Mom’s hand finds mine and she seizes it, forcing my attention to her. “Call 9-1-1.”
I lunge for the landline phone that Malcolm and my grandmother sent crashing to the floor when he tried to take the gun from her. I grab the handset and use it to tug the base toward me. I’m cradling it to my chest as I scramble to reach Malcolm.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell him even as his blood starts to soak into my jeans. “You’re fine. I’m going to get help.” I fumble to right the base in my lap with one hand, since my other is wadding up a throw blanket from a small couch and pressing it against the wound at his side.
I jam at buttons and listen to the ringing, ringing, ring—
Silence.
My grandmother stands by the wall, the ripped-out phone cord hanging from her hand.
“No,” she says. “That’s not how this ends. He stays right there. He broke in with your mother, and they attacked me.” Her light-blue eyes grow clearer as she speaks. “She’ll go to prison this time, both for killing my son and attempting to kill me. She realized how close the investigation was getting and decided to come after me, seeking revenge for a life forcibly lived in the shadows. My investigator was here when they broke in; he witnessed everything, so he can corroborate my statement to the police.” Malcolm coughs up more blood. “Of course, he’ll have to die,” she adds, glancing at him. “But that shouldn’t take long.”
My limbs turn to ice. “You can’t—I’mhere. I saw what happened.” But even as I speak, the doubts creep in. Not about the truth, but about who will believe it. My mother was condemned because of the story the Abbots spun, and Malcolm could be all too easily painted with the same brush as his father. If the investigator will lie for my grandmother, together they can make this night look like whatever they want. It’ll be my tainted word against theirs.
Malcolm will bleed out on the floor. I’ll lose Mom.
The gun is in my hand before I consciously decide to reach for it. I’m trembling so badly that I can barely keep it aimed at the woman threatening to take everything from me.
I expect the protests, the pleas, when they come, but not from my mom.
“No, Katelyn. No.”
I’m still staring at my grandmother’s ashen face when I answer my mom. “If she dies, then we can run again, hide again. I can call for help for Malcolm, and we can leave. It’ll be better this time, because I’ll know. I won’t mess up, and I can help.” My finger slides to the trigger. It’s still warm. My hand steadies. “I won’t let her take you.”
“Look at me. Right now.” Mom’s not yelling or even raising her voice. She’s calm and all the more compelling for it. I tear my gaze away from my grandmother and look to where my mother is pushing herself up into a sitting position. Her features pull tight as she moves, but her voice betrays none of the pain she must be in. “I have lived your entire life with a death on my conscience.”
“But you didn’t mean for him to die. It was an accident.”
“That was the worst night of my life. Seeing them, seeingher.And he didn’t defend me, just let me stand there crying as his mother…” She shudders. “It was too late when he tried to come after me, apologizing for being a coward who wasn’t free to be with the person he loved. I couldn’t think, couldn’t see. I actually thought I might lose you that night, because I felt like I was dying. And I pushed him. Not to hurt him, but I pushed him. He’s dead because of me. Every day for the past nineteen years, that’s what I live with. That moment, watching him fall. I don’t want that for you.”
Malcolm’s lips are moving, and his eyes are wide with terror. He knows what’s happening to him. And I can’t think, I can’t.
“I don’t want to lose you again,” I tell Mom. Salty tears trail down my face and into my mouth.
“Never,” she says, inching toward me. “But I’m willing to pay for what I did, and I can’t live knowing I’m the reason you took a life.”
A sob racks my body as I force the gun to my side.
“Good, baby. Good. Now give it to me.”
I let her slip the heavy weight from my fingers.
“There’s another phone in the kitchen downstairs.” Her lips turn white as she rests the gun on her thigh with her injured arm. She keeps it trained on my grandmother so she can take over for me and hold pressure on Malcolm’s wound with her good arm.
She looks like she’s seconds from keeling over, but glancing at Malcolm, I realize that just means I’ll have to run.
“I can do it,” she says, and her word is all I need to push to my feet.
I dash out of the room, skidding into the wall across from the door, my feet momentarily tangling on the rug running the length of the hall. I’m painfully aware of every thudding beat of my heart.
Racing down the stairs, I feel the railing grow warm under my palm from the friction. I leap past the final three steps and start sprinting toward the kitchen. My footsteps echo loudly in the living room. My ears are throbbing, and my ribs are screaming. I don’t hear my attacker until arms reach out of the darkness and grab me.
I scream for my mother. It’s the only thing I can think to do. A meaty fist swings at my head, but I have so much momentum going that I topple us both forward, slamming us into the island.
There’s a butcher block of knives on the counter, and I grab for it with both hands, twisting and smashing it down on his head in the same motion. I catch him right in the temple, and he goes down hard. The smack of his head hitting the stone floor nearly empties my stomach.
The bounty hunter lies motionless, and I’m whirling, jumping at every shadow in the kitchen as my breath whips in and out of me, loud, loud,loud.No one else comes at me. I don’t know where Blue Eyes is or if he’s even here. I yank the phone off the wall so hard it clatters to the floor and skitters up next the bounty hunter, but I don’t even hesitate as I dive for it.
