I feel sick. I always wondered about Monique. But she was just broken. Julia had broken her.
“The miscarriages… Did you…” I can’t say it. Even knowing what I know about her, I can’t say it. Can barely think it.
“Oh, don’t be such an idiot. Matty is the rightful heir. Carlton should have acknowledged him, but he refused. He threatened to cut me off if I did or said anything about us. It’s why he gave Monique the house in France. To shut her up about it. I don’t know why he cared. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with him.” She walks away a few steps, reaches into her back pocket, and takes something out. “Gerald, come here.” She has her back to me, so I don’t see what it is she hands him. “You want the rest of the money? I have it. In cash. In that bag there.”
She points to a small black duffel sitting beside the door. I hadn’t realized she’d brought anything inside. Gerald looks at it too. I watch them. He looks at what she just handed him, then at me, then back to Julia.
“Finish the job, Gerald.”
Gerald steps toward me and I can finally see what he’s holding. A switchblade. Small but sharp. Deadly.
“Finish the job and we can all live happily ever after. Well, not my dear cousin, but the rest of us.”
47
Jericho
I slam the brakes, the car screeching to a halt half on the overgrown lawn in front of Marjorie Gibson’s house. Our arrival won’t be a surprise to those inside. In the distance, I hear the sirens of the police cars Megs called. Two of the guards who were with us at Jones’s house spill out of the backseat, weapons drawn as I rush toward the front door, Zeke at my heels.
I don’t have a pistol. I don’t have any weapon. But I don’t care. I need to get inside. I need to get to Isabelle. Even though Julia was able to lose the tail I had on her, I see Carlton’s Rolls Royce in the driveway. When I get close to the front door, I hear a TV and over that comes Julia Bishop’s voice giving the order to kill my wife.
When I find the door locked, I slam my shoulder against it. It doesn’t give.
“Finish it! Now!” Julia screams. She knows she’s caught. She’s out of options. And that makes her even more dangerous.
“Sir!” One of the men shouts, aiming his pistol at the door handle.
I step away and he fires. The door swings open and I’m inside in an instant. In that same moment, a gunshot rings out, a bullet tearing through my shoulder sending me back a step, two, before I regain my footing.
The man who shot the door open enters, firing his weapon. Isabelle screams.
I push deeper into the house, take in the scene. One man on the ground. Another aiming a pistol at the one who took out their guy. Another of my men shoots his way in from the back of the house, Zeke on his heels. He’s armed. I didn’t know he was armed.
Their soldier takes mine out, a bullet hitting him square in the chest, dropping him. He’s got an automatic weapon and as I run toward Isabelle and Julia, he sends more rounds across the living room where Zeke and the last of my men shoot back.
I crouch down, my shoulder burning. And all I see through the pain and smoke is Isabelle. Isabelle bound to a chair, trapped there, unable to run, to take cover. Gerald Gibson is just a few feet from her. In my periphery, Julia Bishop leaps toward him as I lunge to cover my wife from the onslaught of bullets.
I knock her chair sideways, grunting with the force of it, managing to slide my hand beneath her head before it hits the floor. She cries out and I hear the crunching of bone. See the photos of our baby scattered on this filthy floor as gunshots pock mark the walls.
A banshee like scream comes from Julia as she falls on top of me. I turn to her, see the arc of her arm and raise mine to stop her. She slices the dagger toward Isabelle’s stomach. I twist my body between her and that short, sharp blade to stop her. To stop the repeating of history and instantly feel the burning pain of the knife plunging into my side.
My body tenses, my arms giving out, unable to hold my weight. Julia jerks away from me, lands on the floor bleeding beside me. Isabelle is trapped beneath me. The photos of our baby are turning red as blood seeps onto the small life captured on that page, ruined.
When I raise my eyes from that photo, the last thing I see are Isabelle’s eyes. That too-blue gaze. Shards of glass. Too beautiful for this world. Too beautiful for such an ugly world.
And although I know she’s screaming my name, I can’t hear her anymore. I can barely see her as my vision fades and the world ends for me like it should have so many years ago.
48
Isabelle
He dies in the ambulance. I hear the flatline and scream for the paramedics to let me go to him, but they hold me back. The pain in my arm is unbearable as they do.
His face is ashen. Eyes closed. Mouth slack. Blood seeps from his side, his chest. And one of the paramedics is counting, doing compressions, another is giving oxygen.
“Come back to me! You come back to me!” I scream and sob. So close to him but unable to touch him. To hold him. To make him come back. “Please. God. Please!”
We arrive at the hospital and the doors fly open. Nurses and doctors meet us, carrying Jericho’s gurney, compressions never ceasing, that count on a loop as I’m lifted out. They race him into the hospital, and I manage to run after them, not caring about my stupid arm when he could be gone.
“Jericho!” I scream his name as they wheel him through doors. Then I hear it. The flat line of the machine changing, beeping in a rhythm.
“He’s back!” someone calls out and I want to hug that person. They wheel him through another set of doors and just as someone stops me from following, he opens his eyes. Only for one split second, Jericho opens his eyes and they lock on mine. Time stops for us. Time comes to a screeching halt and the only sound is that of machines and echoes of people close but no longer here. Not in this space with us. This bubble of time. I put my hand to my mouth and a sob escapes me. When he smiles, reaching the hand that is resting over his heart toward me, I know he hears me. I know he sees me. And I know he’ll come back to me.
When he disappears through those doors, I’m barred from entering. I sink to the floor and sob, giving myself over to the doctors and nurses. Too exhausted to do anything else.
49
Jericho
She’s asleep on the chair across from my bed. I watch her as machines beep around me. Whatever they’re pumping into me makes it hard to keep my eyes open, but I fight it. I want to see her. I need to see her.
Her left arm is bandaged from her wrist up past her elbow. There’s a small bandage on her forehead and scrapes on her cheekbone. She’s wearing thick socks and that knit dress, but the arm has been cut off and it looks like it’s been through hell.
I guess it has. We all have.
I shift my gaze to the ceiling. I died today. I flatlined for more than three minutes. The last thing I remember before passing out were Isabelle’s eyes. The panic inside them.
They talk about your life flashing before your eyes at the moment of death, but for me, I saw that bright, sunny morning in Mexico that turned into the bloodiest day of my life. Now second to what happened this morning. I felt Kimberly dying in my arms. And then I saw her face. Not bloody and lifeless like it had been then. Not gray and slack. I saw her as she was. Young and bright and beautiful wearing one of her happy smiles. She cupped my cheek, oblivious to the blood, then set her hand over my heart and never spoke one word. Just smiled.