“Go ahead, get the tape off,” he said, and she realized he didn’t want it to be on her once he threw her from the cliff. Mom. Down there with her. Oh, no, no, no. What had he done? He ripped the tape from her face and from her hair. He pulled her to the edge and looked down, as if aiming his throwing of her and said, “What the hell?” She saw what he saw as she fought to pull away.
Trevor. Trevor was halfway down the cliff, descending, half-hidden by an outcrop of rock and a thick oak branch. She couldn’t see her mother. Cal tried to aim his gun down at Trevor and fire. Jane knocked him back from the edge, her arm still clasped in his iron grip. If she shoved him over the edge, she would go over with him.
Fine. She couldn’t let him hurt anyone else. She was never going to be whole again anyway. She realized he couldn’t shoot her and still make it look like she’d killed herself and Perri and her mom. That gave her a momentary advantage. She was small and he was big—not as big as Trevor but solid—but he wasn’t expecting her to move toward the drop.
She started shoving him toward the edge. He realized her intent and his face contorted in shock. He fired the gun down toward Trevor, and Jane heard a cry of pain.
Then he swung the gun around toward her, his eyes bright with hate.
No.
64
PERRI RAN. SHE was beyond looking for a phone or a gun, she just wanted out of the house. She burst from the mansion. No sign of Cal or Jane. Cal’s car was there, but she didn’t have the electronic key. She ran past the open gate and onto the empty road.
If she turned left, she could run downhill to Old Travis, wave down a car. She felt sure Cal had not turned in that direction.
He was taking Jane to the crash site. She knew it with certainty. This scheme of his was falling apart and Cal was cleaning house. He was going to kill Jane Norton, the girl she’d hated with a fiery heart for the past two years.
For one moment she wavered. Then she turned and ran right.
She could hear the injured Marcolin howling, chasing her. He had a gun and she had nothing. She ran down the street, the curve bringing Laurel’s red Volvo, parked, into view.
She heard a muffled scream, the crack of a shot.
David. David, I’m coming.
She turned and saw her husband and Jane fighting near the edge of the cliff. In front of a large black truck that was parked there.
The truck. She opened the unlocked door; the keys were in the cup holder. She started the engine and laid on the horn. Jane stared at her for one second, then tried to shove Cal over the side. Instead he picked her up, pinning her arms, and moved toward the edge, yelling over his shoulder at Perri to get out of the truck, he’d explain everything.
He was going to throw Jane off the cliff. Laurel’s car—he must have already killed her. He’d killed Brent Norton. He’d framed Perri as Liv Danger, using her computer. And she’d played right into his hands, let him use her hate against her.
Not anymore. She started the truck, put it into gear, and powered it toward him, starting to slide down the steepness of the rocky decline.
*
Cal hauled Jane to the edge. He could simply drop her; she fought. Not like this, not like this, not where I was supposed to die before, she thought. At the edge he looked down and saw Trevor kneeling on the ground and holding aloft a gun—Laurel’s—to fire it. Cal retreated, stumbling back, and Jane broke free, running to the right, toward the clutch of gnarled, thirsty cedars closest to the edge.
He looked up at the roar of the truck. Perri hit Cal straight on as she slammed on the brakes.
Cal flew well over the cliff’s edge, a look of soft surprise on his face, and fell into the maze of tree branches with a choked scream.
Trevor’s truck slid on the slope, tires fighting for purchase as Perri stood on the brakes, and Jane, stumbling, clutching at a tree, saw Perri’s face through the windshield. Calm, resigned, staring back at her as the truck spun and then dropped over the edge with a thundering crash.
Jane froze behind the stunted cedar she’d grabbed in her mad scramble, the tree closest to the edge.
No. Perri and Trevor and her mom. No.
She heard footsteps sliding down the stone. Marcolin, his eyes red, holding a gun, stumbling down to survey the carnage. She crouched behind the tree and picked up a rock. He was fixed on the truck he’d just seen plummet into the canopy of oaks and cedars below.
Jane hit him, hard from behind, and he dropped to his knees. She hit him again, and then again, the rock messy with blood. He groaned and she hit him in the face. Twice. Three times. He made a choking noise.
She took his gun from him and then peered over the side.
The truck, in its spin as Perri tried to stop, had gone over backside first, smashing through the branches, landing rear-first and then falling onto its side. In the cab she could see Perri, lying still, not moving. Beyond the wreck she saw, through a gap in the branches, Trevor and her mother. He must have pulled her mother clear as the truck roared over the precipice.
“Mom!” she screamed. “Trevor!”
“Your mom’s hurt bad, we need an ambulance,” Trevor called out.
Jane went back to Marcolin’s moaning form and took an orange phone from his pocket. She dialed 9-1-1, and for the second time teams rushed to the isolated cliffside on High Oaks.
Jane crawled back to the cliff’s edge. Trevor ran to the truck’s cab, peering inside, trying to see if Perri was still alive. Jane watched, gasping, listening to the emergency operator tell her that help was on the way. Please don’t be dead. Please, Mom. Please, Perri. Please. Please.
65
SO YOU’RE GOING back to school?” the therapist said. “You shouldn’t push yourself too hard after such an ordeal.” The therapist was an older woman, wearing a smart suit and very fashionable eyewear. Jane thought she was secretly pleased to have a notorious client.
Jane nodded. “After the trials. I want to get back to life. Back to normalcy. Whatever that’s going to be now.”
“You said you’re going to sell your house.”
“Yes. A nice family made an offer. And my mother, she doesn’t want to stay in Austin. San Antonio’s not so far.” They talked for several minutes about her living arrangements, then the therapist asked about the people she read about in the news. Like she had a list in her mind.
“Your mother…”
“The FBI is letting her cooperate so they can trace more of the money Cal Hall cleaned through her charity for Marcolin and the Babylon website. There are lots of overseas payments, lots of banks and other law enforcement involved.”