Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be. Maybe in his mind, it isn’t.
I am not letting go.
I feel my hunter’s blood, rushing hot and fast with every heartbeat.
This isn’t about you.
Oh, it is, you coldhearted bastard. It is.
20
GWEN
I sleep only because I know I must. My family is here. They’re safe. It feels like things are resolving, like our normal lives may be just within reach again.
I’m the only one who knows it’s a lie.
Four hours later, I open my eyes and slip out of bed, waking without any transition at all. No sense of peace. I silently get dressed in jeans, a comfortable shirt, sturdy boots. I can’t risk unlocking my gun safe next to the bed; it will beep, and Sam will wake up immediately. But that’s okay. While he was at the station, I moved my favorite gun, the Sig, to the small living room safe we keep under the couch. Extra mags and another box of ammunition as well.
I pause in the doorway and look back at Sam. He’s fast asleep. I convinced him to take a rare over-the-counter sleep aid last night, and he’s down for the count. Good. He’ll need this. His battle is going to be hard too. In some ways, as hard as mine.
I take in the sight of him and try to etch it on my heart, embed it in my brain. I want to remember this moment of quiet. How he looks. How it feels.
I look in at Lanny, curled on her side, pink-and-purple hair spread out in a colorful fan across her pillow. My beautiful, strong, volatile girl, inches away from being someone the world will have to reckon with on her own terms. I am so proud of her it hurts. Tears roll silently down my cheeks, cool against my hot skin, and I wipe them carefully away before I turn to my son.
Oh, Connor, my complicated, wonderful boy. I love you more than I can ever say. I fear for you most of all, but you always surprise me. Always. I drink in the sight of him tangled in a restless pile of sheets, caught between boy and man, and I think, You will grow up to be like no one else in this world. Not his sadistic, hateful father. Not like me either. Unique and beautiful and mended strong. It’s all I can do not to go in, wake him up, curl him into my arms, and rock him like the baby he used to be.
Closing that last door feels like cutting off pieces of myself.
I collect my holster, my jacket, the Sig, the magazines, the ammo. I add the small ankle holster and .38 revolver, a cop’s emergency gun.
Then I look at the clock.
It’s eight forty-five in the morning. Outside the windows, the sun is up and warm, generous on the grass. Leaves flutter. Cars move on the street as neighbors leave for work. Everything is normal, everywhere but here in the small space of hell I am in.
I don’t have to go. We can face this together. All of us.
I sit down and put my head in my hands, and as I do, my phone alert goes off. I look at it.
Unknown-number text.
A photo of Sam, leaning over the cowling of an airplane.
One of Lanny, taken through her bedroom window as she’s sleeping.
One of Connor, sitting cross-legged on his bed, typing on his computer with his headphones on.
And there’s Vee, in her ridiculous house shoes and pajamas, standing in her doorway talking to a neighbor.
A shot of Kezia collapsed and bloody by the wreck of her car.
You can stop all of them from suffering, the next text says. The choice is yours. But you have to leave it all behind and come to me. You have fifteen minutes to decide. If you don’t leave your house at nine o’clock, I will assume your choice is to save yourself. If you come, leave your phone and any electronics. If your SUV has a GPS tracker, disable it. I’m monitoring you. I’ll know if you try to cheat.
“You son of a bitch,” I whisper. “At least let me tell them why.” But I don’t respond. I know he won’t care. There’s no bargaining here. No mercy.
I call Kez. I’m doing it to say a kind of goodbye, to ask her to look after my family, but the second she picks up the call, I know something is wrong. Very wrong. I’ve never heard her sound like this. “Kez? What is it?”
“He’s dead,” Kez says. “Prester’s dead. He tried to call me and I was asleep, my phone ran down—” Her voice is shaking. “I got video, they just—they just let him die, Gwen. Right there in his car. It’s Sheryl and the man in the SUV. I know it is. And I’m fucking going to get them.”
My lips feel numb. I feel numb. I know how much Kezia thought of Detective Prester. This has to be a living nightmare for her. “Don’t,” I say. I swallow hard. “He doesn’t want you, Kez. He wants me. I’m the reason this is happening. Not you. He thinks . . . he thinks I’m like Sheryl. A killer.”
“Sheryl’s with him,” she says. “He didn’t hunt her. He’s using her.”
“For now,” I agree. “But whatever story he spun for her, he intends to exact some kind of vengeance. On me too. I can’t let him take the people I love, Kez. So I’m going. You stay.”
“Motherfucker sent me a video of Prester while he was dying in that car. Sheryl took it. It was her voice on the recording, had to be. So whether they killed him or not, they let him die. And I’m not staying. They are going. And I don’t mean out of town, out of mind. We find them, and we end this.”
I feel the numbness subside. What’s left is a pure, cold anger. “He told me to leave my house at nine o’clock.” It’s ten minutes to nine. I stare at my clock until my eyes hurt enough to force me to blink. “Not to tell anybody. That must include you too.”
“Hell, he already knows I’ll be coming. If he knows me at all—”
“You’ve got a baby to protect, Kez.”
“And you’ve got kids. You need somebody. I’m going, and he’s going to pay. But we need to make sure the boys don’t follow.”
“How?” I know Javier. I know Sam. They’re not going to let us go without a fight. Not just the two of us, alone.
“Up to you how you do Sam,” she says. “I can take care of Javi.”
She’s right. He wants me. Everyone else is just . . . collateral damage.
I just sit. Silent. Thinking about what I’m about to do, and why. About how hard it’s going to be. About why it’s also going to be the easiest thing I’ve ever done, in a strange sort of way; I’ve always known that I needed to protect my kids from whatever threats came at them. I’ve done it over and over again until it’s a well-worn groove in my soul. But they’re growing up.
This may be the last thing they need from me. The last protection I can offer them. They may never understand that, and I can’t leave a record of why I’m doing it . . . but I have to believe that they’ll know. They’ll understand.
Sam . . . Sam will take it so hard that, in the end, I left him behind. I wish he could know I’m doing that only because of all the people in the world, I trust him—only him—to shelter, love, and protect those precious children we both love so much.
But I can’t leave him not knowing. I can’t. So I turn on the video on my phone, and I take a deep breath, and I tell him. I tell him how much I love him, how much I value him, how much I trust him. I tell him to protect our kids. I tell him that I will come back if I can, and if I don’t, if I fail this time, that I did it for all of us.