Maddocks waved for her to keep going, to keep moving forward, away from Kaganov. He had his rifle trained on her father. But he needed Angie to put distance between herself and Kaganov in order to give him a clear shot.
“Boots,” Kaganov demanded. “Now. Take ’em off.”
Inhaling deeply, Angie bent over and slowly began remove her boots.
A rock clattered down the bank. She froze.
Kaganov’s head jerked. He spun around. Maddocks ducked back into the foliage, but not before Kaganov raised his pistol and fired. The crack sent a flock of pine siskins scattering from the trees. Silence. Kaganov held still, his back heaving as he watched the trees. Still bent over, heart jackhammering, Angie fingered her hand slowly, surreptitiously, toward the handle of the rusted gaff that leaned against the fish station. Her fingertips touch the old splintered wood of the shaft. She closed her fist around the shaft.
As he registered her movement, Kaganov swung his gun back at her. His eyes looked like ice. Time slowed, stretched, as his finger curled and tightened around the trigger. Angie’s vision blurred as a pink glow appeared behind him. Suddenly Mila was there again, standing behind her dad, just like she’d appeared behind the Baptist before Angie had blanked out and emptied her clip into his brain.
Mila reached out her hand. Her voice filled the air, as if the wind itself were speaking.
Come. Come playum dum grove . . . come . . .
Angie couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. As Mila came closer, Angie saw that blood was pouring from her eye sockets. The crimson rivers dripped down her white face, soaking into her pink party dress, covering her white legs. Rage exploded, sending blinding shrapnel through Angie’s brain. Her mind turned black. Her vision narrowed onto only her father.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill.
She gripped the gaff handle tight and yanked it toward her. With a sharp twist of her body from her waist, using the upward momentum, she swung the gaff hard at her father’s face.
The hook met flesh, bone. The impact juddered through her arms. She gripped the gaff shaft with both hands and jerked it downward, and the rusted hook tore through her father’s skin from the eye to his jaw.
He howled as he pulled the trigger, but his shot went wild. All Angie could see now was blood. Hot blood everywhere. She placed her feet wide apart and crouched low. She stepped forward and swung the hook at him again, taking advantage of his shock. The hook tip dug into his chest this time, ripping open his shirt and the flesh across his pecs and down to his belly. He gasped, dropping his gun as he clamped both hands to his gut. Staggering backward to avoid her next blow, he slipped in his own blood. He went down hard onto his back. Angie stepped over him, straddling him with a boot on either side of his hips. She flipped the gaff around so that the hook was in the air, and she drove the back end of the shaft into his forehead with a crunch. His arms flailed at his sides. He went limp. Time slid to a halt. Absurdly, she could hear no more birds. No sound at all. The world had been muffled.
Her father’s gray eyes blinked as he stared up at her, dazed. His face was a mangled mess of meat and blood. As he breathed, a foam of tiny pink bubbles formed at his mouth.
Panting hard, she stood over him, the gaff handle slick with his blood in her fists.
Kill him . . .
But as Angie reached down and unsheathed his knife, she heard yelling. It seemed to come from far, far away, and she barely registered it. She dropped to her knees beside her father’s limp body, exhausted, dizzy. She brought the gleaming sharp edge of his hunting blade to his white throat and pressed it above his Adam’s apple, under the red beard. She registered the ginger body hair growing on the white skin of his neck, and the memory of him killing that sobbing, skinny woman flashed through her eyes again.
Roksi?
She looked up. The wind? Mila?
She saw the little girl in pink again—Mila. Standing behind their father’s bleeding head. Her sister shook her head. No. No. No . . . no killumdum . . .
Angie tore her attention away from the distraction of the little ghost and looked back down into her father’s eyes. The color of her own. Full of pain. And hate. He hated her. Her own father hated her and was the most heinous kind of killer.
She pressed the blade across his throat, breaking flesh—
No. No. No, Roksi . . . stop, Roksi!
She shook herself at the sound of the little voice inside her head, the sweet little voice. Tears flooded her eyes. She was better than this. Better than her father. Better than the sum of her past.
Not again, Angie. Not like the Baptist. No more rage. You’ve found her, you’ve found Mila. Your sister. You’ve come home to her. To your mother. They wouldn’t want this. They don’t want him to make you a killer.
Shudders seized her body.
“Angie!” Maddocks was behind her. “Angie, stop—don’t do it!” His voice came into focus. The sound of the whole world came into focus. Birdsong. The ripples of small waves on the beach stones. His hands were on her shoulders, big, firm, pulling her back, away from her father’s bloody body.
“Drop the knife, Angie. Don’t do it. We’ve got him. We got him.”
But she twisted violently out of Maddocks’s grip, shaking herself free. She bent her face close to her father’s and said, voice low, her lips near his ear, “I’m not killing you, you motherfucking bastard. That would be too easy on you. I’m going to make you pay. I’m going to put you in a cage, just like you caged all those women. For the rest of your fucking miserable life.”
Maddocks hauled her brusquely up onto her feet. She didn’t have the strength to fight him. The knife fell from her hand. It clattered to her boots. Her whole body shook. Her teeth chattered. Tears streamed down her face.
Maddocks turned her to face him. He cupped her split cheek tenderly, looked into her eyes. “Focus, Angie,” he whispered. “I’ve got it. Focus. Go with Bennett here.”
The other male with Maddocks took her hand, drawing her away, leading her down the dock and back to the shore as Maddocks rolled her father over onto his belly and cuffed him. In the distance she heard the thud of choppers.
“They’re here,” Bennett called out to Maddocks. “Takumi’s guys are here.”
CHAPTER 56
A female paramedic finished suturing the cuts on Angie’s cheek and brow in addition to a gash at the back of her head. She must have hit her head in a few places when she was Tasered and fell to the ground. Or perhaps while being lugged unconscious from the hit man’s vehicle to the chopper. She winced as pain sparked afresh under the paramedic’s touch.
“Going to want proper stitches from a plastic surgeon for your face,” the paramedic said with a smile. “But this should do until you get yourself down to a hospital.”