Leonard went still. “It’syou,” he said, pointing the gun at Charlie.
“Charlie!” I yelled, struggling to stand on my one good foot.
The helicopter bore down on us, propellers spraying water outward in waves from where it hovered above.
A loud, artificially amplified voice echoed across the lake. “Leonard Mandich, drop the weapon and put your hands in the air. You’re under arrest.”
Tate?He’d come with Charlie and Dad, too?
Leonard didn’t react to the arrival of the helicopter or the order; his attention still focused on Charlie. He shuffled back, heels knocking against the edge of the boat. “I thought I had to be seeing things, but it really is you. How’d you get on this boat?”
Charlie still didn’t reply.
“Drop the weapon!” Tate hollered over the speaker again. “We won’t give you another warning!”
Shaking his head back and forth rapidly, Leonard ignored the order again. “It’s not possible. You’re dead. You’re rotting at the bottom of this lake.”
“So will you.”
And then Charlie rushed him.
Leonard tried to back away, lifting the gun to shoot, realizing too late he was already at the edge of the boat.
A shot rang out. With stunned surprise, he tipped backwards, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
He was dead before he hit the water.
“Charlie!” I yelled, lunging for him.
Except something was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
As exhausted as I’d been just a few seconds ago, it was nearly impossible to move now. In fact, it was difficult to breathe at all.
My one good foot collapsed beneath me. I barely caught myself in time to sit on the edge of the boat, rocking it violently.
I looked down, perplexed, still noting my oozing, bloody, shattered ankle.
Huh. Why couldn’t I feel it anymore? And where’d all the blood on my shirt come from?
“Reece?” Charlie turned toward me, sounding more horrified than I’d ever heard him.
He had every right to be scared. There was a perfectly round hole in his stomach, exiting out the back of his see-through jacket, shot right through the center of him.
Leonard must’ve fired at the same time he was gunned down by someone in the helicopter.
Charlie’s hands hovered over the hole, shocked, before he looked up at me, and his face morphed from stunned terror to downright devastation.
“Reece!”Charlie screamed, anguished.
I didn’t have time to ask what was wrong before I, too, tumbled over backwards into the cold, blue water.
With a gunshot wound ripped straight through my chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Iwas back in the lookout.
