“Just? He destroyed my life. Our lives!”
“You destroyed his first!” I scream. She flinches. But she doesn’t see what I see. “You blew up a restaurant when I was inside.”
“You were not inside, Beau. You were on the sidewalk, I made sure of it.”
“You drugged me in the bank, Mom.” Mom. It feels like an inadequate word. Monster. “Why would you drug me? Take me to Ollies?” My hands find my hair and clench, trying to suppress the pain building in my head.
“God damn it, Beau, it was all for you! For us, so we can be together again.”
I inhale, standing back. “You left my tracker on so James would know where to find me.” My God. “You were going to kill Ollie and frame James. Because Ollie worked out you killed Dad and Cartwright.” That’s why Ollie was apologizing. His last words to me. I’m sorry. He was sorry for not telling me. For hiding it. For trying to shield me from the shitty truths. She was going to have James killed by lethal injection.
“Your Dad was a disgusting sack of shit. A stupid man.” She throws a heavy hand up, angry by the mention of my father. It’s ironic. His name used to spike the same reaction from me. Now? I don’t know how I feel about him now. His last move was to try and protect me from the truth like Ollie. Does that make him a hero?
Mom looks away, like she could be ashamed. It’s a joke. “I always said you were a talented cop.”
“I take after my mother,” I say, and she looks at me. “Unfortunately. How did Dad find out you were alive?”
“His piece of ass stumbled upon some files while she was making herself at home in my home. Files your father found.”
“Files on what?”
“My deals with the previous mayor and my purchase of Danny Black’s boatyard.”
I laugh, feeling a little unhinged. “Not such a fucking good cop now, huh? Or is it not such a good criminal?”
“Beau…”
“And Amber’s been running for her life because she knew Dad had been murdered.”
“I had no choice, Beau Bear.” She comes to me, taking my arms, shaking me like it’s me who needs some sense knocking into them. “We can go. I have enough money for us. We can disappear together, me and my girl.”
I shake her off and step back, hearing Ollie’s words over and over. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I hear him apologizing over and over for so much. “Ollie didn’t deserve to die.” My mind gives me a cruel flashback of the moment I disarmed him in his apartment. The moment I saw my mother behind him with a gun aimed at his back. The moment she fired, a window smashed, and James crashed in.
The moment she ran away like a coward.
I couldn’t utter her name. Couldn’t tell James what I’d seen. Was hoping I would wake up and find the whole awful thing had been a nightmare.
No.
It’s all real.
And I’m done.
“I’m going home now,” I say, passing her, raising my eyes, my heart in shards of grief. I feel like it could fall out of my chest. Break in two. But I mustn’t let it. I have to keep this heart together.
For James.
For me.
I look up, and I breathe in when I see him standing a few feet away, his face wet with sweat, his hair in disarray, his stubbled face tortured. I know in this moment he’s heard everything. I look back to Mom. She’s staring at him. Staring like a wild animal with their eyes set on their prey.
“It’s over,” I say, my voice shaky. “It ends now, Mom.” I hear sirens in the background, getting louder. It’s over.
But then she moves, gunning for James, drawing her gun, and before I can register a thing, I’m moving too, with no direction or instruction. Just moving.
“Beau!” James’s booming voice saturates my hearing as I crash into Mom, taking her down to the mud. We hit the ground, and I quickly get my bearings, spinning, getting Mom underneath me. I straddle her, pulling her arms back. “Jasmin Hayley, you are under arrest,” I say over a sob. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
“Beau!” she yells, wriggling, forcing me to yank her arms back more.
“You have the right to speak to an attorney now, and to have an attorney present during any questioning.” Justice isn’t served by death. It’s served by being locked up until death. It was served by being in fear of your life on the inside. I watch as one fat teardrop after another hits Mom’s jacket and splashes up as I hold her arms in place, while she continues to struggle, the sirens close.
I look up at James. He looks traumatized. Out of his mind. I start shaking my head, my tears streaming. “I’m not okay,” I whisper, making him move immediately, coming to me. I need him so fucking badly, it makes me resent my mom more, hate her harder, for being the reason I can’t crawl into him now and hide from this shit.
I release her wrists for James to take over as he lowers to his knee.
It’s just a fraction of time.
But it’s enough.
She throws her body up, knocking me back, and spins over.
Bang!
James flies back, his chest concaving.
“No!” I pull my gun, trembling, and aim it at Mom. But my finger refuses to squeeze the trigger. I scream as she stands, pushing past me, and goes at James, firing again. His body jerks, his head snapping back. “Mom, no!”
I look at James.
All I see is love. Devotion.
Light.
I turn my eyes onto my mother.
I inhale, re-aim the gun at her back, and pull the trigger. She flies forward, her arms shooting skyward, and falls face first into the dirt. I don’t need to check. The hole in the back of her head tells me. I drop my gun, screaming to the sky, my emotions pouring out of me harder than they ever have before, jacking my body. My fists hit the ground, smash into the mud, over and over.
“Beau, baby,” James wheezes, on his knee next to me, one hand wedged into the ground to hold himself up. I look up. All I see is blood. Blood and light. My lip trembles as I crawl to him, desperate, sobbing, trying to assess him, trying to find the bullet holes.
How many? Where?
“Someone help!” I scream as he drops to his shoulder and rolls to his back, struggling to breathe. “Someone help me!”
I hear screeching tires, sirens, screams.
Danny and Otto are sprinting toward us.
I hate their expressions.
Hate the crippling grief taking hold.
It’s beyond excruciating, more powerful than any grief I’ve ever felt before.
A loss I will never get over.
44
JAMES
It has to be said, the light was blinding. And it was really fucking tempting to walk toward it. But . . .
Beau.
I could hear her need.
Feel her love.
The light on this occasion can fuck off. I didn’t go through the past few months to let death take me so pathetically.
“Stop moving,” she orders, flapping around the bed, pulling at the covers, throwing me filthy looks left and right.
“I’m stiff.” And not in the best way.
“Doc said strict bedrest for four weeks.” She gently pushes me back down, and I sigh, exhausted, unwilling, and unable to fight her.