it’ll be pure, bloody slaughter, just as it was with Annie. He’ll rip me to pieces.
I see the camera operator moving out of the room behind us; he’s brought the video recorder with him, and he’s filming me as I head for the stairs. I hear Melvin roaring. It sounds like hell is ripping open behind me.
The screwdriver that Melvin used to kill Annie has rolled out into the hall, kicked there at some point, and I bend and pick it up without breaking stride. Someone’s charging up the stairs, a new man, and he has a gun in his hand.
I need that gun.
I can’t feel the pain of my wrist anymore, or anything else. I feel incandescent. I burst with power, and I close the distance faster than I thought possible. I bury the screwdriver in the guard’s neck, and the gun falls to the floor as he staggers back and starts to tumble down the steps. I dive for the weapon, twist over on my back, and as I roll, I see Melvin taking a last step toward me. He has his right hand clamped over his bloody, mutilated eye, but he sees the gun just in time to throw himself to the side as I aim and fire. Adrenaline or not, the shock of recoil sends a brutal stab through my arm, and I yell in pain and fury. My first shot misses him by less than an inch. I try again.
Melvin ducks into the room where he intended to kill me. He has weapons there. Maybe even a gun. I can’t stop now, even if my wrist shatters off my arm, I have to hold the gun and shoot, and pain doesn’t matter.
I fire more bullets into the wall, walking the shots methodically across. I don’t know where he is. My heart is racing so fast that it feels like a dying bird in my chest, but my brain feels slow. Calm. Almost peaceful. The gun in my hand is a semiautomatic, so it has a minimum of seven bullets. I’ve fired four.
The video operator is still standing there filming me. Maybe he truly doesn’t understand that he isn’t just crew, that he’s a guilty accomplice to horrors. Maybe he thinks his camera is a magic shield.
I shoot him, and he goes down. Five.
I scramble forward. My legs feel weak and loose, but somehow I stay up. I dodge drunkenly around the hole in the middle of the floor, step over the dead camera operator, and pray there’s still at least one more bullet in the gun so I can put it in Melvin’s head.
I make it to the door of the torture room. There’s a man curled up motionless on the oval rug: the lighting tech. I got him with the shots I put through the wall.
Melvin isn’t here. Melvin’s gone.
There’s a door to the left. I missed it before; the camera tripod was blocking it. But the tripod’s on its side, and a broken laptop is sparking and flickering next to it.
I sense someone behind me. A shadow, moving fast.
I whirl and pull the trigger.
I realize just one second too late that it isn’t Melvin.
It’s Sam.
The gun clicks.
Empty.
Sam’s breathing hard as he skids to a stop. He’s staring at me with wild eyes, and he’s standing in the spreading pool of Annie’s blood. He’s got a gun, too, and he’s holding it on me as if I’m a dangerous creature he can’t trust. Then he yells, “Put it down, Gwen! Put it down!”
I drop the gun, and it hits my leg painfully enough to jolt me out of my momentary trance. Everything floods me at once, a storm of emotion that I can’t even understand. It rips away the focus, sends me reeling, shaking. The pain is back. So is the fear.
“He’s still here!” I scream at Sam. “Melvin! He’s still here!”
Sam’s staring down at the ruined body of Annie with an expression of pure, visceral horror. It takes him a second to tear his gaze away and fix it on me. “No. He’s out in the hall. He’s dead.”
“What?”
“He took a bullet in the eye. It’s okay. Gwen. He’s down.” He catches me when I fall against him. I feel such an immense sense of exhaustion I think I might die. My heart is hammering like an engine; my body is still intent on running, fighting, even when there’s nothing left to fight. I feel tears shredding me, wild and desperately intense.
“You got him,” I whisper to Sam. “Thank you. God, thank you.”
He holds me so tight it feels like we’re fusing together, and I want that, I want that. “No,” he says. “I didn’t shoot him. You did. Didn’t you?”
It takes me a long, icy second to understand what he’s just said, and why it’s important.
I didn’t shoot Melvin in the eye. I stabbed him. With the gore and blood, it would have looked like a death wound. A shot to the eye. All Melvin had to do was lie down and let Sam go past him.
I grab Sam’s gun and use his shoulder as a rest to aim, because there’s the monster coming just behind him, there’s the tiger, and death is in his eyes.
Melvin is lunging for Sam’s back with a knife.
I stop him with three bullets through the forehead.
He folds at the knees, and then he’s down on his face. He’s still breathing. I can see his back rising and falling, and I want to put another bullet in it, but Sam’s turning now, taking the gun from me.
It’s good he does, because I likely would have shot Agent Lustig, who enters the doorway with his own gun drawn. Sam lowers the weapon, and Lustig takes one look at the two of us, then at the dying man stretched out on the floor. The dead man near the lights. The ruined body of Annie.
“Christ,” Lustig says, and lowers his weapon. “My good Christ, what the hell is this?”
We stand there in silence. Lustig kneels next to Melvin, and we watch my ex-husband’s back rise and fall for three more gasping breaths, and then there’s a long, rattling exhalation that trails into silence.
The devil’s dead. He’s dead. I want to feel . . . what? Good? But there’s none of that. I’m just grateful. Maybe later I’ll feel satisfaction, vengeance, the fulfillment of a long-burning rage.
But right now I’m so grateful I am weeping. I can’t stop.
“Please,” I gasp. I reach for Sam, and he puts his arms around me
again. “Please, please tell me they’re okay, please, please . . .”
“They’re okay,” he whispers to me. There’s a stillness to him, a peace, that I need right now. “Connor’s all right. Lanny’s all right. You’re safe. We’re okay. Just breathe.”
My knees give way when we’re halfway down the rotten stairs, and Sam carries me the rest of the way. I’m so tired. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. When I manage to look, he’s putting me in the passenger seat of a sedan, and I’m looking at the rotten, spoiled colonial splendor of Triton Plantation House. It does look like the White House, destroyed by rot and time. A creek runs by the side of the road, sluggish and choked with mud. Bayou country.
Sam and Lustig are outside the car, talking in quiet voices. They’re both shell-shocked. I can hear it. But I’m not. Not anymore.
“Rivard was right. State police never showed. If we hadn’t made it—” Lustig breaks off. “It’s a bloodbath in there. God only knows the bodies we’re going to find around here. How many of these places do they have?”
“Dozens,” Sam says. “But we’ve got Rivard, and once this thing breaks, it’ll shatter everywhere. We’ll find them. All of them.”
I wish they’d burn it down. All of it, ashes and bones. But I know there’s more to this than what I want, and I know that. I’m just so tired that I feel tears sliding cold down my cheeks. I wipe them away with a clumsy, bloody right hand.
That’s Melvin’s blood.
Melvin’s dead.
Mike Lustig leans in and says, “You should thank our boy Sam,” he says. “Saved your life.”
“No,” I tell him. I feel everything slipping away again. “I saved him.”
I sleep.
And I don’t dream at all.
28
GWEN
One month later
To most people, I look like I’ve recovered. I try hard, for my kids. If I still feel fragile as glass inside, I think only Sam can see it now. Sam, who sees everything. That might have bothered me once, but now I’m glad. I talk to Sam. I even see a psychologist who specializes in trauma recovery. I’m getting better. So are the kids. I made sure they got their own therapy, whether they admitted to needing it or not.
I don’t check the Sicko Patrol anymore, but when I ask, Sam quietly tells me that it’s continuing to roll on with more fire and energy than before. Despite my wishes, I’m the subject of a lot of articles and blogs again. Some think I’m a hero. Many think I got away with murder.
One thing I have to accept: now there’s no hiding from it anymore.
The symbol of that is this house on Stillhouse Lake that we’re reclaiming as our own. It’s not just the four of us; our friends have been here helping. Javier and Kezia. Kezia’s dad, Easy Claremont. Detective Prester and several Norton officers I now know by name. Some of the kids’ school friends and their parents came, too; they all pitched in to repaint the outside of our house and get rid of ugly reminders of the past.
I expect new hatred to come at us, but for now, at least, this house is our fortress again.
Today, it’ll be finished.
“Mom!” Connor holds up something I can’t see from across the room. “Is this trash?”
“Does it look like trash?” I call back, and I manage a smile. He smiles back. It’s hesitant, and stutters a little in the middle, but it’s a start. We have work to do, Connor and I. Miles to go. He blames himself for too much, and now he’s grieving his father. I know Melvin doesn’t deserve that, but this isn’t about him. It’s about Connor, and letting him go through all the stages of grief for a man who never truly loved him. “Thanks, baby. Why don’t you take a break?”
“Why don’t you take a break?” Sam says, then takes the trash bag from my good right hand. My left is wrapped and splinted, and it hurts too damn much, but the doctor says it’ll heal. Eventually. “Because you need to sit. Stop pushing.”
He’s right. It’s done. Sam and Lanny have teamed up to repaint the damaged kitchen walls, while Kezia and Javier installed the new front window. Connor and I have picked up the last remnants of garbage. The front curtains stay down for now. I want to look out at the snow and the lightly frozen lake. It seems clean out there, in a way I don’t think it ever has before.
Lanny is sitting with her girlfriend—maybe they’re not quite calling it that yet, but I can see the looks—and they’re wearing matching braided bracelets. When she thinks we’re not looking, I know Lanny’s holding Dahlia’s hand. She needs this. She needs to be loved. I’ll do everything I can; I’ll love her more fiercely than any lioness, but I can’t give her gentleness, and sweetness, and Dahlia seems to have that for her, at least for now. I stop to hug my daughter, because I can’t not, and she lets me cling for a long, long moment before she pushes back and rolls her dark-rimmed eyes. I kiss her dark hair and try not to think about the girl in the noose. The one who got away, I think. I keep asking. They haven’t found her, but she wasn’t dead at the plantation, either.
Maybe she’s found safety. Maybe something good came out of it for her.
Sam’s waiting with a beer for me, and I gratefully take it and sink down next to him on the new couch. The old one was filthy, and anyway, it’s time. It’s time for new things. Fresh starts.
“Mike called,” Sam says, then takes a deep pull of the beer. Connor settles in on the other side of him, and when Sam puts an arm around his shoulders, he doesn’t flinch. He takes out a book and starts reading, but that’s expected. It’s a new book, I realize. One I haven’t seen before. That seems significant, but I don’t know why. “He’s going to be tied up in DC for a while, but he says hi. Rivard’s executive assistant rolled hard the second he knew the old man was locked up. He gave Mike the keys to the kingdom.”
“Everything?” I ask, giving him a look. The trauma of Baton Rouge sometimes seems like a nightmare, a month out, but suddenly it’s vivid again. Memories of empty, hungry eyes. The gun kicking in my hand. I can still feel the shock traveling through my arm, up my body. Feel the blood on my face. I take a breath. “You’re sure? Everything?”
“Almost a thousand arrests just this week,” he says. “All over the world. Including the ones who bought tickets to the show that night.”
That’s code, and I understand it. The show. The one where I was to be tortured to death. I shiver a little and huddle closer to his warmth. “That sounds good.”
“They’re going to get all of them. Rivard was a businessman; he kept excellent records. Even the trolls are getting hauled in and booked.” Sam laughs a little bitterly. “Not that it’s put a dent in your hate mail, but give it time.”
“So Mike’s okay?”
“Mike,” Sam says, “is the new golden boy of the Bureau, and I think he likes it. Oh, one more thing. The forensic work on the videos finally came in: faked, of course. Not that you had anything to prove to us about that. Any of us.” He looks over at Kezia, at Javier, at the kids, and I feel gratitude well up inside. Over this past month, each of them has come to me and told me when and where they’d come to the realization that they were wrong. Predictably, maybe, my daughter was the last.
Sam apologized first. Not that he had anything to be sorry for. Oh, the kids believed me first, I think, but it took an adult admitting it before they were comfortable saying so. I think they get that reluctance to show vulnerability from me. I hope that I can show them something else, now.
I tip my head up and look at him. He kisses my forehead, a quick brush of lips that leaves me warmer. This is sweet. And I’m so grateful for that. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says, offering me his bottle. We clink glass. “The FBI’s putting out a public statement tomorrow that completely clears you. The end.”
I sigh a little. It was a minor issue, given everything else that’s happened, but I’m glad it’s settled now. “You and I both know that isn’t true,” I tell him. “There will always be some people out there who don’t believe it. Any of it.”
“I see.”
“So I might be homeless pretty soon.” There’s a slight, teasing question in his voice. I smile, but I don’t look up.
“That would be sad.”
“So sad.”
“And I suppose you might need a place.”
“Now that you mention it. Got any leads?”
Lanny and Dahlia are whispering together. Giggling now. “Oh, just get it out there,” Dahlia says. “We all know.”
“Yeah,” Connor says, turning a page. “It’s pretty obvious.”
“Okay, okay, fine. Mr. Cade, you’re welcome to move in here.” I feel a tremor, though I mean it. This is a huge step for me. An expression of trust I wasn’t sure I could ever give anyone again.
“You sure?”
This time I do glance up. His eyes are steady and kind, and I catch my breath, because there’s a look there I’ve never quite seen before. Intense, as if he’s seeing me for the first time, all over again.
“I’m sure,” I say. There used to be a minefield between us, but all those bombs are gone now, blown up, and what’s left in its place is good ground. A good place to build. It’ll take work, but I’ve never been afraid of that.
“Dinner’s ready!” That’s Kezia, from the kitchen. “I didn’t cook it, so it’s safe, I swear.” The running joke of the past few weeks has been Kezia Claremont’s inexplicable talent for ruining absolutely everything she tries to cook. It’s a gift.
“She made an effort, though. She burned some toast,” Javier says as Kez carries a big pan of roasted chicken and vegetables to the table. “Let’s eat before Boot gets it all.”
Boot rolls over at the mention of his name and licks his chops. I pat him, and he grunts and closes his eyes. He’s recovered better than any of us.
“Yeah, get everything on the table,” I say, then slip out from Sam’s warmth to put on my coat, hat, and gloves. “I’m just going down to check the mail. Be right back.”