Chapter 52
Fifty-Two
The gunshot is deafening. The bullet hits Easton mid-lunge and he goes flying backward.
He was bluffing. It was loaded.
Blood spatters Miles and Valencia in little droplets.
Valencia cries out as Easton hits the floor hard, knocking over the chair I was tied to.
I stand there, staring at his body. My ears ringing.
I shot him.
Valencia’s voice drifts through the ringing and the brain fog of shock. Calling my name over and over.
Nate’s name.
I turn to her.
“Untie us!”
Right. I run to Miles first.
“Are you okay?” He gives a grunt beneath the duct tape. His eye is bleeding—a line of red down to the duct tape that follows
the curve of his chin—but it focuses right on me, so he should be okay.
The ice pick is on the ground, near Easton. He’s face down, and blood smears across the floor where he landed. But he isn’t
moving.
I stand and step over him, watching closely for movement.
But he’s still. And I don’t think he’s breathing.
I snatch up the ice pick and jump back over him to Miles.
Using the ice pick, I carefully poke a hole in the duct tape around his forehead, then rip it wider.
I leave it there for him to take care of when he’s free, because I know it’s going to rip out hair.
I do the same with his mouth, and he takes several gasping breaths, thanking me. Then I cut his arms and legs free and let
him pull the remaining tape around his head and mouth as I go to Valencia.
“Are you okay?” I ask as I take care not to accidentally stab her leg with the ice pick.
She nods. Then she opens her mouth to say something else, but Miles screams.
I turn and my blood runs cold. Easton is getting to his feet. His hand is pressed against his shoulder, blood spilling through
his fingers from the bullet wound beneath. He glares at me, hunched and wincing as he breathes sharply between clenched teeth.
For the first time, I see the real Easton. Before, when he killed JT, I thought I was seeing the real him. But he still had
part of that person-mask he wears up. This is the terrifying, real monster that’s been hiding all along.
He lunges at me.
I raise the ice pick at him, but he grabs my arm.
The gun. Where did I put the gun?
It’s on the floor, behind Miles’s chair. Too far to reach, but at least Easton doesn’t have it. He tackles me to the ground, slamming my arm against the floor, trying to get me to drop the ice pick. But I hold on for dear life.
Then I see the bullet hole in Easton’s right shoulder.
Blood drips from it in a slow stream.
Without stopping to think, I reach up and shove my finger into it. He screams in agony and punches me in the face. My vision
trembles, and the taste of blood fills my mouth again before I feel another wallop from his fist.
The ice pick clatters to the ground. Easton reaches for it, but Valencia’s leg kicks his hand away, then the ice pick. It
slides across the room.
Easton pushes off from me, cursing at his mother as he scrambles for it. I pull at his shirt, trying to keep him from going
after the weapon. He spins and tries to punch me again, but I roll away. I pull his arm with me, and he rolls on top of me,
his knees on either side of my chest. He grabs my head with both his hands and slams it hard against the floor.
I scream and reach once more for the bullet wound, but he slaps my hand away and bangs my head down again.
Everything is blurry.
He stands and I reach for his ankle, but he kicks me away.
Easton slowly limps over to the ice pick; whatever adrenaline that was fueling him seems to be wearing off. I try to scramble
to my feet. But the whole room lurches around me, as if we’re on a boat instead of in a boathouse. My head pounds as I spit
out blood.
Behind me, Valencia and Miles are shouting, but their words don’t register.
All I can focus on is Easton. Walking toward the ice pick.
I lunge toward him as he bends down for it. I leap onto his back, wrapping my legs around his sides, and try to pull him over. He uses the momentum to move back toward the other wall where the workbench is. Then he spins, losing his balance, and I fall back onto the countertop.
My back knocks into something and it falls to the ground.
The smell of gasoline fills the room.
The gas canister. It’s on the ground, and the yellow spout has fallen off. Gas glugs out slowly onto the floor behind me.
I kick away the can and stand upright as Easton lunges toward me, the ice pick raised high above his head.
He screams loudly as he brings it down. I try to duck but it’s too late. The point pierces my skin with a sharp, hot burst
of agony as Easton buries it in my chest all the way to the hilt, then pulls it out in a quick movement. I almost fall to
my knees but brace myself against the countertop.
Easton drives the ice pick into me again, but it hits the back of my shoulder. I feel a horrific scraping shudder in my body.
I scream again and tackle Easton to the ground.
His hand comes away from the ice pick, but it’s lodged in my shoulder. Blood pours out of the wound in my chest, half an inch
below my clavicle. And maybe only inches from my heart.
I hope.
We’re covered in blood and sweat. Easton reaches up and wraps his hands around my throat. He squeezes hard, and the ragged
breaths I had been heaving immediately stop while the pounding in my head grows heavier.
I reach for his hands, clawing at them, drawing more blood. Trying to stop him. Trying to breathe. But he’s too strong.
“Looks like you die the same way I killed Nate,” Easton says through clenched teeth.
My chest burns, aching to take a breath, as I fight back. I reach for Easton’s eyes, but he bites down hard on my left hand.
I open my mouth, trying to scream as his teeth sink deeper, but his hands keep the scream trapped in my throat.
I try to pull my hand away from him, but the ice pick in my shoulder cuts into another muscle, sending out a fresh burst of
pain. Instinctively, I reach up with my right hand and rip it out. More horrific pain.
But this is my only chance.
I aim for his face, watching his eyes go wide as blood spills from his mouth.
The ice pick hits him in the cheek, right below the eye. The tip scrapes down over Easton’s cheekbone and exits through the
skin under his jaw. He howls with pain, and I rip my hand back from him. His grip around my throat is gone, and I suck in
a deep, burning breath laced with the smell of gasoline.
I scramble away from him, hacking and gasping. The ice pick is still in my hands. Easton keeps screaming slurred obscenities
at me as he holds a hand against the blood spilling from his jaw.
Behind him, Valencia is screaming, too. She’s standing by the door to the dock, and so is Miles. He must have gotten her free
during the scuffle between me and Easton. But both of them are shouting something I can barely hear over the pounding in my
head. Valencia is pointing as Miles tries to pull her away, toward the door.
I manage to slow my gasps for breath long enough to focus on where she’s pointing.
The river of gasoline moving across the floor.
And where it ends.
That’s when I recognize one word through the rush of blood in my head.
“Fire!”
The gasoline reaches the kerosene heater. And now I know why Easton had it lit. His plan at the end of the day was to fill
the boathouse with gasoline and let it burn to the ground. Because without even touching the heater, the gas ignites.