Mitch turned toward the lake’s shore and lifted his hands into the air. His pants fell down.
Petty bent and helped me to my feet then turned me around. Suddenly my hands were free, and I was grateful her knife hadn’t ended up in the lake along with her gun. It was a few minutes before my arms started to work again, though not very well. I stuffed my bloody and ruined hands under my shirt into my armpits.
Still brandishing her knife at Mitch, Petty said, “Pull your pants up.”
He did.
“Wow,” I said. “You know what? You really are like Sarah Connor. Except without the crazy.”
Petty gave me a strangely pleased and surprised look, then smiled at me, that beautiful, dimpled smile.
I KEPT THE knife in Mitch’s view as he yanked his pants up, zipped and buttoned them.
“Now walk toward the car.” He did as he was told, and I followed with Dekker close behind me. He was unsteady, and I was concerned he was going to tip over into the pond. My shredded left calf muscle screamed in pain as I limped.
“Where’s Randy?” I said.
“I took him to the hospital,” Mitch said.
“No you didn’t.”
“He’s gone,” Mitch said, trudging toward the shore, holding his pants with one hand and his belt with the other. “He won’t bother you anymore.”
“Is Randy in the tailings pond?” I asked.
“Of course he is,” Dekker said.
“Is my mother in there?” I said.
Mitch said nothing, and I realized I already knew the answer. I looked out over the pond, the gallons of acid within it, and watched the snow disappear as it touched the surface. I was overwhelmed by a compulsion to join the snowflakes, to dissolve and blend with them and my mother, who had vanished into those depths so many years ago.
But I had to live. I had to see that this monster got what was coming to him.
When we got to the Taurus, I turned to open the back door and suddenly heard a choking sound and scuffling behind me.
I turned back around, and Mitch was strangling Dekker with his belt with one hand while struggling to pull Baby Glock out of his pocket with the other.
I let go of my knife and gave Mitch an elbow shot to the chin, forcing him to release Dekker, who fell to the ground. Then I kicked Mitch in the groin, just like my dad had taught me. He dropped to his knees, and my gun popped out of his hand. I jumped on top of him, landing punch after punch, breaking teeth and bone, his and mine, head butting his face over and over, never wanting to stop—-
thisisthesonofabitchwhokilledmymomandmademydadacrazymotherfucker
—-until I realized that Dekker was shouting in my ear and pulling me away.
I looked at my battered hands, my skull ringing, blood running down my face, and tasted it in my mouth. I hawked it back and spat it into Mitch’s pulverized face. He panted and moaned, but didn’t bother to wipe his face.
“You can’t make me go with you,” he groaned.
I picked up Baby Glock, pulled back the slide and aimed it at his head.
“You’re going to get in your car,” I said, “and we’re going to drive you down to the hospital, where we’re going to call the cops. And if you try to escape, if you try to run, I will shoot you, and I don’t care if I go to jail for the rest of my life. My father, Michael Rhones . . .”
I could no longer speak. My father. I’d cursed him, even hated him, for most of my life, hated him for the endless drills and the training and the working out, his silences, his rules.
I’d asked myself Why? thousands of times, wondered endlessly why he’d raised me like he had. Somehow, he’d known this day would come, and he sacrificed his whole life to give me the tools he knew I’d need one day. Suddenly the love I’d felt for him as a little girl flooded me with such potency it nearly knocked me over.
I forced myself to stop crying and stood straight and tall as I faced the man who destroyed my family.
“Like Dekker said, Dad trained me for this moment. He trained me to kill. And I will kill you.”
“She will,” Dekker said.
“Get in the fucking car,” I said.
I SAT IN the front seat facing backward, my gun pointed at Mitch.
“You’re just like your mother,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“It’s not a compliment. She was a—-”
“Did you not hear what she said?” Dekker asked him. He had to use the heels of his hands to drive because some of his fingers were broken and the skin looked gray. “You probably want to keep your fucking mouth shut.”
“You’re going to prison,” I said to Mitch.
He tried to smile, his broken face looking like a watermelon dropped from the top of a ten--story building. “But I’ll get out,” he said. “No matter what you do, no matter where you go, I will find you.”
I held his gaze silently for a moment. “Oh,” I said, letting myself smile back at him. “You better hope to God you don’t.”
He stopped smiling and looked out the window. He didn’t utter another sound the rest of the way to the hospital.
Dekker laughed. “You are such a badass.”
He parked in front of the emergency room.