Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Iturn, and David is in the doorway.
For one second, none of us moves. The flashlight lies where I wedged it, throwing its beam low across the floor. The light catches him from below, hollowing his eyes. Rain runs from his coat. His breath comes hard, like he’s been running.
He looks at me first. Then he sees Julia.
Whatever he came here to say dies in his face.
"No," he says. It is not a denial yet. It’s shock.
"How could you?" I ask.
His eyes come back to mine. "Mallory."
"I found the bag."
"What bag?"
"The bag in the garage, David. The syringe. The tape. The notebook. The plans."
His face empties.
"You killed the Ericksons," I say. "Lena. The people in Oregon. All of them. You brought Julia here. And I slept beside you every night."
"No." He takes one step toward me. I drag Julia back with me, and she makes a broken sound against my shoulder.
David stops.
"Mallory, listen to me. This is Henry. He set this up."
"Stop lying."
"I'm not."
"You couldn't tell me where you were Tuesday."
"I followed him," he says. "Henry. That's where I was Tuesday. That's where I was tonight. I was trying to find out what he was doing."
"You're lying."
"I'm not." He’s close to crying now. "I am telling you the truth."
"No," I say. "The police know. Rodriguez knows. It's over, David. Get out of our way."
He looks from me to Julia, then back again. "No," he says. "You don't understand."
I fumble my phone out with one hand, Julia sagging against the other. My thumb finds Rodriguez's name.
David sees the screen. "Mallory, don't."
Shit. The call won’t go through. One bar flashes, vanishes, comes back empty. Rain hammers the plywood. The whole unfinished wing shakes with it.
"Mal, just put it down."
David moves for the phone. I see him coming for me.
I twist away, but his fingers catch my wrist. The phone flies out of my hand and skids into the dark. Julia slips off my shoulder, folding hard against the studs. I reach for her and miss. Then David has my arm.
"Mallory, stop."
I shove him with both hands. He catches me by the arms. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to hold me there.
"Listen to me."
"No."
I drive my knee up. It catches his thigh, maybe his hip. He grunts and loses his balance on the loose boards. We go down together. My shoulder hits first. His weight comes across me for one blind second, an accident of the fall. He’s already trying to pull back.
"Stop. Please," he says.
I don't hear the please. I feel his body over mine. I hear Julia somewhere in the dark. I hear every dead woman I've put his name to.
I thrash sideways and drag myself out from under him, but his hand closes around my ankle before I can get clear. I kick back with my free leg, blind and hard, and my heel hits something solid. His face, I think. He lets go with a broken sound, and I scramble up before he can reach for me again.
I’m through the plastic and into the hall before I know I’m running.
The hall is black, and I run with one hand dragging along the wall. The storm moves through the house in great walls of sound. I can't hear his footsteps, can't tell if he is up, if he is coming.
Then his voice cuts through it, close behind me.
"Mallory. It's Henry. Please, listen to me."
I don’t slow for even a second.
The study door stands open. I burst through it and drop hard to my knees at the low cupboard under the bookshelves. Pain shoots up my legs. I yank at the doors, but they stick, and for one horrible second they don't move.
"Mallory!"
His voice is in the hall.
I pull harder. The doors give.
My hands know where to go because I watched David do it the night of the break-in. The case is at the back, exactly where it was then, his initials stamped into the corner. I drag it out, thumb the latch, and take the gun in my hand. It is cold and wrong and heavier than it should be.
I stand and turn with it.
And he’s there.
David’s in the doorway, out of breath, his eyes wide.
He stops when he sees the gun. Everything stops. Him in the doorway, me by the desk, the barrel wavering in the air between us. The window flashes white and drops us both into black, then hands us back to each other.
"Mallory. Wait." His hands come up. "Put it down."
"So you can kill me like the others?"
His face changes. "I would never hurt you."
"You already have."
"No. Listen to me. Put the gun down because you don't understand what is happening."
My arms won’t stop shaking, and the barrel shakes with them. I have no memory of ever holding one. It feels like it wants out of my grip. I am pointing it at my husband, and every part of me is screaming to pull the trigger.
But it’s still David.
The man I fell in love with.
That’s the thing my body can’t get past. His face. His voice. The man who slept beside me. The man who made coffee in our kitchen. The man who may have killed all those people and still knows exactly how to say my name.
"Mallory. You know me.”
He says it softly, and that is what nearly breaks me.
“I thought I did,” I say.
My finger tightens.
Not enough.
He sees it.
Then he rushes forward.
Not for me. For the gun.
His hands close over mine, hard and sudden, forcing the barrel away. My finger slips against the trigger. For one terrible second I think it is going to fire into the floor, into his leg, into both of us.
"Let go," he says. "Mallory, please, let go."
Thunder cracks over the house, close enough to shake the walls.
I shove him back with everything I have.
He stumbles but doesn't let go. The gun jerks between us, pulling me forward as he tries to wrench it down. His shoulder catches mine.
I twist away.
As he grabs for my arm, I feel the desk behind me.
I hit it hard, hip first, then ribs, and the whole room jumps. My feet go out from under me. I fall backward over the edge, still gripping the gun, still trying to keep it away from him.
The corner of the desk catches the side of my head.
The room goes white. Something bursts behind my eyes, and the black comes up fast through it. I can't find the floor.
I’m no longer in the study.
I am back in my car. The glass is going, a fast silver web tearing across it. There’s water. So much water. Black water climbing the hood, up the glass, coming in cold around my feet, and the dark rises with it.
The darkness takes the water, and the study, and David's voice, all of it, at once.
Then there’s nothing.