“How?”he snapped, clearly riled now.“How do I do that?”
She caught the anger in his eyes, saw his hand twitching on the revolver and made an urgent note to herself.Dial it down.
“You inherited her talent,” Kate said softly.“I’ve seen your sketches at the scenes.Your composition.Your eye.Thedetail.That’s hers, living on in you.A gift.And you use it like this.Forthis.”
She would have gestured towards his gun, but wisely kept her hands still.The faint light of pride moved across his face before he could hide it.
“She used to go without food so I could have new brushes,” he said quietly.“Said it was worth it.‘You’re my little Michelangelo, Quinny.’”He snorted, the fondness undercut by bitterness.“They should’ve put that on her gravestone.”
“She sounds like a wonderful woman,” Kate said.“Generous.Selfless.”
“She was,” he said, and now there was no hiding the ache.
“So help me understand.”She leaned in a little, hands still in his sightline, voice low and urgent.“How do you honor her name, her memory, by turning that talent into a… party trick?By using her gift for creation as a tool of destruction?You’re not just punishing other people’s children and parents.You’re spitting on what she gave you.You’re disgracing her gift.”
His head jerked back, as if she’d slapped him.For the first time since she woke up, the gun dipped, his grip tightening.
“Careful,” he said, voice roughened.“You don’t get to talk about honor.Not when your father left my mother to die like—”
“She didn’t raise you to be this,” Kate cut in, pressing.The window was tiny; she could feel it.“To break into motel rooms and threaten strangers and stage corpses.She gave you art and you turned it into a weapon.What would she say if she saw you now?”
“Shut up.”The words came out strangled.
“You say you’re correcting the fifth commandment,” Kate went on, ruthlessly.“But the first commandment any decent kid learns is don’t shame your mother.Don’t squander what Mary Marsh bled for.You think this is what she want—”
“Quiet!”
He lunged to his feet, rage flaring, the chair skidding back on the worn carpet.The gun snapped up again, both hands on it now, pointed squarely at the space between her eyes.
Kate froze.
The doorway was three steps away.The gap between his right boot and the chair leg: six inches.The bedside lamp: directly to her right, within arm’s reach.
He was breathing harder now, chest heaving, nostril hair quivering with each angry exhale.The cap had slipped back, exposing more of his face—reddened, sweaty, veins standing out in his temples.
“You don’t speak her name,” he hissed.“You don’t get to use her against me.”
“Okay,” Kate said, very softly.“Okay.I won’t.I’m sorry.I shouldn’t have.”
“Damn right you shouldn’t.”
They stared at each other, a taut wire of silence stretched between them.
In the parking lot outside, a car went past, tires whispering on asphalt.A door slammed somewhere, distant.A pipe gurgled.
Marsh’s knuckles were white on the gun.
If he shoots now, she thought, he won’t miss.
Her body twitched with the urge to move—to dive, to roll, to do anything except sit and wait.Years of training wanted to turn this into a calculated risk, a timed strike.But the angle was bad.He was too close.Any lunge would be suicide.
Then, from somewhere deep in the motel’s guts, a phone rang at reception.Shrill, insistent, cutting through the thin walls.
The killer’s eyes flicked, just briefly, toward the sound.
It was enough.
Kate grabbed the lamp.
