She heard Aurora shout, “You need to tell her all this. You can’t just run away like a coward. Tell her. She won’t believe me.”
Angeni started to push the screen door open, saying, “Ror, what’s going on?”
She saw the back of her best friend. Then Aurora turned around. Their eyes quickly met before there was the split-second sound of a gunshot. And then, for the second time in Angeni’s week, everything went black.
Chapter 36
Sasha
It all happened so quickly.
Sasha heard the slight squeak of the screen door opening, then Angeni’s voice: “Ror, what’s going on?”
Aurora was already on edge, her hands shaky, so it was clearly an accident when she turned to Angeni and the gun went off.
Just one shot.
At first, Sasha thought Aurora had fired into the side of the house, into one of the wood logs.
But then she heard Aurora scream.
“Oh my god, Britt!” she said.
Aurora dropped the gun and went to the doorway, where Angeni’s body lay slumped. Her eyes were open and alarmed.
“Did you shoot me?” she said, clear as day.
There was a scream from the trees. Someone was there, not a deer after all. Before Sasha could figure out who it was, a car came down the driveway with a man inside that Sasha had never seen before. What was going on?
It was mayhem from there. Erik, having heard the gunshot, came running out front with Freya in his arms. Matt and Jer came running too.
There was so much blood, and Angeni lost consciousness after just a minute or two. Sasha thought she was dead. She could tell everyone else did too.
The man from the car emerged and said, “I’ve called 911.”
Then a woman with a baby came out from the trees and ran to the man, saying, “Jeff?” The man hugged the woman and the baby.
“Is she alive?” Aurora screamed.
Sasha was about to pick up the gun, get it out of the way, but then it occurred to her that she didn’t want her fingerprints on it.
Someone was going to be blamed for this, and it wasn’t going to be her.
Now
Chapter 37
Gwen
As Gwen feared, by the time she finishes the story of how she ended up on Angeni Luna’s property and witnessed the shooting, Detective Steele is looking at her like she’s a total nutcase.
“It’s a strange story, I’ll give you that,” Detective Steele says, eyebrows raised to her hairline.
“Classic case of wrong place, wrong time,” Gwen says, trying to be blasé.
“Or wrong place,righttime,” Detective Steele says.
“I don’t think someone getting shot qualifies as a ‘right time.’”
