I waited, held my breath lest she hear me and turn around. Then I sprang on her when the moment was right.
The gun discharged, but she was going down. I landed hard, the wind once again torn from my lungs. She struggled, screaming so loudly there was a ringing in my ears when she stopped.
Secure the gun.
I reached under her body, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe she’d tossed it aside. Maybe it fell when she fell. Maybe…I searched the debris near her hand. She wasn’t moving. I thought that maybe I’d knocked her out. But the blood. There was blood. Everywhere.
I found the gun. It was caught between our bodies, her arm twisted from the break in her humerus. The pain must have knocked her out.
So why was I feeling lightheaded all of a sudden?
Then the pain came.
Oh…that’s it…
Chapter 30
Kate
The next few days were a blur of activity. The local police sent the entire police force, which consisted of five people, toward the property when Ash called to let them know I was on the way. A grandmotherly-looking woman in a uniform took me back to the station while the rest went in search of Donovan. I don’t even remember giving a statement, but they tell me I did.
I remembered hearing the ambulance. I remembered the lights. It was so surreal, so much like the night the lights reflected off the dunes where Joshua’s body lay. They took me to the hospital, telling me about Amanda. Amanda would be okay. She’d broken her arm and likely dislocated her shoulder. She might need surgery. But she’d be okay. I didn’t understand why I should care that Amanda would be okay.
Ash was there at some point. Ash and Joss and Rose. Kirkland and David were holding down the fort, but Ash thought it would be a good idea to bring Rose and Joss along. I don’t know why.
My daddy arrived later. Maybe days later. Maybe that day. I don’t know. Time became fluid in those days just after.
I remembered seeing Donovan. I remembered thinking he looked like Donovan, but he was too pale. Too weak. And the white bandages wrapped round his chest…that wasn’t right.
Nothing about it was right.
I remembered crying a lot. Too much.
“…puncture lung. Close to the aorta. A few minutes more…”
It was just too much.
“You promised me,” I said, holding his cold hand. “You promised you’d come find me. You’ve never broken a promise, never made a promise you knew you couldn’t keep. Don’t start now, Donovan. Don’t start breaking promises now. Not to me.”
But I was so afraid that it was too late.
It was.
Too late.
Chapter 31
At the Compound
“Amanda Graham,” Detective Emily Warren said slowly. “She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic at the age of thirteen. Her parents believed that the disease could be controlled with medication. And it was, for a time. But the death of her boyfriend, Joshua Thompson, when she was eighteen sent her on a downward spiral. She managed to hide this spiral for some time, even attended college for a while. But then she disappeared. Her parents had no clue where she’d gone. Then, one day last June, she suddenly reappeared. She appeared to have her condition under control, so her father gave her a job at his tech company in Silicon Valley.”
“Exactly what you’d expect a loving father to do,” Kirkland said.
Emily glanced at him, but didn’t comment.
“She ran into Kate Thompson, her boyfriend’s twin sister, at the cemetery a few weeks later. They began a friendship that extended to Amanda potentially moving some of the tech company’s financial accounts to Miss Thompson’s bank. But at the same time, Amanda was targeting Kate for revenge. She obtained a copy of the police reports on the murder of Joshua Thompson and came to the conclusion that Kate Thompson was the cause of the fight that ended Joshua’s life.”
“Which is completely insane,” Kirkland interjected.
Emily glared at him.
“Amanda tested at the genius level on every intelligence test she was ever administered. It didn’t take much for her to figure out how to build a couple of IEDs. She was also something of a computer genius, working as a hacker during some of her missing time—we found emails on her computer addressed to a Philistine, a known hacker active during that time, on her computer—so it also wasn’t a stretch for her to hack your system, David.”
He inclined his head without making comment. He still blamed himself for the breach because, after all, it was his system.
“The police have raided her home in San Francisco, as well as an apartment she kept here in Santa Monica. They found enough evidence to put her away for a very long time. So, as soon as she is released from the hospital in Austin, she’ll be put on a plane to California. The district attorney believes the family will urge her to take a plea deal.”