Yes.Of course I want that. Rage has been coursing through me since the Nichols shooting. It seeps out at every target it can find. The man who put the gun in Clay’s hands. The woman who slept with my husband. The system that failed the Lucas family. Hospitals and schools. His mother who didn’t make sure he took his meds. His father who didn’t fight hard enough to have him committed. Who clung to the belief that they could care for him at home. Who didn’t want to lose his child.
And then Mitch for showing me what I’m capable of, and Rowan for giving in to his demons, and even my girls for wanting pink towels. It’s not rational, where it flows—this rage, after it’s done feasting on the first course, which is always, always, myself.
Fuck, Elise. Pull yourself together!I wrap my hands around the rifle.
“Okay,” I tell him. “I’ll do it. But I can’t leave my family. You can leave. Find another place to start over. You’ve gotten very good at hiding. I can see that. You’ve been masterful. Surpassing anything I could have taught you.”
Wade is again taken aback by the change in my demeanor. He watches me now as I go on.
“The boots,” I say. “Bought at different locations? The treads sanded down?”
He nods cautiously.
“And the zip ties, the chloroform, the plastic sheeting on the floor?”
He repeats the gesture.
“I presume you were careful picking up this Brannicks kid, however you managed that. He’s not as small as I am. Was he high on something? Is that when you did it? He smells bad, like you’ve had him for a couple of days. He looks dehydrated.”
“I told you, I was expecting you to find me sooner,” he offers in defense. “I thought you’d be smarter. That you’d call the hotels and find out about the conference and know that would be the perfect location.”
“I haven’t been myself.”
He looks remorseful, like he didn’t mean to cause this fallout. But there is always fallout.
I continue, “The plastic will melt in the oven. The body will burn. I can do the kill so it’s through and through. That way I won’t have to worry about letting the body cool and searching for the bullet in a pile of ash and bone. I can’t go with you. I can’t burn the boats. But we will always be connected by this. You will always have this piece of me, and that has to be enough.”
Wade is silent now, surprised by my proposed compromise.
“I will kill Brannicks, but not in a way that will prevent me from being with my family, from returning to my life,” I continue. “I think you’re right. I think this is what I need to find peace. Even if you and I are the only ones who will ever know. But how will we get out of here? How will we cover our tracks?”
He glances out the window, and I use this moment to release the rifle. I hide it behind my back.
Fantasy and reality are at war inside his head. He never believed it would be this simple. That I would leave my children. I see the wheels turning again.
“I planned it all out, Elise. How we’ll leave together, where we’ll go...”
“No—that can’t happen, don’t you see? You know that. I can never leave my children. If I told you I could, you would know I was lying. You would know I would always long to find my way back to them. This has to be enough. I will kill this monster, and we will be bound together forever. And then I can help you, see? I can help you stay hidden by pretending to look for you. You’ll be able to live in peace, not looking over your shoulder. Find a nice girl. Maybe start a family...”
He moves slower now as he thinks about this new twist to his plan. It’s better, and he knows it. But more than that, his delusion is morphing into something real, something tangible, and it is shifting the emotions inside him from an anxious high to a euphoric longing. He wants a normal life. He wants what he craved as a child, and I am showing him a way to have it, even after all he’s done.
He looks disoriented, but the plan is taking hold. “I have the truck. I’ll drive you to your car. And I brought a pull rake. Just like that man used in the case from Colorado. There won’t be any tracks. And there will be too many boot prints to sort them out.”
“Right,” I tell him. “Too much evidence or not enough.”
“Yes,” he says as he settles into these new feelings. “Let’s go.”
I nod, tilt my head. Smile. The body language of reassurance. “Ok. How are we going to do this? Are you going to give me my gun?”
“Once we get inside the Kill Room. I’ll stand behind you, then hand you the gun.”
I take a breath and make my move.
I pull the rifle in front of me and aim it at his chest.
Wade is stunned—frozen the way he was that day at Nichols. But it doesn’t last. Like me, he’s now been here before, and he’s not the same person. He has the memory of this emotion and can wrangle it under control. He lifts my gun and points it at my face.
“Oh, Elise! Why did you do that?”
