“Hey!” he says, standing in his baggy sweatpants, holding a beer in one hand and shaking a finger at me with the other. This is not it. I back up and make my way down to the last house, a quarter mile down the dark, woodsy road, my heart in my throat because I know this one is it. Andi is there. Tom Blanc must be there. I glance behind me at the gun on the floor, anxiously making sure it’s still by my side.
When I pull up to the edge of the drive from the street, the mailbox saysCarroon it, and in the back of my head, that reminds me of something, but I can’t figure out what—no matter how hard I think, I don’t know who the fuck’s house this is. I thought something might make itself clear, but it’s just that feeling of something being on the tip of your tongue or the edge of your brain—things aren’t coming together. I instantly make the decision not to drive up. I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. Whatever’s going on, I want to sneak up on it and be prepared. See them before they see me. I pick up the gun and hold it by my side as I walk carefully and quietly up the dirt drive, and when I’m close enough, I see lights on inside the house and my heart almost stops when I see the truck—the pickup truck that followed us. It steals my breath. He’s here.
I stand frozen for a few moments, trying to decide how to proceed, but before I can make a next move, I hear something. A small sound like a cry or a faint whimper. I pad silently, gun in position and ready as I inch toward the sound, and when I see it, I have to suppress a scream. I cover my mouth and lay the gun in the wet grass and fall down on my knees next to her. It’s Andi. She’s hurt. Shot.
“Jesus,” I say. But her eyes are closed and she doesn’t speak. She only utters a soft moan of pain, and her pulse is weak. I pull off my jacket and wrap it around her waist, trying to add compression to the wound, and then I call 911. I tell them we need a medic right away. I tell them the man who shot her is still on the loose and that he’s dangerous.
“Oh, God,” I say, stroking her hair. “It’s okay, help is coming, okay? You’re gonna be okay. I’ll wait with you. It’s okay.” But then I see the back deck light come on and a screen door fling open.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice says. Jesus. It’s Tom. This is really happening. Why is he here? I don’t even know where I am or how Andi got here. It all swims in my head and I stay down on the ground with her, trying to remain unseen. Then I hear the screen door slam and footsteps down the back stairs.
“Run,” I hear Andi say in a labored whisper. I turn my attention back to her.
“Medics are coming, Andi. Okay?” I say again so she doesn’t feel abandoned, and then I duck into the shadows of the sycamores and move quickly to the front of the house while Tom looks for me out back. I crouch down in the bushes and listen. I hear him shuffling around. Then the shed door opens and closes. He flashes a light around and then goes back inside and the screen door slams again.
Inside, I hear someone crying. A woman. Muffled voices. I plead quietly to myself, praying hard to hear the sound of sirens coming down the road, but nothing. Then, suddenly, the front door swings open and the porch light comes on.
“Hey!” Tom’s voice yells. He’s heard me but he can’t figure out where the sound came from. My truck is hidden behind the trees on the road. I try to stay hidden and wait it out until help comes, but I hear him rush down the front steps and start coming in my direction, and at this point I have no choice. I hold up the shotgun, readying myself, and then I move out from behind the brush I’m hiding behind with the aim of catching him off guard. He’s holding out the flashlight on his phone in one hand. His back is to me as he flashes the light toward the other side of the yard, near the parked truck. I see a handgun stuffed in the back of his waistband, his free hand poised to grab it.
I step out, and he hears me and whips around, grabbing for his handgun as he does, but he’s met by a shotgun, only a few feet from his face. He drops his gun and holds his hands up.
“Regan?” he says, and I’m afraid of dropping the gun because I’m shaking so hard. I have never done anything remotely like this before, so now that I have control, I don’t know what to do with him. I don’t want him to run, and it’s freezing out here, so while I still quietly beg the universe to let me hear the sirens coming, there’s nothing, so I tell him to go inside.
“You’re making a mistake,” Tom says, but he does slowly walk up the porch stairs and into the house backward, without taking his eyes off me. I follow, and when I’m inside, I see a man I don’t recognize sitting in an armchair, bound to it with zip ties. Then I hear banging.
“Regan!” I hear someone yell, and I quickly kick away the chair from under the doorknob and open the door where the noise is coming from. Sasha practically falls out of the bathroom, then freezes when she takes all of us in. I stare at her, taking it all in myself.
“Jesus,” I say. “Fuck.” I don’t know what I expected to see, but not this. “You’re part of this?” I ask her. Her face is pale, and she just looks at me, blinking.
“No,” the man in the chair says.
“Who the fuck are you?” I ask, but before anyone can speak, Tom rushes toward me, and I don’t think. I just close my eyes.
And then I shoot.
“Fuck!” Tom yells, his face red and filled with fury as he looks at his shoulder. I’ve hit him, but it’s little more than a graze. He’s bleeding a decent amount but he’s not badly hurt. I’ve only shot this gun once before, at the self-defense lessons Jack forced me to take. I’m not a good shot, but the rage inside me fuels me to cock the gun again.
But before I can shoot, Tom has lunged at me again. This time so swiftly that he’s on top of me before I can move a muscle. It’s like he’s an expert at taking down an enemy with a weapon or something—it’s so fast and seamless, he must have been trained to do it. Whatever disarming maneuver he uses, it only takes an instant before my weapon has dropped to the ground and my arm is painfully pinned behind me.
Sasha doesn’t go for the gun. She just sits there with her hand on her heart, watching. Is she in on this, or just in shock? Tom snatches my shotgun from the wood floor and pushes me down onto the sofa, pointing the gun at me.
“Goddammit,” he screams. Sasha winces. I feel the panic rising inside me. I don’t know what’s happening here.
“Andi is out there, Sasha. What are you doing? Help her!”
“What?” Sasha says, her eyes flitting back and forth between me and Tom.
“We’re gonna get out of here, Sash. Okay?” he says.
I see the fear in her eyes and although I’m still trying to understand how the scene I find myself in came to be, I can tell she’s afraid to go with him. I can tell she isn’t some monster letting Andi bleed out. She’s captive, too. Tom kneels in front of her, but he keeps the gun in hand, knowing I won’t move—knowing he can take me down in seconds. He pleads with her.
“Listen,” he says softly. “I did everything I did for us—I made sure you weren’t hurt when they set out that order on you. I saved your life. I got out of the mess my family put me in. All this—this is the shitstorm that happened because of them. We can walk away,” he says, and I think about the cop sirens—how it hasn’t even been fifteen minutes since I called and we are out in the middle of nowhere. Will they get here in time?
Tom’s leaving means he plans on running, which means there’s no reason to kill us, so even though there is a rush of relief that surges through me, I can’t help worrying what would become of Sasha.
“We get Chloe and just drive. I have everything we need. New plates for the car, IDs—it would be easy. Just tell me that you understand why this all had to happen, and let’s just go.”
“What about Drew?” she asks, and then I wonder if she is really considering this or if she’s just stalling. I think about Andi outside and wonder how much time she has. I watch Sasha as she looks at Tom intently. He glances down to take her hand in his free hand and in that split second, Sasha quicklymakes eye contact with me and then moves her eyes with a slight twitch of her head behind me and down, so that’s where I look.
