“Get the gun, Evangeline,” he said. “Get it and bring it over here.”
Evi pushed herself to her feet. She was trembling visibly. She looked at Nikki with desperation in her eyes.
“Get the gun!” he shouted. “I’ll cut her again! I swear to God! I don’t care any more about this child than you ever cared about me.”
“Do what he says,” Nikki told her. “It’ll be all right.”
How could she even say something so stupid? What part of this was all right? But she kept her voice calm and strong.
“Do what he says.”
She watched Evi pick the gun up like it was a dead rat, distaste and fear twisting her face. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold on to it.
“Stay calm, Evi,” Nikki murmured to her. “It’s going to be all right. Just stay calm.”
*
EVI LOOKED AT THE GUN in her hands. Stay calm? Every cell in her body was trembling. She had never been so terrified in her life. It felt as if her nerves were wrapped around her throat, growing tighter and tighter. She could hardly breathe.
“Bring the gun over here,” he ordered.
She looked at the weapon in her hands, then at the stranger holding a knife to the throat of her daughter. Both of them her children. His father had died because of him. Now her daughter might die by his hand. None of it should have happened. Her mother shouldn’t have died of an overdose. She should never have put Evi in a position to be taken advantage of by a man she should have been able to trust. Ted Duffy shouldn’t have come to her room that night. Evi shouldn’t have leaned on him. So many decisions by so many people had brought them to this moment, and the result was this battered animal holding a knife to Mia’s throat, a madman with an agenda only he could understand.
Evi walked toward him, holding the gun in front of her like some kind of offering.
“Put it to my head,” he ordered.
“What?”
“Put it to my head,” he said again.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s time to close the circle, Jeager, Evangeline Grace,” he said. “I came here to close the circle. It started with you. It ends with you. I didn’t come here to kill you. I came here for you to kill me.”
*
SHE HAD BROUGHT HIM into the world. She would take him out of it. That was the circle, Charlie thought. She had given him to the cycle of madness that had been his family. He had ended their lives: The father who had tormented them, who would have disowned them. The mother who had never protected them, never nurtured them. Diana. He couldn’t leave her to self-destruct or to be destroyed by a man who only wanted to use her. Charlie had always loved her best. He had always protected her. He had been protecting her even as he cut her throat with the wakizashi he had taken from their father’s collection, the knife he now held to the throat of the child. A quick, painless death. A kiss to take her to the afterlife.
All that was left was for him to die.
That was the circle.
He had begun his search for his birth mother with no clear picture of what he wanted from her. He had known only that he had to find her, the woman who had brought him into the world and given him away like a puppy to the first stranger who would take him. Or maybe she had done it for money. Maybe that was what their father had meant when he used to say, “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
As the other pieces fell into place, his purpose for finding her had become clear. She could do this one thing for him, this one kindness. It would be their one perfect moment as mother and son. She had given him life and now she could give him the essence of life in death.
This was how it was supposed to end. He would be gone, and she would live with the memory of him forever.
He could hear a helicopter getting close. More police. It didn’t matter. It would all be over soon.
“Do it,” he said.
She looked back at the policewoman.
“Do what he says, Evi,” the cop said. “Stand to the side of him. Put the gun to his temple.”
“No. No,” his mother said, crying. “Oh my God . . .”
“It’s all right, Evi. Just do what I tell you,” the cop said. “Stand to the side of him. Put the gun to his temple.”
“No. Please! I can’t!”
“Do it,” he said. “Do it!”
He tightened his hold on the child as he shouted, scaring the girl. She wailed for her mother. For their mother.
Evi raised the gun, her hands shaking so badly he thought she would strike him with it before she could put it to his head.
“Do it,” he said.
“I can’t!” she sobbed.
“Do it or I’ll kill her!”
“Mommy!” the child wailed.
“DO IT!”
*
NIKKI HEARD THE CHOPPER coming closer. Whop, whop, whop. From the corner of her eye, she could see the spotlight sweeping back and forth. She kept her focus on the bizarre tableau in front of her.