My fingertips brush the handle. Then something slams into my torso. His boot. He kicks me again, harder this time. The dry snap of my rib cracking is almost, but not quite, too soft to hear. I fight the urge to curl into a little ball. I fight the urge to keep hiding.
Another quarter-inch reach, and I have it. The gun is heavier than I expected. I don’t really know how to use it. I don’t even know if there are more bullets. But I roll onto my back and point it at his chest.
His face warps into a monster grimace. He lunges down at me, fingers curled into claws.
I pull the trigger. There’s heat, noise. Force pushing me into the dirt. There’s a spray of something hot and wet.
And then, silence.
I don’t know how long I lie there, staring up at the sky. Aiden is near my feet. He’s very still.
And then the stars blink out. No—they’re obscured. Gabe’s form blocks them from view. He’s leaning over me. His breath is ragged but steady.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers.
I close my eyes. I feel like I’m floating. In this moment, before consequences, before explanations, I feel safe.
“I know,” I say.
FORTY-THREE
Gabe
We walk back toward the motel holding hands. I move gingerly, trying not to jostle my shoulder too much. The pain is getting steadily worse, roaring in like a rapidly approaching train. I focus on keeping my breath steady. There’s no way Catherine—or whatever her name is—can carry me if I pass out.
My brain keeps flying back to the man in the clearing behind us. To the moment before he fell. It’s frozen in my mind: Catherine on the ground, pointing the gun up. The look on his face as he lunged for her. For some reason I’m stuck there, in the instant before she shot him. That last moment before a person died right in front of me. The thought makes my legs go soft for a second; I stumble, but catch myself. The motion sends a molten wave through the gunshot wound.
“Gabe?” It’s too dark to read her expression, but she clutches my arm like it’s a life preserver.
“I’m . . . okay.” My voice is small in the dark. For a moment the world tilts, the stars wheeling overhead. Then I take a deep breath, and everything falls still again.
“It’s just a little further. Come on. That’s it.” She helps me over a fallen tree branch. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this.”
“None of this is your fault,” I say. Then, a moment later: “Who was that guy?”
She’s quiet for so long I start to assume that she’s not going to answer. It startles me when she speaks.
“I used to think he was my boyfriend. I don’t know what to call him now.”
Boyfriend. I don’t know if it’s the blood loss, or the shock, but it takes me a moment to understand the word. It feels somehow abstract, detached. Boyfriend, father. Alive, dead. Whoever he was, it doesn’t matter anymore.
“I’ll explain everything when we get out of here,” she says. “I promise. But right now we just need to focus on getting back to the car.”
Through the trees I see a glint of light. The motel. We’re almost there. We step out of the woods, and I feel some of the tension leave my shoulders. A wave of agony comes in on its heels. Catherine must notice; she pauses to let me catch my breath.
Something explodes; a branch shatters overhead.
Instinctually, I grab Catherine by the edge of her shirt and pull her as hard as I can behind a copse of trees.
I lean back against the bark, my shoulder screaming with pain. A gunshot. But there aren’t any red or blue lights pivoting through the parking lot. It can’t be cops.
And that’s when I know exactly who it is.
“Sasha,” I call. “Don’t do this.”
I hear her footsteps coming closer.
“This .40 caliber has some fucking kick!” There’s a jaunty rage in her voice, a grit-toothed smile. “You know, I think I like Mom’s .22 better, but she caught me playing with it the other day and hid it. All I could find was this monster.” Another echoing boom, and the ground explodes a few feet from us. “Daddy’s gonna be pissed when he sees I took it.”
I close my eyes, pressing my back against the tree. After all we’ve been through, after what I’ve just seen, this can’t be how our story ends. It can’t.
“How’d you find us?” Maybe I can distract her, defuse her rage, if I can get her talking. “Let me guess. Some of your mom’s super-spy shit.”
“Yeah. I put a tracker on your phone. That’s how she caught Daddy fucking his assistant last year.” She laughs. “Aren’t they all just dogs, Cathy? From what I’ve heard, you know a thing or two about that.”
“Leave her alone.” My voice comes out in an uneven snarl. I clutch my shoulder with my free hand, panting a little with the pain.
“It just makes me so mad.” The laughter is gone from her voice now. “You’re such a liar. You told me you were mine. You told me we’d be together forever. And the first chance you get, you go running after her.”
“The cops are on their way, Sasha,” I say.
She laughs again. It’s a dry, empty sound.
“I don’t care anymore.”
Next to me I can feel Catherine tremble. I look over at her—at her narrow features, at the slight, pensive overbite of her mouth. At her long-lashed eyes, pupils wide with fear. I lean down and kiss her cheek. Then, before she can try to stop me, I step out from behind the tree.
I don’t have a plan. All I know is that Sasha is here for me. She’ll hurt Catherine, but she’ll do it to get to me. So I’m the one who has to stop her.
Instantly there’s another shot. It disappears somewhere into the darkness past me. Sasha’s about thirty feet away, gun held out from her chest in both hands. She’s still in her drill uniform—a sparkly vest, a short white skirt. The sequins catch what light there is, flaring bright as flame.
She lowers the gun ever so slightly, her eyes meeting mine.
“Why do you love her, and not me?” she asks. Her voice is almost matter-of-fact.
There are a million and one things I could say. I could point out all she’s put me through. I could use all the labels she hates so much: manipulative, abusive, controlling. I wouldn’t be wrong.
But the truth is so much simpler, and so much more complicated.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just do.”
We stand like that for a long moment, staring at one another. I look at her heart-shaped face, at the thick, dark hair like a tempest around her shoulders. I look at her mouth, sagging under the weight of her bitterness.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Because it’s true. For whatever she’s going through. For whatever I may have done to make it worse.
Her features crumple into an expression of anguish. The gun is aimed at my chest this time. No more wide shots.
Then, all at once, she turns the gun toward her own temple. The movement is so swift and so sure I realize that it’s what she’s meant to do all along.
“No,” I say, too soft. I start to run. There’s no way for me to get there in time; I know even as I reach toward her I won’t make it. “No, Sasha.”
I can hear sirens. I barely noticed them over the pounding of my own heart. But there are the red and blue beams, swirling across the highway. Lights go on inside the motel. Someone steps out, a silhouette in a doorway. A cop car swerves into the parking lot, another close on its heels.
Sasha’s hand trembles. I stop a few feet away, holding my hands up.
“Don’t,” I say.
She blinks, once, twice, like she’s waking up from a bad dream. She looks up at the cop cars. An ambulance pulls into the lot a moment later. The lights flash across her skin.
The gun falls to the ground. She sits down, hard, on the broken concrete. Her expression is empty, as if everything has been drained away.
FORTY-FOUR
Elyse
It’s the kind of gray day I love, the kind that makes me homesick for Portland. Town Lake is dull under the heavy clouds, and while December in Texas isn’t nearly as cold as I want it to be, there’s a cool current in the air.