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 you were staring down the barrel of a rifle held by a man you once loved, once trusted, once promised to spend your life with.
Tom held the rifle loosely. Too loosely, which somehow made it worse.
The casual way his hand gripped the stock, the way the barrel drifted left and right as he swayed.
But his finger was on the trigger. She could see it from here, see the way it rested against the curve of metal, see how little pressure it would take 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 in 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 the kind of 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, calm, even though terror was coursing through her veins like ice water. “The kids are scared. Let them go. This is between you and me.”
“Between us?” Tom laughed, and the sound was bitter and ugly and nothing like the laugh she remembered from when they were young. “There is no us. You made sure of that when you divorced me. When you 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. But Lydia shoved it down. Anger wouldn’t help. Anger would get them killed.
“You took it from yourself when you wouldn’t stop drinking,” she said, keeping her voice level. “When you chose the bottle over your children.”
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. Anchoring himself to her. Trusting her to protect him.
“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.
Saw grief, saw regret, saw the weight of what he’d done pressing down on him.
“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. The words hung in the cold barn air like poison.
Lydia felt sick. She’d suspected, of course. Had known in her gut that Tom was capable of this. 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. To set the fire and then save them from it. 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.”
For a moment, Tom’s face crumpled. He looked small and lost and beaten, and Lydia felt an echo of the love she’d once had for him. Not romantic love, not anymore, but the grief of watching someone destroy themselves.
Then his expression hardened. “Then I have nothing to lose.”
Tom steadied the rifle. 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 a kind of focused 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. Relieved that there were now two adults, and therefore that much 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, toward danger, and Lydia wanted to scream at him to stop. “But I am trying to keep these kids safe. Look at them, Tom. Really look. 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 them. He doesn’t try to burn them alive. He sure as hell doesn’t point a gun at their mother while they watch.”
Behind Lydia, Eli made a small sound. Not quite a sob, not quite a gasp. Just 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. I know what it is to be so wrapped up in grief and anger that you can’t see straight.
I know what it is 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. And 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. Please don’t make my children watch you kill someone.
“Take me,” Ethan said.
The words punched through Lydia like bullets. No.
“Let them go. Keep me as a hostage if you need to. But let Lydia take the kids and walk out of here.”
“Ethan, no!” Lydia’s cracked on his name, and she saw his eyelids flicker, but he didn’t look at her. 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. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t process what he was doing, what he was offering, what it meant that he’d walk into a barn with an armed man and offer himself as a sacrifice.
For a moment, time hung suspended.
Tom’s finger hovered over the trigger. His eyes were wet, anguished, lost. Lydia could see the war raging behind them, rage and grief and love and hate all tangled together.
The barn was so quiet. Just the sound of breathing. Just the creak of old wood. Just 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 opening. His hand went to his chest. His face was blank.
Then he fell.
“Oh, God.” Tom’s face went sheet-white, all the rage draining out of him in an instant. The rifle dropped in his shaking hands. “Oh God, I didn’t … I didn’t mean …”
He didn’t mean to shoot. Didn’t mean to hit Michael. Didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But it had happened.
And 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 didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Just lunged forward, her hands reaching for the rifle, wrenching it from Tom’s unresisting grip.
It was heavier than she expected. Cold. 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. Just folded in on himself and dropped to his knees, then to his side, curling into a ball. Sobbing. Great heaving sobs that shook his whole body.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped between sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry?—”
But Lydia wasn’t listening. Was already turning toward where Michael had fallen, where Ethan was rushing over, dropping to his knees beside the prone form.
“Michael!” Ethan’s voice was sharp with fear despite his training. “Oh God, stay with me?—”
His hands went to Michael’s shirt, and Lydia watched as he ripped it open.
There was blood on the white fabric. So much blood.
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, trying to process. The bullet had hit him. She’d seen it hit him. Seen the impact, seen him stagger, seen the blood.
But there was nothing there.
Michael’s eyes opened. Clear, calm, utterly untroubled. He looked at Ethan’s shocked face and winked.
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, turned back. Met Lydia’s eyes. His expression was gentle, patient, and he gave her a nod. As if recognizing her across a crowded supermarket.
Then he walked out of the barn like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t just taken a bullet meant for Ethan. Like bullets couldn’t hurt him.
Because maybe they couldn’t.
Ethan shook his head like he was trying to clear water from his ears. Stared at the spot where Michael had been. Then, at the blood stains on the ground. Then at the barn door.
But there was no time to process the impossible. Tom was still sobbing on the floor. The kids were still huddled against the wall. And they needed law enforcement, needed this nightmare to end.
Ethan pulled out his phone, 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.”
A pause while he 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 argue. Wanted to stay, to make sure Tom didn’t try anything. But Ethan was right. The kids had seen too much already. They needed air. Needed space. 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.