He kneels over her, grabbing hold of her hair to lift her head. Her throat is bleeding, but the cut isn’t deep enough. One more slash will put an end to her suffering, and to his.
As long as she walks this earth, he won’t be free.
She ruined Casey’s life, and she ruined his parents’ marriage, and she lured Rick away, and . . . and . . .
And she had lured his biological father away, too. She must have. Who else, what else, could it have been? It was all part of her plan to destroy him, and he— Someplace in the house, a door opens, closes. Footsteps.
She’s here. She really came, just as he’d instructed her to.
Detective Sullivan Leary.
“Noreen?” a voice calls . . .
A familiar voice . . . but it isn’t the one he heard on the phone a short time ago.
It belongs to Rowan Mundy.
Then who . . . He stares at the woman on the floor.
“Noreen?” she calls. “Noreen?”
Walking up the driveway, Mick sees his mother’s minivan parked alongside an unfamiliar car: a Mercedes SUV.
Uh--oh.
He stops short, regarding it uneasily.
Whatever it means, it can’t be good.
As he stands there wondering whether he should leave again, he hears a shriek from inside the house.
It’s his mother.
He starts to run toward the scream, but a pair of strong hands close on his shoulders.
“Stay right here,” a deep voice says, low in his ear. “Don’t move, and don’t make a sound.”
Frozen in the archway, Rowan gapes in horror at the scene before her.
Her sister is lying on the floor near the foot of the stairs, covered in blood. She’s alive, moaning. But a man is kneeling over her with a blade in his hand, pressed against her bloody neck.
He looks up at her.
Who the hell is he?
Rick is supposed to be here, but he’s too young to be Rick; he doesn’t look like Rick at all, but there’s something about him . . .
She gasps.
Casey. Rick’s stepson. He was always a quiet kid, shy, kept to himself . . .
Rick’s shadow. That’s what she used to call him.
And now he’s here, and Rick is not, and her sister . . .
Her sister . . .
She finds her voice, shrieks, “What are you doing? What are you doing?”
He scrambles to his feet, momentarily confused, caught off guard. “You . . . You’re . . . Your hair! What did you do to your hair?”
She hurtles herself at him without stopping to think. They topple to the floor, rolling, grasping . . .
The blade slices through the air, searching for its mark, but she won’t let it hit her, she won’t . . .
In one violent motion, he lifts her off him and throws her down, flat on her back. He straddles her, and she sees the madness burning in his eyes as he glares down at her, sees him raise the hand that clutches the blade, sees it arc through the air toward her chest, her heart . . .
Grasping that this moment is her last, she tilts her head back; she can’t bear to watch. Her eyes settle on the gallery of framed portraits above the stairs. They’re upside down, but she can see them: Braden, Katie, Mick, Jake . . .
Her heart.
Her heart, her soul, her life.
I would die for you . . .
She takes her last breath, but she won’t close her eyes. Fixated on the photo, she wants their smiling faces to be the last thing she sees on this earth.
There’s a blast of sound, and then she can’t breathe, and there’s blood in her mouth.
This is what it’s like to die, she realizes. It will be over soon, and then . . .
It isn’t.
Time goes on, and she can taste blood, smell it, but it isn’t her own. It’s Casey’s.
He’s on top of her, crushing her, because . . . because . . .
A muffled, far--off voice shouts something that sounds like “Sully!”
“I got him, Barnes!” a female voice shouts, closer and clearer. “We need the medics right away. Hurry! There are two females here, and one’s in really bad shape!”
She hears a commotion, and then the dead weight is being lifted off Rowan, and she sees a redheaded woman standing over her.
“Are you okay?” she asks, holstering a gun and leaning in. “Did he hurt you?”