“Just hold on,” she begged. “Help is almost here.”
But it was too late. His whole body had slumped, releasing whatever tension he’d been holding in it. She could tell from his vacant eyes that he was gone.
Then she heard the gunshot.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Jessie was in the dining room fifteen seconds later.
She was still panting for air when she arrived and tried to make sense of what she saw.
Claire Vallejo was lying on her back on the dining room carpet, unmoving. There was a gaping wound in her left chest. A bloody pair of scissors rested in her left hand. Devery was standing over her, shoulders slumped, arms at his side. His gun rested on the table beside him.
He looked up when she came in. His eyes were brimming with tears and he looked horror-stricken. He started to speak but it only came out as mumbles.
“I can’t understand you, Devery,” she told him. “What the hell happened?”
“When I started to call it in, I looked away from her for a second,” he said, sounding anguished. “She must have been hiding the scissors behind her back because when I looked up again she had them in her hand and started toward me. I fired at her shoulder, just hoping to disable her. But she kind of lurched forward as I did and I guess I misjudged and got her in the chest. She went straight down. By the time I got over to try to help her, I saw that she was already dead.”
He seemed to suddenly get wobbly, as if he might faint, and reached out to the table for support. Jessie rushed over to steady him, easing him into one of the dining room chairs.
“She came at me. I had no choice but to shoot,” he said, looking up at her with pleading eyes. “I only meant to wound her.”
Jessie could feel the stirrings of grief and shock at Sam Goodwin’s death starting to overcome her. She could barely process that the woman responsible for his murder and threeothers was suddenly dead too and would never face true justice. The sirens were right outside the house now. They were deafening.
Jessie tried to force all that out of her head and focus on the broken officer looking up at her with pleading eyes.
“It’s okay, Harper,” she said, hoping she sounded convincing. “It’s okay.”
Devery fought back tears as he continued to look up at her, like a little kid hoping for comfort from his mom.
“I’m so sorry,” he cried, finally giving into the tears. “I had no choice.”
Jessie reached down and wrapped her arms around him. He leaned in, burrowing his head in her stomach. She heard the shouts of officers entering the house, but didn’t respond. They would find them, along with the uninjured Priya Kapoor, soon enough. Instead she simply waited as she hugged Harper, hoping it might offer him comfort and be a salve to fight off her own encroaching anguish.
She clung to him tightly, praying that eventually the two of them would get through this nightmare together.
