“You don’t know what I want to do.” She adjusts her grip on the gun. Blood dribbles down the side of her head. Her forehead is sticky with sweat and dirt.
The man can’t hold himself up any longer and slinks to the ground in slow motion. He’s still breathing hard. I refuse to look at his leg. I can’t handle blood. I keep my eyes locked on Genevieve. She doesn’t seem to mind that he’s crumpled.
“I know that you’re just scared and don’t see another way out, but things don’t have to end like this. You’re not someone who hurts people. You’re a kind person.” I force the anger and revulsion out of my voice, doing my best to sound friendly despite her wickedness. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it out of this alive. “This doesn’t have to go on. It can just be over.”
She shakes her head wildly. “No. No. No, it’s not over. It can’t be over.” She steps closer and points the gun at my head. “Get on your knees!”
Everything stills. A jay warbles in one of the trees above us.
“Genevieve, think about it. You can’t do this.” I gesture manically with my hands in front of me. “I—”
“I said get on your knees,” she hisses.
I bend to my knees while talking as fast as I can. “Think about how much Mason needs you. How much he needs you to take care of him. Nobody can take care of him like you do. Nobody. I’ve never seen a better mom.” It’s all a lie. She was about to abandon Mason. She wasn’t saving Mason. She was saving herself. But I’m speaking directly to her weak spot. Attention and praise are drugs she can’t resist, and I flood her with her favorite poison. “You’ve worked so hard to champion for him all these years, and honestly, I’ve never seen a woman who’s more dedicated to her kids. You’ve sacrificed everything for him. People will see that. They’ll understand why you had to do what you had to do.”
There’s a moment—just a split second—where she pauses to consider my words, and I duck, covering my head with both hands, and spring up, plowing into her gut like a football player. She stumbles backward with her arms flailing wildly, sending the gun soaring through the air. She tries to run for it, and I grab her by the hair, yanking her back. Her feet fly out from underneath her, and she lands on the ground with a hard thud. I jump on top of her before she has a chance to do anything, straddling her with both legs. I grab one of her wrists and pin her arm down, working frantically to grab her other arm while she fights against me.
“Get off me!” she screams, bucking wildly underneath my body. Her face is furious, pupils huge. She claws at me with her free hand. Her fingernails rake into my skin and scrape deep. I slam my elbow into her chest, grinding it into her collarbone. She jabs her knees into my back.
“Ah!” I cry out as my lower back spasms from the impact. She shoves me off and rolls out from underneath me, scrambling to get the gun. I twist around, grabbing one of her ankles and jerking her backward, sending her crashing back to the packed ground. She struggles along the dirt, snake crawling and inching toward the gun, her arms outstretched as far as they’ll reach, but I’m not letting go. I wrench her leg, and she shrieks in pain. She stops crawling, but not because she wants to. Only because I’m in position to pull her hip out of its socket if she doesn’t.
“It’s over,” I say, panting hard. The man she shot is slinking away, crawling toward the truck, but I pay him no attention and just let him go. The police can worry about him. She’s the one I’m not letting get away. I spring up and smash my foot into her gut. The wind is knocked out of her lungs in an audible oof. I snatch the gun from the ground and spin around, towering over her with the gun clasped in my hands, and point it straight at her.
Her eyes are wild. Hair splayed around her in the dirty broken leaves. She’s still trying to catch her breath. But she doesn’t look afraid. Not like I felt. A wicked grin spreads across her face. She puts her arms up in mock surrender, flat against the ground. “What are you going to do now, Casey? Shoot me?”
“I don’t need to. I’m going to sit right here until the police come, and then I’m going to take great joy in watching them arrest you.” I do my best to keep my hands steady on the gun. She’s like any other kind of animal. They can smell fear. I will my phone to be connected and strain my ears for the sound of approaching sirens, but the only thing I hear is the sound of the truck peeling away.
Genevieve dramatically rolls her head from side to side. “I don’t see any police.” She sounds almost drunk.
“What do you think I was doing laying out there in the grass? I recorded this entire thing, and then I called them.” Except I’m not sure the call went through. The reception is sketchy out here. Someone had to hear the shot, though. Someone called. Please let someone have called.
“Your stupid video doesn’t prove anything,” she spit.
“You just shot an innocent man!”
She snorts. “He’s hardly an innocent man, and besides, I only shot him in the leg.” She says it like it’s an absolution of wrong. Is she that delusional?
“What did you do to Mason?” My voice cracks with emotion as I stare into her makeup-smeared face. What will happen to that poor boy? She’ll never get near him again once they find out how she hurt him, but will he ever be right again? Is it possible to undo all she’s done?