I picked up the shard of glass I’d been holding, gripped it tightly, and then slammed it into what I thought was his lower calf.
He howled.
That howl turned into a “stupid fucking bitch!”
He reared back and was about to kick the hell out of me, forgetting entirely about the axe in his hand when he was hit so hard in the side by a charging male body that it took him sideways into the next mirror.
I watched in satisfaction as Bright’s head bounced right off the mirror, leaving a spray of blood in the broken debris behind.
“Fuckin’ A, man,” Keene replied hoarsely. “You took him out so fast and hard that I never saw it coming. Can I have your autograph?”
Autograph?
What?
“What are you talking about right now, Quinoa?” I asked Keene.
“This is Titus.” Keene pointed at the man who was now standing as if he hadn’t just hit some man so hard that he’d passed out after hitting his head on the wall.
“Hello, Titus.” I smiled. “Thank you for saving me.”
“Your man tried,” Titus offered his hand to me, but I didn’t take it. I waved my bloody hands at him, and he understood immediately. “But his crew held him outside so that he didn’t kill this motherfucker. We need him alive.”
“Why do you need him alive?” I asked curiously.
Because I most certainly wouldn’t mind him dead.
“The tall chick outside heard some of what he was saying,” Titus explained.
“Melinda knew enough that she heard about your mom and Mary. This sheriff needs to pay. Tell everyone what he knows so we can find justice for all of those victims and their families,” Keene added. “If we’d allowed Coffey in here in the mood he was in, this man would no longer have a head.”
That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I frantically got to my feet after that, my heart racing. “We need to get outside.”
Keene, seeming to understand my urgency due to my lack of wanting anything to do with the stupid Fun House, though likely misunderstanding because it had nothing to do with it, he led me outside.
“How did y’all figure out how the hell to get in here so fast?” I asked.
Keene was silent for a few seconds too long before I said, “Keene?”
He sighed.
It was Titus who answered, though.
“Your brother memorized how to get in and out of it without having to pay attention to anything but the turns to take. Left. Left. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right, right, right. Left.” Titus explained it to me. “He said that when he found out about your mother, he wanted to make sure you knew how to get out. But you never wanted to be anywhere close to it ever again. So he respected your wishes and didn’t say anything about it to you.”
I felt my heart get all melty.
“Left,” Titus said. “Your brother is going to stay with the crazy man, right?”
“Right,” Keene promised, giving the “crazy man” an extra kick with his steel-toed boot.
I snorted. “I have a lot to tell you, Quinoa.”
Keene winked. “Hopefully, when the law enforcement gets here, I can listen without wanting to kill this bastard.”
Doubt it, I thought.
My hands and face were burning by the time Titus led me out, and I knew by only the look on the closest man’s face, who just so happened to be Trig, that I likely looked like a damn slasher victim.
“It’s a lot better than it looks,” I promised. “Where is he?”
Hearing my voice, the crowd of men who looked like they were straining beside me suddenly parted, and there he was.
He was standing in the middle of that group, looking like he’d just gone a round with the devil himself.
His hair was a mess, his eyes were wild, and the moment his straining body was let go, he stumbled to his knees due to the force he was trying to use to get away.
He hit the ground, then was up on his feet in half a breath.
His wild eyes looked around, confused at his sudden freedom, then he spotted me and froze.
A sound left his throat that sounded like a wounded animal, then he was moving toward me.
“It’s only a few surface cuts,” I promised as he moved to cup my face. “He was swinging an axe, and the glass shards kept spraying me in the face. I’m fine.”
“An axe?” he asked in a dangerous calm.
I licked my lips. “Yeah.”
“Is Keene with him?” he asked me.
I nodded. “You’re okay?”
I nodded again.
“I’ll be right back,” he said in a deadly quiet voice.
I tugged on his shirtsleeve and did what I did best. Exaggerated.
“We need to go to the hospital to get me checked out, then I need to find the closest police officer willing to take my statement,” I said.
He took a deep, clarifying breath, then blew it out.
Then he gathered me up in his arms and held me to his body until the cops arrived.
I gave my statement, telling them everything. While Keene sat on one side of me listening, my sisters stood at my back, Coffey’s old team stood at theirs, and then Coffey sat at my other side, holding my two hands in makeshift bandages in his hands.
“And Bright admitted to you that he killed your mother?” The detective looked skeptical.
I would be, too, had I been hearing this insane story.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“I heard that as well,” Melinda confirmed at my side. “In between crashing and banging. The man was yelling at the top of his lungs, so there’s no way that I couldn’t hear.”
“And why didn’t you go in?” The detective eyed her up and down.
Melinda didn’t rise to the bait.
“Because I was holding a toddler, and I knew that she would never forgive me if I put that toddler down to be used as cannon fodder, or bring him with me to possibly be hurt,” Melinda explained, not quite rudely, but close.
“Well,” the detective sighed. “This just sounds really far-fetched. He admitted a lot of stuff to you that implicates him greatly. That’s two actual murders and one attempted murder.”
“I wish it was just a story I made up,” I murmured. “That night my mother was murdered…” I swallowed hard. “I walked into the Fun House because that was our thing. We’d go in there and hide from each other. I went in there that night and there she was, on the ground, dead. Meanwhile, I was too stunned to scream. I sat down on the floor and looked up, and I could see her dead eyes from eight other angles. It’s something that haunts my dreams, even right now.”
The detective blew out his breath. “Walk me through everything that happened one more time, please.”
So I did.
Then I was taken to the hospital.
It was there that we got the second biggest shock of the night.
“Can you get her checked over…internally?” Coffey requested once the doctor made his appearance. “She was two months pregnant when we went to the hospital last week.”
“Of course, of course,” he said. “We’ll get an ultrasound in here ASAP. In the meantime, we’ll only treat you with drugs that are healthy for a pregnant woman. Thank you for informing us.”
Coffey’s brows rose. “You act like some don’t.”