Hennings starts inching my way, sidling past the row of squatty wooden benches in the middle of the platform.
“It’s okay, man. You’re the boss.” I raise my hands in a surrendering gesture meant to relax him, while I consider my options. The way I see it, I have only two. Draw his fire away from Evelyn, or charge the bastard.
I take an easy step toward him.
He catches on and his round face burns red with rage. “Fucker, I said stay back!”
The gun swings forward, his finger curling tightaround the trigger. As soon as the weapon leaves Evelyn’s temple, she brings her arm up under his, throwing off his aim.
The shot he fires hits one of the fluorescent tubes overhead. The light explodes, and the sound of gunfire scatters the few people who’ve trickled onto the platform at the other end of the station.
At the same time, Hennings bellows, slamming the butt of the pistol into the side of Evelyn’s head. She goes down, landing on her side at his feet.
I charge him, shoving him away from Evelyn as I grab his gun arm and push it up at a ninety-degree angle. He claws at me, his strength a surprise. No doubt he’s running on adrenaline now, in addition to psychopathic rage.
He manages to punch me in the side of the head with his left hand. I shake it off and head-butt him. The bastard retaliates with a hard kick to my left knee.
My prosthesis wrenches and we go down together in a heap on the concrete. The back of his head hits hard and he loses his grip on the pistol. With the impact of our inelegant fall, the weapon skitters under one of the benches.
With Hennings dazed and unmoving, I scramble for the gun, my stump screaming in its skewed socket. The pain is inconsequential, but the lameness of my limb shaves off precious instants as I dive and shimmy beneath the low bench to grab the weapon.
I hear Evelyn’s scream in the same second that I’m lifting my shoulders up off the ground, the pistol gripped in both hands and trained on Hennings.
He’s standing near the edge of the platform, holding Evelyn in front of him like a shield. I can’t shoot throughher, and one wrong move by her assailant and she could fall to her death on the tracks below.
Hennings peers around her. He is breathing hard, spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth. “You’ve ruined everything,” he says to me, seething with fury. “You’ve ruined her, fouling her with your body. Now this.”
He shakes his head, glancing at the ceiling of the station, where the pound of booted footfalls sounds from above. The gunfire and screams will have brought law enforcement from all directions. The station is probably already on lockdown, police only seconds away. Hennings knows it as well as I do.
“There’s only one way out now,” he says, rubbing his cheek in Evelyn’s long, unbound hair. “They won’t let me leave with her. So, I’m going to have to take her with me another way.”
Ah, Christ.
The tracks.
Evelyn’s terror is a palpable thing as she stares at me, her lovely face stricken with fear. I hold her gaze across the space that separates us, making a silent promise that I will fix this. All I need is the sliver of a chance.
Her breathing slows as our eyes lock and hold. I watch as a calmness settles over her, a resolve that awes me, especially when every fiber in my body is stretched to the breaking point with stark, cold dread.
“Walter,” she says quietly. Although he can’t see her face, I can. I can see the fortitude it takes for her to lift her hand and gently caress the arm that’s banded around her. “Walter, you’re right, darling. We can’t be together in this world. But, please . . . before we go on to the next one, I want to feel your lips on mine. Just once, mydarling.”
I stand as still as statue, watching as the madness in Walter Hennings responds to the siren sweetness of Evelyn’s voice. He relaxes his iron hold on her, just enough for her to slowly pivot in his terrible embrace.
“Oh, my love,” he murmurs, taking his eyes off me to gaze into hers.
He moves his mouth toward her. But instead of kissing him, Evelyn brings her hand up and rakes her fingernails down his face, hard enough to draw blood.
The assault startles him, staggers him back on his heels with a roar.
And in the split second of his inattention, with Evelyn now ducked out of the way, I adjust my aim and pull the trigger.
The head shot topples him.
I set down the gun as his dead weight tumbles over the edge of the platform and onto the rails below.
“Gabe!” Evelyn launches to her feet and runs to me where I’m still on my ass on the floor.
She dives into my arms, and I wrap her in my embrace.
