“I hoped,” my aunt whispered bravely, “that as a sister, you’d be grateful that at least one of you got away.”
Abigail stared my aunt in the eye. For one second, I thought we just might make it. I thought Abigail—
She pulled the trigger. Her Sig Sauer exploded. My aunt made a funny hissing sound, spun slightly left, reaching out a hand as if for balance. Abigail took aim a second time and I hurtled my boot at her head.
It connected just as she squeezed the trigger. Another gasping sound from my aunt, then Abigail spun around, pointing her gun toward me. I flipped off my second heavy-soled boot and hurtled that one as well.
I caught her shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt her. But it threw her off balance. She had to take a second to adjust her stance, during which time I grabbed three sofa pillows and started winging them through the air.
She ducked reflexively. Left. Right. Left. I used the opportunity to spring across the room.
Not away from her.
But toward her. Bounding over the coffee table, pivoting around the camelback sofa. Ducking and weaving straight into the firing zone.
Her eyes opened. Her face shone, pale and shocked in the dark, and I suffered a fresh fissure of memory. Another time, another pale face. Another person I loved and just wanted to make happy.
But it wouldn’t be enough. It was never enough. She would hurt me instead.
I drew to a halt twelve inches in front of my baby sister and stood stock-still as Abigail leveled her Sig Sauer at my chest, hot barrel touching my sternum, point-blank range.
“You should’ve saved me,” she whispered hoarsely.
“I did. I sacrificed myself for you. Time and time again. It just wasn’t enough. I loved you, Abby. And if you loved me, then you should’ve been happy for me, just like Aunt Nancy said.”
“I fucking hate—”
“Shhh…”
My little sister’s hand shook. Then her finger moved on the trigger. Just as I whipped the plastic ballpoint pen from the back of my ponytail, and, holding it horizontally between my two hands, brought it down like a steel bar against the top of her forearm, right below her wrist.
An old bartender’s trick. Sounds like nothing. Looks like nothing. Hurts like hell, right before the hard pen cuts off blood flow to the forearm and the entire hand goes numb, rendering your opponent’s fist slack and unresponsive.
Abigail’s right hand opened reflexively. She couldn’t help herself, her mouth forming a silent O of pain as her Sig Sauer clattered to the floor. I kicked it away. She caught me in the side of the head with her left fist.
Then she was battering at me, and I was doing my best to defend as the back door burst open and a dog came racing into the house, barking frantically, while a female voice rang out, “Boston PD, hands where I can see them!”
I couldn’t put my hands where Detective D. D. Warren could see them. Abigail had given up on her gun, and now had her fingers locked tight around my throat. She was squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, the dark room going even darker. My hands on hers, clawing, grappling for purchase, trying to find her fingers, force them off, as lights began to explode inside my skull.
She had such tremendous hand strength. She wasn’t just wringing the breath from my body. She was doing her best to crush my neck.
Staggering back into the low coffee table. Losing my balance. Falling sideways to the floor.
“Stop, police!”
My little sister looming above me, still holding tight, her eyes filled with almost unholy glee. Until the lines blurred, and she wasn’t my sister anymore. Instead, I peered up into my mother’s face.
Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave…
I gave up on clawing her hands and started fighting in earnest. Jab, jab, jab to her kidneys. Uppercut to her chin, right punch to the side of her face, again and again. Hitting and hitting and hitting. A year’s worth of training, the fight of my life.