Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(107)

I need that gun.

I can’t feel the pain of my wrist anymore, or anything else. I feel incandescent. I burst with power, and I close the distance faster than I thought possible. I bury the screwdriver in the guard’s neck, and the gun falls to the floor as he staggers back and starts to tumble down the steps. I dive for the weapon, twist over on my back, and as I roll, I see Melvin taking a last step toward me. He has his right hand clamped over his bloody, mutilated eye, but he sees the gun just in time to throw himself to the side as I aim and fire. Adrenaline or not, the shock of recoil sends a brutal stab through my arm, and I yell in pain and fury. My first shot misses him by less than an inch. I try again.

Melvin ducks into the room where he intended to kill me. He has weapons there. Maybe even a gun. I can’t stop now, even if my wrist shatters off my arm, I have to hold the gun and shoot, and pain doesn’t matter.

I fire more bullets into the wall, walking the shots methodically across. I don’t know where he is. My heart is racing so fast that it feels like a dying bird in my chest, but my brain feels slow. Calm. Almost peaceful. The gun in my hand is a semiautomatic, so it has a minimum of seven bullets. I’ve fired four.

The video operator is still standing there filming me. Maybe he truly doesn’t understand that he isn’t just crew, that he’s a guilty accomplice to horrors. Maybe he thinks his camera is a magic shield.

I shoot him, and he goes down. Five.

I scramble forward. My legs feel weak and loose, but somehow I stay up. I dodge drunkenly around the hole in the middle of the floor, step over the dead camera operator, and pray there’s still at least one more bullet in the gun so I can put it in Melvin’s head.

I make it to the door of the torture room. There’s a man curled up motionless on the oval rug: the lighting tech. I got him with the shots I put through the wall.

Melvin isn’t here. Melvin’s gone.

There’s a door to the left. I missed it before; the camera tripod was blocking it. But the tripod’s on its side, and a broken laptop is sparking and flickering next to it.

I sense someone behind me. A shadow, moving fast.

I whirl and pull the trigger.

I realize just one second too late that it isn’t Melvin.

It’s Sam.

The gun clicks.

Empty.

Sam’s breathing hard as he skids to a stop. He’s staring at me with wild eyes, and he’s standing in the spreading pool of Annie’s blood. He’s got a gun, too, and he’s holding it on me as if I’m a dangerous creature he can’t trust. Then he yells, “Put it down, Gwen! Put it down!”

I drop the gun, and it hits my leg painfully enough to jolt me out of my momentary trance. Everything floods me at once, a storm of emotion that I can’t even understand. It rips away the focus, sends me reeling, shaking. The pain is back. So is the fear.

“He’s still here!” I scream at Sam. “Melvin! He’s still here!”

Sam’s staring down at the ruined body of Annie with an expression of pure, visceral horror. It takes him a second to tear his gaze away and fix it on me. “No. He’s out in the hall. He’s dead.”

“What?”

“He took a bullet in the eye. It’s okay. Gwen. He’s down.” He catches me when I fall against him. I feel such an immense sense of exhaustion I think I might die. My heart is hammering like an engine; my body is still intent on running, fighting, even when there’s nothing left to fight. I feel tears shredding me, wild and desperately intense.

“You got him,” I whisper to Sam. “Thank you. God, thank you.”

He holds me so tight it feels like we’re fusing together, and I want that, I want that. “No,” he says. “I didn’t shoot him. You did. Didn’t you?”

It takes me a long, icy second to understand what he’s just said, and why it’s important.

I didn’t shoot Melvin in the eye. I stabbed him. With the gore and blood, it would have looked like a death wound. A shot to the eye. All Melvin had to do was lie down and let Sam go past him.

I grab Sam’s gun and use his shoulder as a rest to aim, because there’s the monster coming just behind him, there’s the tiger, and death is in his eyes.

Melvin is lunging for Sam’s back with a knife.

I stop him with three bullets through the forehead.

He folds at the knees, and then he’s down on his face. He’s still breathing. I can see his back rising and falling, and I want to put another bullet in it, but Sam’s turning now, taking the gun from me.

It’s good he does, because I likely would have shot Agent Lustig, who enters the doorway with his own gun drawn. Sam lowers the weapon, and Lustig takes one look at the two of us, then at the dying man stretched out on the floor. The dead man near the lights. The ruined body of Annie.

“Christ,” Lustig says, and lowers his weapon. “My good Christ, what the hell is this?”

We stand there in silence. Lustig kneels next to Melvin, and we watch my ex-husband’s back rise and fall for three more gasping breaths, and then there’s a long, rattling exhalation that trails into silence.

The devil’s dead. He’s dead. I want to feel . . . what? Good? But there’s none of that. I’m just grateful. Maybe later I’ll feel satisfaction, vengeance, the fulfillment of a long-burning rage.