A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(67)

Crystal met Natasha’s gaze over Merritt’s shoulder, her eyes wide and pleading. She looked deliberately at her sobbing children, then back at Natasha. Her entreaty couldn’t have been more clear.

Natasha swept up both girls and ran.

She’d been in this house once before. It was small, all on one story, with two bedrooms in the back. She raced to the farthest one, kicked the door shut behind her, and stuffed the girls into the closet, ignoring their hysterical wails. Then she shoved a chair underneath the doorknob so the closet couldn’t be opened from the inside.

A racket of crashes, thuds, and bangs sounded from the kitchen, accompanied by Merritt’s deep shouts and Crystal’s higher-pitched screams. As Natasha approached the bedroom door, debating her options, there came a single ear-piercing shriek, followed by an abrupt silence.

Wary, she opened the door and slipped into the hallway. She crept back toward the kitchen, and when she got closer, she heard the sound of a man crying.

Natasha rounded the kitchen doorway. Crystal was sprawled in a pool of her own blood on the linoleum, her open, sightless eyes turned in Natasha’s direction. Merritt was crouching by her side, his back to Natasha; there was a bloody kitchen knife on the floor a few feet behind him, as if it’d been thrown.

“Crystal!” Merritt shook her shoulders. “Come on, baby, wake up. You know I didn’t mean it. Stop playing around.”

Crystal didn’t respond. But then, dead people so rarely did.

With an angry roar, Merritt slapped her face. “Stop fucking with me, bitch!” That didn’t work either, of course, and he broke down in sobs.

Natasha padded into the kitchen, staring at the mess of what had been a living, breathing woman only a few minutes ago. Besides the funeral of a great-aunt, Natasha had never been in the presence of a dead body before. Merritt must have stabbed something vital for Crystal to bleed out so quickly.

She scooped the knife off the floor. It was lightweight in her grip, still dripping red.

Merritt spun around on his knees and saw Natasha. His hands and clothes were soaked with blood.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “You gotta-you gotta tell the cops that.” Struggling to his feet, he swiped at his puffy eyes, which only smeared the blood over his face. “She just made me so crazy, you know? But I didn’t mean to kill her.”

“She was your wife,” Natasha said quietly. “Your children’s mother.”

“I know.” Merritt glanced at Crystal over his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to, I swear. If she’d just-”

Natasha drove the knife into his stomach.

He didn’t scream. Instead, he made a sort of liquid burble, his eyes going round and shocked as he looked down at the knife in his guts and then up at her face.

She twisted the blade-just a little, just to see what would happen. He choked, jerking and swaying on his feet.

When she pulled out the knife, he collapsed to his knees, clutching his abdomen with both hands. That did little to stem the tide of blood that poured from his ravaged organs.

“Why?” he whispered, before he toppled over onto his side.

She hadn’t planned to stab him, but watching him writhe on the floor, she felt something click into place that she hadn’t even known was missing.

This was right. This was the way things were supposed to be.

Merritt tried to pull his cell phone out of his pocket, but it slipped from his blood-slicked hand. She kicked it away and then stepped out of his reach-she wasn’t stupid.

“Please,” he said through foam-flecked lips. “You could still call 911. I won’t tell anyone. Please.”

“Why would I do that?” She walked around him, cocking her head. “You deserve this. You understand that, don’t you?”

He shook his head.

“You vowed to love Crystal, to protect her, and then you beat her for years until you took her life. How long would it have been before you did the same to your children, or another woman?” Knife in hand, Natasha squatted by his side. “Now you’ll never hurt anyone again. The world will be a better place without you.”

And she’d been the one to ensure that. She was the reason Merritt’s life was draining away on the same floor where he’d slaughtered his wife. Merritt had ended Crystal’s life, so Natasha had ended his. It was a far more appropriate fate than the one that would have been handed to him by the so-called “justice” system.

This-this was true justice.

The rush of it was sharp, electric, like the free-fall of a rollercoaster. Her eyelids fluttered and she flexed her tingling hand around the knife handle.

Merritt tried to speak again, but all he could manage was a raspy grunt. He looked at her with those big dumb eyes, crying like the woman-beating coward he was.

Ugh, he was ruining it. She grasped his chin and turned his face in the opposite direction.

Better.

It didn’t take long. The flow of blood became sluggish; his breathing slowed, stuttered, and stopped. Soon, he was no longer moving at all. She rested the fingers of her free hand against his pulse.

Dead.

A shudder coursed through her body. For the first time in her life, she felt whole.

The wail of police sirens broke through her reverie, and she lifted her head. One of the neighbors must have heard the commotion and called 911. She was lucky nobody had tried to enter the house.