Page 55 of Floodgates

“Oh, that’s comforting,” I said sarcastically with a strained smile.

He grinned widely and his eyes twinkled. “I’m kidding. I think Alex was strapped to protect you, that’s all.”

“Did he shoot the guy?”

“The guy wouldn’t put down his gun; Alex had no choice but to put one in his leg.”

“So he’ll be all right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Good.”

“Why good?”

“’Cause I would’ve felt bad if Alex had to kill someone because of me,” I confessed.

“He’s had to shoot a few people, Trace, and they didn’t all live, ya know? It’s part of the job. It’s not personal. If you do something bad, you run the risk of getting hurt. Alex is there to enforce the law. Sometimes the law must be carried out with deadly force.”

“I hate guns,” I said flatly. “If nobody had them, it would be better.”

“That’s ridiculous. Guns have nothing to do with anything. It’s the person, not the gun.”

“Who in the hell is Celia Hughes?” Evan asked suddenly, clearly annoyed.

I let myself fall back against the couch as Cord brought Evan up to speed on Breckin’s latest affair.

I dozed off listening to Cord talk, and drifted in and out of sleep for a couple hours before all the policemen cleared out and my dad and Alex finally came back in the house. My dad made chamomile tea, and I got reheated soup and saltines. We all sat at the kitchen table and listened to Cord explain about Celia Hughes and the car bomb and how confusing it was to have amateur night being played out alongside the work of an obvious professional. The intruder was a nobody; the car bomb had been precisely planted. They only found it because Celia had first juggled and then dropped her keys on the way to the car, and because she was pregnant, one of the officers had volunteered to get down on his hands and knees and retrieve them from under her car. The keys had done the Murphy’s Law slide and wound up way under the car, inaccessible from either side. As he crawled and reached, the officer had seen the bomb and alerted the others. Just plain dumb luck at work. So much C4 had been rigged to the ignition key, Cord said, there would have been nothing left of her to identify. I heard the room go silent and felt all eyes on me. I said nothing and didn’t open my eyes to look at any of them.

“And you think Tracy is in the same danger?” I heard my dad ask suddenly, sounding frightened.

“I do,” Cord replied solemnly. “I don’t know what’s going on yet, but I think it has something to do with Breckin and I’m not sure what else. Someone is killing the people he’s been with, but what’s really weird is that outside of us here and Celia and Breckin, I don’t think anyone else knows he cheated.”

“So the person who’s trying to hurt Tracy must have been watching Breckin,” Alex offered, his mind obviously clicking away in thought.

“Yeah, that’s what I think,” Cord agreed, yawning quietly, absently running his knuckles down the side of my neck. “I think one of two things is gonna happen: either the person who’s doing this will eventually go after Breckin, or he or she will reveal himself or herself to him after everyone is dead.”

“But Celia Hughes is still alive, and Tracy is certainly not going to die,” Alex said adamantly, daring Cord to contradict him.

“Yeah, but Timothy Stanson is dead: he was killed in a house fire after he was beaten. Someone tried to blow up Celia today, and they were planning to up the ante with the delivery of the rabbit to Tracy.”

“So did anyone deliver any dead animals to Celia?” Evan queried.

“No.”

“Then why send the rabbit to Tracy?” Evan persisted.

Cord tipped his head back and forth. “I have a theory about that.”

“Which is?” Alex prodded him.

“I think whoever this person is is mad at Breckin and wants Tracy to know that Breckin cheated on him. I think he’s after Breckin. I think he’s trying to punish him for some trespass that we don’t know about yet, and he’s upset on Tracy’s behalf even though he, or she, plans to kill him.”

“Jesus Christ,” Alex whispered. “What the hell, Cord?”

“I know.”

“I don’t—” He took a breath. “You have to help me protect my brother.”