Chapter 29
NOW
The world disappears beneath me.
One moment I’m standing on charred boards, tears streaming down my face, Harvey’s gun aimed at my throat. The next, there’s nothing but air and darkness and the terrible sensation of falling with no idea where the ground is.
We hit something hard. Not the ground – an intermediate floor, maybe, some crawl space or cellar level that survived the fire but not the weeks of rot that followed.
The impact drives the breath from my lungs.
I hear Harvey grunt somewhere to my left, debris raining down around us.
The groan of timber that’s been asked to bear weight it was never meant to hold.
Dust billows up in choking clouds. I can’t see.
Can’t breathe. Can only lie here in the dark, every part of my body screaming with fresh pain, waiting to find out if I’m still alive or if this is what death feels like – this endless falling, this suffocating darkness, this sense that everything solid has given way beneath me.
Something shifts above us. A deep, ominous creak that seems to come from the bones of the house itself.
The walls are moving. I can feel it through the rubble I’m lying on – vibrations travelling through stone and timber, the whole structure adjusting to its new reality.
We’ve broken something fundamental. Knocked out some load-bearing element that was holding the ruins together through sheer stubbornness.
Now everything is coming down.
I force myself to move. Every muscle protests.
My shoulder feels wrong, twisted, and there’s blood running down my face, but I push up onto my hands and knees anyway.
The dust starts to settle, revealing shapes in the darkness.
Broken beams. Shattered brick. The jagged outline of the hole we fell through, a few metres above us.
And Harvey.
He’s pinned beneath a section of flooring that came down with us. I can see his face – grey with dust, twisted with pain – and one arm reaching towards me. His legs are trapped under timber and debris, a pile of destruction that must weigh hundreds of pounds.
‘Help me.’ His voice comes out strangled. Desperate. Nothing like the man who held a gun at me moments ago. ‘Kelly, please. I can’t move. I can’t—’
Another groan from above. Something cracks like a gunshot, and more debris showers down on us. A chunk of brick lands inches from my hand, close enough that I feel the wind of its passage.
The house is dying. Whatever precarious balance kept these ruins standing for so long has finally tipped, and everything is accelerating towards collapse.
I should help him.
That’s the thought that surfaces first, unbidden. He’s trapped. He’s hurt. He’s Daniel’s brother, and I’ve already let one Reynolds man die in this house. The pattern of it – the terrible symmetry – makes something twist in my chest.
But then I think about Richard. About the blood pooling on my hallway floor while Harvey stood over us, weapon in hand. About the weeks of terror. The notes. The ring returned like a curse. Everything he’s done to destroy the new life I was trying to build.
He wanted me scared.
He wanted me suffering.
And now he’s lying in the dark, begging for help, and I could just… walk away.
I get to my feet. The movement sends fresh pain lancing through my shoulder, makes my vision swim with grey static. But I stay upright. Stay standing. My legs are unsteady but functional – nothing broken, nothing that will stop me from climbing out of here.
From leaving him behind.
‘Kelly.’ His voice cracks. ‘Don’t. Please. I can’t feel my legs. I think something’s broken. You can’t just—’
‘Watch me.’ The words come out flat. Empty. ‘You were going to kill me. You terrorised me for ages. You put Richard in hospital.’ I take a step towards the far wall, where the rubble piles high enough that I might be able to climb. ‘Why should I help you?’
‘Because you’re not like me.’ He’s struggling now, trying to shift the timber pinning him down.
It doesn’t move. ‘You said it yourself – you couldn’t save Daniel, but you wanted to.
You wanted to be the kind of person who would have tried.
Don’t let me die down here. Don’t become someone who watches people in their final moments. ’
The house shudders. Somewhere above us, an entire section of wall gives way with a roar of falling brick and splintering wood.
The sound is enormous – apocalyptic – and the vibration travels through the floor beneath my feet like an earthquake.
More dust cascades down. I throw my arm over my face, coughing, eyes streaming.
When I can see again, Harvey is still trapped.
Still reaching for me with that one free arm.
‘Please.’ The word is barely audible. ‘I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything now, but I’m sorry. I was wrong. About you. About everything. Just don’t let me die.’
I should keep walking. Every survival instinct screams at me to move, to climb out of this collapsing tomb before it buries us both.
Harvey made his choices. He chose obsession.
Revenge. He chose to spend months destroying my life rather than accepting that his brother’s death was a tragedy without a villain.
He doesn’t deserve my help.
But I can’t stop thinking about that night.
About standing in the kitchen doorway while flames rose between Daniel and me.
About the relief I felt – that horrible, shameful relief – as I watched him burn.
I didn’t choose that feeling. It came from somewhere deeper than choice, some dark place inside me that I’ve been trying to pretend doesn’t exist.
But I can choose what happens now.
I can choose to be someone different.
The thought hits me with surprising clarity, cutting through the fear and the pain and the building roar of the house coming apart around us.
I couldn’t save Daniel. Maybe I couldn’t have even if I’d tried – the fire was too hot, the flames too high, the path between us already impassable.
But I never even tried. I just stood there, frozen by hatred I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.
I don’t want to be that person any more.
I don’t want two brothers to die because of me.
‘Damn it.’ The curse scrapes out of me as I turn back. As I stumble through the debris towards where Harvey lies trapped. ‘Damn it, damn it, damn it.’
‘Kelly…’
‘Shut up.’ I reach the pile of timber pinning his legs and wrap my hands around the nearest piece. It’s heavier than it looks – fire-hardened wood, dense with char – and my injured shoulder screams in protest. ‘Just shut up and let me work.’
I pull. The timber doesn’t budge.
Above us, something gives way with a shriek of tearing metal.
I look up and see a beam shifting, tilting, beginning its slow descent towards the floor that’s already crumbling beneath our feet.
The whole structure is folding inward now, walls leaning at angles that defy physics, the skeleton of the house finally surrendering to gravity.
‘Harder!’ Harvey’s voice is ragged with panic. ‘Pull harder!’
I brace my feet against the rubble and heave with everything I have. The wood shifts – barely, centimetres at most – then catches on something I can’t see. My shoulder feels like it’s being torn from its socket. My hands are slipping on the charred surface, splinters driving deep into my palms.
‘It’s stuck,’ I say in a gasp. ‘There’s something underneath, I can’t—’
The floor lurches. Not a gradual settling but a sudden, violent shift that throws me sideways. I lose my grip on the timber, land hard on debris that digs into my ribs. For a moment I can’t breathe, can’t see, can only feel the world tilting around me like a ship going down.
‘Kelly!’ Harvey’s voice, somewhere in the chaos.
I push myself up. Try to get back to him. Try to find the timber again, get my hands around it, and do what I came back to do.
But the house has other plans.
The walls above us make a sound I’ve never heard before. Not a groan or a creak but something organic – a shriek of metal and stone and timber all tearing apart simultaneously. I look up and see the hole still expanding, widening, as the entire upper structure begins to fold inward on itself.
This is it.
This is the end.
I lunge for the timber anyway. Get my hands around it one more time. Pull with everything left in my broken body, because I have to try, I have to try…
Something hits my back.
The impact drives me face-first into the rubble. I feel my head strike something hard – brick, maybe, or a chunk of foundation – and the world explodes into white light and then nothing. No pain. No sound. Just a spreading numbness that starts at the base of my skull and radiates outward.
I’m aware, distantly, of debris raining down around me. Of Harvey screaming something I can’t make out. Of the house finally, fully, giving way. That tremendous roar of destruction that drowns out everything else.
I try to move. Can’t.
Try to speak. Can’t.
The darkness is spreading from the edges inward, eating the world one piece at a time. Through it, I can just make out Harvey’s face – grey with dust, contorted with terror, still trapped beneath timber I couldn’t move.
I tried, I think as consciousness slips away. This time I tried.
I went back.
I couldn’t save him but I went back.
The last thing I see is dust. Billowing up around me like smoke. The last thing I feel is cold. Then there’s nothing but darkness, the distant sound of destruction, and the terrible uncertainty of whether anyone will be alive when the collapse finally ends.