Chapter 18
Eighteen
Lydia had been standing in front of Eli and Rosie for what felt like hours but had probably been only minutes. Time moved strangely when staring down the barrel of a rifle held by a man once loved and trusted, someone she had once promised to spend her life with.
Tom held the rifle too loosely, which somehow made it worse. His hand gripped the stock casually, the barrel drifting left and right as he swayed. His finger was on the trigger, resting against the curve of metal. It would take only a little pressure to make that finger tighten.
His eyes were red-rimmed, wild, darting around the barn like he was seeing things that weren’t there. He reeked of whiskey even from six feet away. The smell hit Lydia in waves every time he moved, sweet and sour and so familiar it made her stomach turn.
“You think you can just run away?” Tom’s voice slurred with alcohol and anger. “Take my kids and start over with some … some Boy Scout in his perfect little house?”
Behind Lydia, pressed against her back, Eli and Rosie were so quiet she could barely hear them breathing.
She’d told them to be still, to be silent, and they were obeying with perfect compliance that broke her heart.
Children shouldn’t have to learn how to be invisible because their father was angry.
“Tom, please.” Lydia kept her voice steady and calm, even with the terror behind her sternum. “The kids are scared. Let them go. This is between you and me.”
“Between us?” Tom laughed. The sound was bitter and ugly, nothing like the laugh she remembered from when they were young. “There is no us. You made sure of that when you divorced me and took my kids from me.”
The unfairness of it, the sheer audacity of blaming her for the consequences of his own choices, made anger flare hot and bright under the fear.
Lydia shoved it down. This wasn’t the time to be angry. Anger would get them killed.
“You took it from yourself when you wouldn’t stop drinking,” she said, keeping her voice level. “You chose the bottle over your children, Tom.”
Behind her, Rosie whimpered. The sound was small and torn, and Lydia felt Eli’s small hand grip the back of her jacket, his fingers digging in hard enough to hurt.
“Shh, Rosie. It will be okay,” he told his little sister and Lydia didn’t know how but she had to make it so.
“I never—” Tom’s voice cracked, and for a moment Lydia saw something other than rage in his eyes. “I never meant for it to go this far. The fire. I just wanted to scare you, make you realize you needed me, but then it … it got out of control so fast. And I couldn’t …”
He was confessing. Admitting he’d set the fire.
Lydia felt sick. She’d suspected, of course. But hearing him say it, hearing him admit that he’d deliberately set their house on fire while they slept, made her stomach heave.
“You tried to kill us,” she said quietly. “Your own children.”
“NO!” Tom swung the rifle wildly, and Lydia’s breath stopped, her body tensing to throw herself backward onto the kids if she had to.
“I didn’t! I was going to … I was waiting outside to rescue you.
To be the hero. But someone else got there first. Some guy I’d never seen.
And then you were at the hospital and?—”
He broke off, breathing hard, and Lydia tried to process what he was saying.
He’d planned to rescue them. The plan had been to manufacture a crisis so he could swoop in as the hero, as the man they needed, as the father who’d protect them.
It was insane. It was the logic of an alcoholic so far gone that he thought arson could be a path back to his family’s love.
“Put the gun down, Tom,” Lydia said, forcing the words out through a throat tight with fear. “It’s over. The sheriff knows. They’re looking for you.”
Tom’s face crumpled.
For a moment, Lydia felt an echo of the love she’d once had for him, grieved that it had come to this, that she had stood witness to him destroying himself.
His expression hardened. “Then I have nothing to lose.”
Tom steadied the rifle and aimed it at her. His finger tightened on the trigger.
This was it. This was how it ended. In a barn that smelled like old hay and motor oil. On a Monday morning when the sun was shining and the frost was melting outside. With her children watching.
She’d never told Ethan she loved him.
That was her last coherent thought before everything happened at once.
The barn door swung open with a creak that seemed impossibly loud. Cold air rushed in, making Lydia shiver despite the fear-sweat soaking through her shirt. Both she and Tom turned their heads toward the sound.
Ethan.
Ethan was here.
He stepped inside, hands raised, his face calm but his eyes full of intensity that made him look like a different person. Not the gentle paramedic. Maybe the soldier he used to be?
“Tom,” he said, his voice steady and controlled. “My name’s Ethan Cole. I’m the paramedic who helped save your kids that night.”
No. No, you shouldn’t be here. You should have waited for the sheriff. You should have stayed safe.
But the mother in her was so relieved that there were now two adults and a higher chance for Eli and Rosie to survive this situation.
Tom swung the rifle toward Ethan, and Lydia’s scream caught in her throat. “You! You’re the one trying to replace me!”
“I’m not trying to replace anyone.” Ethan took a step forward toward the gun, and the danger, and Lydia wanted to scream at him to stop. “But I am trying to keep these kids safe. Look at them, Tom. They’re terrified of you. Is that what you want? To be the man they’re afraid of?”
“They’re MY kids!” Tom’s voice rose to a shout.
“Then act like their father.” There was steel in Ethan’s voice now, the combat veteran who’d made impossible choices under fire. “A real father protects his children. He doesn’t threaten that he’ll burn them alive. He certainly doesn’t point a gun at their mother while they watch.”
Behind Lydia, Eli made a small sound somewhat like a mix of a sob and a gasp, the sound of a nine-year-old boy hearing someone finally say what he’d been too scared to say himself.
Tom’s face went red. “You don’t know anything about being a father.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” Ethan took another step forward, and Lydia’s fingernails dug into her palms hard enough to draw blood.
“But I know what it is to lose someone you love and be so wrapped up in grief and anger that you can’t see straight.
I understand the tendency to make terrible choices because the pain is too much. ”
His voice softened on those last words, and Lydia heard Sarah’s ghost in the spaces between them.
“But I also know that those kids deserve better.” Another step. The rifle was pointed straight at Ethan’s chest, yet he kept inching forward. “They deserve a chance to grow up without this nightmare. Deep down, you know that too.”
Tom’s hands shook. The rifle wavered, the barrel dipping toward the floor and then jerking back up.
Please, Lydia prayed. Please, Tom, put it down. Don’t make my children watch you kill someone.
“Take me,” Ethan said.
Those two words pierced through Lydia like bullets.
No. This was madness.
“Let them go. Keep me as a hostage if you need to. Let Lydia take the kids and walk out of here.”
“Ethan, no!” Lydia’s voice cracked on his name.
His eyelids flickered but he didn’t take his eyes off Tom.
“I’m offering you a way out,” Ethan continued, his voice still that same steady calm even as he was offering to die in their place. “Take me. Let them go. We can end this without anyone else getting hurt.”
Lydia couldn’t breathe, unable to process how it had come to this, how this man had walked into this barn and offered himself as a sacrifice.
The moment hung suspended in Tom’s indecision.
His finger hovered over the trigger. His eyes were wild with anguish, rage and grief, love and hate warring behind them.
The barn was so quiet, making her ears sensitive to every breath, the creak of old wood, and the wind outside.
Then movement.
A flash of white in Lydia’s peripheral vision.
Michael.
Where had he?—
Tom’s finger tightened on the trigger.
The rifle barked.
The sound was deafening, echoing off the walls, making Lydia’s ears ring. Behind her, both kids screamed. Lydia’s own scream was trapped in her throat, her eyes locked on Ethan, waiting to see him fall?—
But Michael was there.
Somehow, impossibly, Michael was between Ethan and the bullet.
He staggered back, a red stain spreading across his white shirt like a flower blooming. His hand went to his chest. His face was blank.
He fell.
“No.” Tom’s face went sheet-white, all the rage draining out of him in an instant. The rifle dropped in his shaking hands. “This wasn’t—I didn’t mean?—”
He hadn’t meant to shoot and hit Michael or for any of this to happen. Still, it happened.
In that moment of shock, in the second when Tom was staring at Michael’s fallen body with horror written across his face, Lydia moved.
She lunged forward, her hands reaching for the rifle, wrenching it from Tom’s unresisting grip.
It was heavier than she expected. The metal bit into her palms and the stock dug into her shoulder as she struggled to hold it steady.
Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely keep it pointed in Tom’s direction.
“Get on the ground.” Her voice came out deadly calm, which was strange because inside she was screaming. “Now.”
Tom collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. He folded in on himself and dropped to his knees, then to his side, curling into a ball. Great heaving sobs shook his whole body.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped between sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry?—”
Lydia was already turning toward where Michael had fallen. Ethan was already rushing over, dropping to his knees beside the prone form.
“Michael!” Ethan’s voice was sharp with fear despite his training. “Stay with me?—”
His hands went to Michael’s shirt and ripped it open.
There was so much blood on the white fabric, but when the shirt fell away, beneath it?—
Nothing.
No wound. No blood on the skin beneath. Not even a mark.
Lydia’s brain stuttered. The bullet had hit him. She’d seen it with her own eyes—the impact, his stagger, the blood.
How was this possible?
Michael’s eyes opened. Clear, calm, utterly untroubled. He looked at Ethan’s shocked face and winked.
Michael winked.
Then he sat up, smooth and easy, like he’d just woken from a nap.
Ethan stared, mouth open, hands frozen in mid-air.
Michael smiled that small, knowing smile of his. “You should check on your friend outside. He’s got quite a headache.”
Caleb. He meant Caleb.
Then Michael stood, brushed off his pants like he was getting up from a church pew, and walked toward the barn door.
He paused at the threshold and turned back to meet Lydia’s eyes. He gave her a gentle nod. Then he walked out of the barn like nothing had happened.
Ethan shook his head like he was trying to clear water from his ears. He stared at the spot where Michael had been. There were blood stains on the ground.
There was no time to process the impossible. Tom was still sobbing on the floor. The kids were still huddled against the wall. They needed law enforcement and whatever else necessary to end this nightmare.
Ethan pulled out his phone and dialed. “Sheriff Wyatt? This is Ethan Cole. I’m at the Harper farmhouse barn. Tom Redding is here. He’s disarmed and compliant. We need deputies. Now.”
He paused and listened.
“Caleb Byrne is outside. Head wound, conscious. No other injuries,” he threw a questioning glance to Lydia who nodded in agreement. “We’re all safe now.”
He hung up and moved to Lydia. His hands were gentle as he took the rifle from her trembling grip, careful not to jar her fingers.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “I’ve got this. Get the kids outside.”
Lydia wanted to stay and make sure Tom didn’t try anything. But Ethan was right. The kids had seen too much already. They needed her.
“Come on, babies,” she said, turning to where Eli and Rosie were still pressed against the wall. “Let’s go outside.”
They came to her immediately, both of them latching onto her like they’d never let go. Lydia herded them toward the door, stepping carefully around Tom’s sobbing form, and out into the cold November morning.