He didn’t answer me. Simply pointed the barrel of his gun at the panel on the wall. “Reset the panels.”
I hesitated, and he shouted, “Do it, you stupid bitch, or they’re all dead.”
Trembling, I turned, my fingers barely cooperating as I reset everything. The alarm and the security plans blipping back into place.
“You…” He gestured at Hadley then at Charleigh, Raven, Emery, and Piper, who remained face down on the floor, their spirits coiling with uncertainty.
Hadley dropped her head and rushed over to them, pulling out a roll of thin twine from her pocket. She knelt behind Charleigh and began to bind her wrists, and Raven started to shift, no question willing to give it everything to protect her sister. Only Ethan was across the floor, pointing the barrel of the gun at her head. “Don’t fucking think about it. Any one of you move, and you’re all dead.”
On a cry of hate and fear, Raven’s eyes slanted to me for help before she slumped back down. Hadley quickly shackled each of them.
Ethan slowly strolled back in my direction. A wicked serpent who’d come to destroy. He tucked his gun into his back waistband then dug into his pocket and pulled out a box of matches.
“Ethan,” Hadley gasped as she stood. “No, you promised. Daisy and I walk out of this. Alive.”
He looked at my sister with a sneer. “You’re even more stupid than I thought.”
He walked into the kitchen, lit a match, and held it up as he grinned. “Now, let’s see how fast he comes running this time.”
Then he let it flame against the bottom of the curtain that hung over the kitchen sink.
FIFTY-TWO
CASH
SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
Cash stumbledtoward the double sliding doors that led from the emergency room and out into the blinding glare of the breaking day. He felt as if his mind were detached from his body. His heart severed from his soul.
A walking shell while his ghost hovered in the blank space above his head.
They were dead.
All of them.
His mother.
His father.
His brother.
Nausea roiled in his guts, crawling from a dark pit inside him and slipping out to saturate every molecule of his being.
A festering sickness that corrupted and decayed.
Eating him from the inside out.
He blundered out into the parking lot. No clue where he was going.
Disoriented.
Lost.
Once Daisy had been discharged in the middle of the night, Ms. Lopez had forced her into leaving, doctors ordering that she needed to rest after the mild smoke inhalation she had suffered.
She tried to refuse. Tried to cling onto Cash to give him hope and support.
But there was none of that.
