Chapter 7
Islide out of Apple’s bed, into my shoes, and out the door of her room, pulling it closed with a soft click.
Bryce has put on some music, a kind of jazzy Christmas mix.
I’m going to make some excuse and go. Like any good hit woman, I have a go bag.
It’s in the well of my trunk, where the spare should be.
If I have any chance of getting away, it has to be now.
I even have a safe house, a place I bought under a shell company name, remote in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and another car parked in a garage outside of town.
Eventually, they’ll find the car I’ve abandoned, the house, me, but it will buy me some time to formulate a plan.
My heart thuds with fear, but I know this decision is the right one. It’s been a long time coming. This is my hard place. Time to go.
Bryce has turned the lights down low, lounges on the couch over by the tree.
“I have to leave,” I say, moving toward the door. “Something has come up.”
Usually, he’d use the opportunity to make a dirty joke. Instead, he stays silent. Did he fall asleep?
“You and Apple need to go too. I can’t explain, but I’m asking you to trust me.” He still doesn’t answer. “Bryce, are you listening?”
It’s then that I notice the way his head is tipped awkwardly back. How much has he had to drink?
I move in closer, put a hand on his shoulder.
“This is serious.”
That’s when I see a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead, the couch behind him washed in red.
I freeze; it takes a millisecond to process.
Standing there beside the big window, I realize I’m a clean target and hit the ground just as a bullet whips silently past me to shatter the stylish glass lamp on an end table. The pieces fly everywhere, one of them slicing the skin under my eye.
There’s no fear, just adrenaline pumping as I army crawl, keeping low.
Once I’m clear of the window, I get up and run down the hall, push silently into Apple’s room, and lift her from her bed.
She clings to me like a little monkey, still sleeping, head resting heavy on my shoulder.
I move, fast and quiet, to the master bedroom.
I’m unarmed, but I happen to know that Bryce, like many idiots, keeps a loaded gun in his bedside table.
The front door to the house opens and closes.
Think.
I could slip out the back with Apple, run through the woods. But I won’t be able to scale the wall with her. No chance I’ll get us to my car without getting shot. Whoever it is, they’ll be watching for that. There’s no more chance of flight. So the only choice now is to stay and fight.
I slide open the drawer and let out a sigh of relief. There it is. A flat gray Glock. He loved to take it to the range and brag about his prowess after. I lift it from its place, check that it’s loaded with a bullet in the chamber, stow it in the waistband of my jeans. I look around.
There’s no back exit from this room, and slow footfalls are getting louder in the hall.
I move us into the huge walk-in closet, then lay Apple on the carpeted floor, behind the center island, where Bryce keeps his obscene collection of watches, belts, underwear, and socks in a tidy tower of drawers. Apple stirs and rolls over into a ball.
“Daddy?” she mutters.
I’m time traveling again. In the closet on Black Friday, watching my father kill my mother.
Sitting frozen, shock keeping me locked in place, world shattering.
I watched life leave her kind brown eyes, which went from loving to blank.
I’ve replayed that moment a thousand times.
What could I have done? Should I have done?
You were a child, Dr. Black repeats when it comes up, as it often does. You were in no way responsible for any of it. You were powerless. Defenseless. That’s the condition of childhood. We’re at the mercy of our parents’ choices.
Maybe Dr. Black would say, if she knew the truth of my profession, that in my work, I am killing my father, avenging my mother, over and over.
And now, after so many years, I’ve realized finally that there’s no turning back the clock, no righting this cosmic wrong.
And that my recent depression is really just grief.
I feel like your heart’s just not in this anymore, Paige.
But maybe the truth is that my heart’s in it for the very first time since that night thirty years ago.
I pull one of Bryce’s jackets from a hanger and cover Apple with it. She’s hidden, safe for now behind the island. I take a stand in the dark to the right of the door, waiting.