Chapter Twenty-One
The moment it happened—the moment he said it out loud—Maya felt the room change.
Not in the way people meant when they said the air got heavy. It was sharper than that. Like the house itself had inhaled and couldn’t exhale again.
Asa moved between her and his uncle, gun raised, shoulders squared, but Maya could see it anyway—the fracture under his control. The way his breath went too tight. The way his eyes didn’t blink often enough.
Because the man in front of them wasn’t just a killer. He was family, and that made him more dangerous than any stranger with a weapon.
“I loved you,” Jonas had said.
Loved. Like the word could soften what he’d done.
Maya couldn’t make her tongue work to scream for the help they so desperately needed. She could only stand there behind Asa with her hand on his back, trying to keep him anchored so he didn’t do what she wouldn’t blame him for doing.
“Get your hands where I can see them,” Asa commanded. “Get on your knees.”
Jonas didn’t comply. Instead, he took a slow step backward toward the hall and the back of the house.
Asa tracked him. “I said stop!”
Jonas lunged toward Asa and grabbed for the hand holding the weapon. A shot rang out.
“Asa!” Maya screamed and followed the fight.
The gun clattered to the floor. Asa slammed his shoulder into his uncle’s chest. Jonas staggered half a step.
Asa used it to his advantage and drove forward hard, shoving his uncle into the kitchen counter so fast a mug on the edge toppled and shattered. His breath came ragged. “You’re done.”
Jonas smiled. “You sound like Raymond,” he said, and headbutted him.
Asa stumbled back, blood blooming at his brow, then running down the side of his face. He blinked, then jumped to his feet again.
Maya saw the moment something in Asa changed. The moment the fight stopped being about survival and became something else.
A reckoning.
He lifted his hands—devoid of the weapon now—and came at Jonas again.
Jonas caught Asa’s next swing, twisted it, and slammed him into the pantry door.
The door burst open.
Cans clattered, rolling underfoot.
Asa shoved off the door, but his boot landed on a rolling can and slid.
Jonas took advantage of it. He grabbed Asa’s arm and wrenched it. Asa grunted, teeth bared. Pain flashed in his eyes.
Jonas leaned close, voice low and vicious. “You should’ve stayed gone.”
Asa’s response came out in a growl. “You should’ve stayed buried.” He drove his knee up hard.
Jonas took it in the gut and expelled a sharp breath. Asa didn’t pause. He swung, fist connecting with his uncle’s jaw.
The sound of it was awful. Jonas’s head snapped sideways.
For a second—just one—he looked less like a predator and more like a man surprised the world could still hurt him. Then the surprise hardened into rage. He grabbed Asa’s shirt and slammed him into the refrigerator.
Magnets fell. Photos fluttered to the floor.
Maya’s stomach turned as one of the photos landed face-up—smiling people in sunlight. Normal lives on a normal day.
Like none of this belonged here.
Asa shoved back, and they both went down hard, sliding across the kitchen floor in a tangle of limbs.
“You killed him,” Asa hissed, voice raw. “You killed my father.”
“He chose Vanessa,” he rasped. “He chose Maya . . . over family.”
Asa wasn’t just fighting the killer; he was fighting the last piece of his father still living inside him.
With the radio’s chatter ringing in her ears, Maya’s gaze snapped to the floor. The gun near the kitchen table. Her heart slammed against her chest as she scrambled toward it.
Asa had told her earlier: If it gets to be too much, tap my hand. We walk out.
There was no walking out now. There was only one ending to this.
Her fingers closed around cold metal. The weight of it shocked her. Too heavy. Too real. She’d never held a gun in her life like this—never with intent—never with blood and breath and fate on the other side of it.
She whipped around then froze. Asa lay unconscious on the floor. “No!”
Jonas stumbled to his feet. With Asa out of the picture, he was free to eliminate loose ends. His lips curved, slow. “There you are.”
Her blood turned to ice.
Jonas lunged for her.
Her voice came out strangled. “Stop.”
“You’re not going to shoot me.”
Maya’s finger hovered near the trigger. She didn’t want to kill him. She wanted Asa to live. She wanted her mother back. She wanted the years he stole to matter. “You don’t know what I’m capable of doing,” she whispered.
He moved closer. “I do. Because you’re like your mother.”
Maya’s throat tightened. “Don’t! You killed her!”
He didn’t deny it, and her world threatened to shatter.
He kept talking, because of course he did. Because he loved the sound of his own voice. Because he loved the sound of fear. “She thought if she talked, it would save her.”
Asa moaned.
Jonas’s smile widened before he slammed Maya against the wall. The gun hit the floor, skittering away.
Maya’s shoulder exploded with pain. Her head cracked against the wood. For a second, the world roared then went white. She heard Asa’s voice—distant, broken—saying her name.
Then the man leaned close, face inches from hers, and Maya saw him clearly. The monster that had stood in the barn and made a four-year-old girl go silent.
His voice dropped into her ear, so tender it made her gag. “I let you live,” he whispered. “But you didn’t stay quiet.”
Asa materialized beside them. He whipped his arms around Jonas’s neck and tore him away from Maya, slamming him into the opposite wall so hard that a framed picture fell and shattered.
Maya slid down, clutching her shoulder, gasping.
Asa stood between them again, blood on his face, eyes wild.
Jonas straightened slowly, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
Outside, boots thundered up onto the front porch.
The doorknob rattled.
“Asa,” Will’s voice bellowed. “Open the door!”
Jonas’s eyes flicked toward the door, then back to Asa. His uncle shifted his weight, ready to pounce again, when the crack of a gun lit up the kitchen like lightning. She realized Asa had the gun.
Maya flinched hard, hands flying up, and for one frozen second, she tasted defeat. Had Asa missed?
Then Jonas grunted. Not a scream. Not in shock. But in pain. He staggered back a half step, hand flying to his side. Dark oozed fast between his fingers, soaking into his jacket. His face twisted with fury, as if Asa had personally offended him.
Asa didn’t hesitate.
He kept the gun trained on him, breath ragged, blood still streaking down his temple. His voice was steady in a way that terrified Maya more than panic would have. “Get down,” Asa said. “Now.”
Jonas spewed out a laugh. “You finally chose. Took you long enough.”
Maya pushed herself up from the wall, her shoulder screaming in protest. Her vision swam, but she forced it to clear, eyes locking on Asa’s back, on the space between him and Jonas.
Jonas shifted again—subtle, almost lazy—but Maya saw it. Saw the way his weight rolled onto his back foot, the way his gaze flicked past Asa toward the hall.
Toward the back door.
“No!” Maya shouted.
Jonas moved.
Asa fired again.
This time, the bullet caught Jonas higher, clipping his shoulder, spinning him sideways.
He slammed into the counter, knocking drawers open, silverware spilling onto the floor with a shriek of metal, but he didn’t fall.
He shoved off the counter and ran. Not clumsy or panicked but fast. Jonas crashed through the back door shoulder-first, wood splintering outward, cold air and rain knifing into the house.
Maya stumbled forward, heart hammering so hard she thought it might break her ribs. “Asa!”
He was already gone.
She followed, her feet slipping on the wet kitchen tile as she ran for the doorway.
The night outside was chaotic. Rain poured down in sheets, wind whipping hard enough to sting. Flashing blue lights cut through the darkness, strobes reflecting off slick pavement and wet grass.
Asa was twenty feet ahead of her, sprinting after Jonas across the yard, gun raised, boots slipping in the mud.
Jonas vaulted the low stone wall at the edge of the property with terrifying ease.
“Asa, don’t!” Will’s voice thundered from somewhere behind her.
Asa fired once more into the darkness.
Nothing.
The forest swallowed Jonas whole.
Branches cracked. Footsteps faded, and then deafening silence.
Asa skidded to a stop at the edge of the trees, chest heaving, rain plastering his hair to his face. His shoulders fell as if gravity was pulling them down.
For a second, Maya was afraid he might follow anyway. That he might vanish after Jonas into the dark and not come back the same man.
Then Will reached him, grabbing Asa’s arm hard. “That’s enough,” he barked. “We’ll find him.”
Asa didn’t fight the grip. He just stood there, staring into the trees, rain streaking blood down his face, his whole body vibrating with something violent and unfinished.
Somehow Maya reached him. She didn’t remember crossing the yard.
She only remembered pressing her hand flat against his back, right between his shoulder blades, anchoring him the way he’d anchored her so many times before.
“He’s gone,” she whispered. “Asa, he’s gone.”
His breath shuddered. “I had him,” he said hoarsely. “I had him.”
“You stopped him,” she said. “You saved me. Your uncle’s hurt. He won’t get far.”
Slowly, like the words weighed a hundred pounds each, Asa pulled her toward him. “You’re hurt,” he said.
“It’s just my shoulder,” she said. “I’m still standing.”
That seemed to matter. His hand hovered near her arm as if he was afraid to touch her but afraid not to.
“I have a feeling he knows these woods and the island,” Will said. “We’ll keep tracking him, but he planned this. Did you recognize the suspect?” The chief searched his face.
Asa nodded once. “It’s my Uncle Jonas. He’s the killer.”
“You’re kidding?” Will’s shocked gaze shifted to Maya. It took a beat before he asked, “Are you okay?”
She nodded because she didn’t trust her voice.
“Tonight changes everything,” Will said. “We know the man who killed your father and possibly your mother.”
Asa swallowed. “I shot him. I shot my uncle.”
Will took the gun from Asa’s unresisting hand. “You did exactly what you had to do.”
Asa looked down at his hands like they didn’t belong to him anymore.
Maya slid her fingers into his.
He flinched—then held on.
“He didn’t win,” she whispered.
Asa closed his eyes for a moment, forehead resting lightly against hers despite the rain, the blood, the chaos, the flashing lights. “He’s not done.”
“No,” Maya agreed, “but neither are we.”
The monster from her past had revealed himself, and that meant the hunt was no longer about shadows and guesses.
It was personal.
It was open.
And next time, she knew with certainty, Jonas wouldn’t be running.