My heart started again. “Mae.”
A million thoughts tumbled through my head.
“Heath! Move! What if it’s the cops? You can’t be here!”
He might have been right. Mae’s scream might have been a warning that we’d been found and I needed to disappear into the woods.
But what if it wasn’t that?
Even if it meant going to jail, I was going back to them.
“Get a gun.” I pushed my legs harder than I ever had before, sprinting down the path.
Everything around me became a blur in my hurry to get to them. “Mae!” Where the fuck were they?
I got to the dock, then froze at the scene playing out in horrifying detail in front of me.
When I’d returned to the house, I’d left Rowe, Mae, and Ripley by the water.
An extra person stood among them now.
Rowe and Zye were locked in a silent battle, no more than fifty feet separating them.
Zye had one hand clamped down on Ripley’s shoulder.
The other held a shining silver gun. He held it barely out of Ripley’s line of view and pointed right at the back of his head. He didn’t look in my direction, but there was no doubt he’d noticed my arrival.
“Well, hey, Michaelson. Fancy meeting you out here in the woods? It’s like a class reunion now, all of us here together. You, me, Teach, and Pritchard. Shall we get drunk and reminisce about the good old days in Gen Pop?”
None of us said a word. All I could focus on was the gun pointing at the back of Ripley’s head.
Behind me, Liam skidded to a stop, taking in the scene.
He pulled his gun, aiming it at Zye. “Let him go.”
Zye gave a lazy glance in Liam’s direction. “What is this? Were you guys having a party? I’m going to assume my invitation got lost in the mail, and not that you didn’t want me here.”
“Nobody has ever wanted you anywhere, Zye.” Rowe’s eyes flashed. He took a step forward, but Zye moved the gun closer to Ripley’s head.
“Now, now. Stay where you are. I’m having some time with my son. Aren’t we, Ripley? Some father-son bonding is what we need.”
Liam’s voice was strangled from behind me. “I said let him go.”
Zye clamped down on Ripley’s shoulder. “How good a shot are you, lawyer? Confident enough you’ll hit me and not him?”
Ripley let out a wail of pain.
It cut through me like glass. I staggered forward but froze when Zye glared at me. “Don’t even fucking try me, Michaelson. You know exactly what I’m capable of.”
I wished like anything I hadn’t left that knife behind in the shed. Cursed everything for not putting it in my pocket instead.
Zye knew perfectly well that he had the upper hand. “Right, so here’s how we’re going to play it. I can either walk out of here with Ripley, nice and calm and nobody has to get hurt. Or, I can turn the four of you into the cops. Heath goes back to prison, and the three of you join him for aiding and abetting a convicted murderer. And Ripley ends up with me anyway, since I’m his last living biological relative.”
My stomach rolled at both options, nausea rising in my gut.
Zye’s grin spread ear to ear, twisted and menacing, not meeting his eyes. Shadows fell across his face in the darkening evening, sharpening his cheekbones and glinting off the barrel of his gun. “Well, what’s it to be? Time’s a ticking, boys. Ripley and I have places to be.”
None of us said a word.
Zye had us, and he knew it. He knelt to Ripley’s height, twisting him around so he faced him.
Ripley’s cries grew louder, faced with a man he didn’t know who held him too tightly. He struggled to get to Rowe, terror clear in his wide eyes, the tears streaking down his face and a cut-off cry that ripped from his throat. “Daddy!”
Rowe’s knees buckled at the word. My heart clenched, and a sob ripped from Mae’s throat.
Zye frowned. “I’m your daddy, son.”
Ripley wasn’t having any of it. He twisted and turned in Zye’s clutches, arms out toward Rowe, his high-pitched screams reverberating around in the silence. “Daddy! Daddy!”
Rowe choked on an agonized cry. “Please, Zye. Let him go. We’ll give you whatever you want—”
I searched for an opportunity to get Ripley away. There had to be something, but I’d never thought Zye stupid. He knew exactly what he was doing. None of us could get to Ripley without risking Zye opening fire. I didn’t care about myself, but Zye was just as likely to pull that trigger with the gun aiming at Ripley or Mae.
I couldn’t have that.
Zye snarled in Rowe’s direction, pulling Ripley back tight against him, pinning his arms. His laugh was bloodcurdling. “What I want? Hey, kid? You like guns?”
Zye shoved the gun in Ripley’s face.
The little boy blinked, his eyes crossing when he tried to see the gun pointed an inch off his forehead.
He stopped crying.
Agony speared through me at the realization of what was going down. It punched through the shock, sharp and fast. I was going to have to stand here and watch Zye take him. After everything we’d done to keep him safe, it was all going to come down to this one moment, where there wasn’t a thing we could do. Zye held all the power with that gun held to Ripley’s head.
He seemed encouraged by Ripley’s silence. “Of course you like guns. All little boys like guns, don’t they? Well, where we’re going, there’ll be all sorts of guns for you to play with. I’ll teach you everything I know about them. How to clean one. How to shoot one…” He chuckled as he looked over at Rowe. “I’ll teach you how to point one right at a person’s head and watch their brains fly out the back of their skull. Sound good?”
Ripley didn’t make a sound.
Neither did the figure moving in the shadows.
I saw him in my peripheral vision at the last second, but it wasn’t long enough to make a sound.
Zye turned, sensing the same thing I had, but it was too late.
Vincent’s knife was already deep in his neck.