Gun Shy(71)

I climb up into the window quietly, shimmying through the gap and dropping over the kitchen counter and to the floor as silently as possible. I check the bottom floor before creeping up the stairs, taking them two at a time, flinching when the boards creak halfway up.

I can hear water running, and that’s where I go - to the bathroom. I try to open the door, but it’s jammed with something. “Cassie!?” I yell. Now that I know she’s in the bathroom, I’m not worried about an intruder — I’m worried about what a beat-up girl is doing in the tub at midday on a Friday. If she’s taking a bubble bath after a grueling work shift, if she’s listening to her iPod and can’t hear me, I will replace the door and apologize a thousand times over.

But I know in my bones that Cassie isn’t relaxing or listening to music or having a fucking bubble bath. I saw the haunted look in her eyes before she took off running; I’ve known that feeling myself a time or two. In the days after I found Karen in the well. In the nights after I drove off the bridge and ruined Cassie’s mother. In the long years I spent in Lovelock prison, everything blurring into one long nightmare. I saw that look in her eyes. The look that said: I don’t know if I can go on.

“Cassie!” I yell one more time, just in case. Nothing. I smash my shoulder into the door as hard as I can, again and again. On the third go, it opens slightly, just a crack, enough for me to see my beautiful girl lying pale and motionless in a bathtub full of water and blood.

“Oh, shit,” I mutter, kicking the door until I’ve created a hole big enough to reach my arm into. I discover the chair propped underneath the door handle and unwedge it, opening the door and rushing to the bath. I hit the tiles with my knees, the shock vibrating up my body as I look down at Cassie. She’s so fucking pale, dressed in a bra and panties, cuts and bruises littering her body. But it’s not those I’m worried about now. It’s the deep gashes in her arms that are pouring with blood, blood that starts bright red and diffuses to a pinkish color in the tub of water she floats in. Her hair fanned around her shoulders, she looks like an angel. She looks dead.

“No,” I whisper, reaching in and lifting her out of the tub, setting her on the tiled floor. I grab at the towels hanging on the rack, wrapping one around each of her wrists and holding them above her body, trying to use gravity to help stem the thick pulsing of blood from the identical deep lacerations on her wrists. I hold her wrists in one hand, searching for a pulse at her neck. It’s so faint I can barely feel her heart, struggling to pump whatever blood is left in her body to keep it going.

“Cassie, baby, can you hear me?” I fish my phone from my jeans pocket and dial 911. I know that by doing this, I’m inviting the wrath of Damon King upon me, but I don’t care. I would walk through fire to save this girl. I would open my chest and bleed my heart’s blood into her if it would save her right now. I would kill everyone in the world if it brought her back, if it woke her up. The ambulance is dispatched. I hear sirens wail in the distance. I keep checking her heartbeat because I’m terrified that if I take my fingers away from her neck, she will die right here in my arms.





CHAPTER FORTY-TWO





CASSIE





I didn’t die.

I couldn’t even get that right.

What I did do was ensure that I’ll never be alone long enough to try it again. I don’t remember Leo finding me in the bathtub, or the ambulance arriving, or Damon riding in the back with me. I don’t remember them tapping his vein to transfuse more blood into me after they used their stock and ran out.

I do remember waking up in the hospital, though, strapped to a hospital bed with leather restraints, my wrists bandaged heavily and my stomach full of charcoal, my poor, concerned stepdaddy sitting beside the bed.

I remember the drive home, two days later, after Damon had signed me out with a promise to watch me like a hawk and never leave me alone. I remember the way he pulled up on the side of the road when we were halfway home, pointed at a clearing in the thick pine trees, and told me that’s where he’d bury Leo’s body if I ever pulled a stunt like that again.



* * *



That was three weeks ago.



* * *



Now, Chris McCallister sits across from me, his fingers drumming restlessly along the side arm of the sofa. I had to rearrange this room, move the floor rug to cover the large stain that Ray’s blood made. Ironically, not from the shot that killed him — apparently, that blood came clean off the floorboards in the dining nook. But in here, in the living room, the wooden boards lining the floor aren’t glossy, but dull and sanded back, waiting for a fresh coat of varnish.

Instead, they got a fresh spray of blood when I slashed Ray’s palm with a carving knife.

Damon says we’ll need an industrial sander to get the stain out, so in the meantime, my mother’s Turkish rugs and some clever furniture repositioning will have to suffice. The only reason I don’t want anyone to find out what happened to Ray is the same reason I don’t want anyone to find out what happened to Jennifer - because Damon will, undoubtedly, be able to pin the crimes on Leo and send him to prison for the rest of his life.

Nevada has the death penalty.

That’s not going to happen.

Chris is here because Damon had to go into Reno and meet with a new taskforce. They’re taking over the investigation into Jennifer’s disappearance. And since I can’t be alone, I have a babysitter here.