Grounded (37 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Mr. Tragic

STEPHAN - MINUTES EARLIER

I was getting a lot done in a short amount of time when it came to packing up my house, right until the time that I ran into a box of photos.
 
Javier and I studied the first stack of pictures and laughed.
 
It was a large stack of snapshots from a company Christmas party from maybe three years ago.
 
They’d been taken on a super cheap camera, so they were grainy with a lot of red eye, but they brought back good memories, and we sat down on my bed and went through them all carefully.

Javier giggled, flipping a picture to me.
 
I laughed so hard that I had to sit down.
 
Murphy had his shirt off in the photo, and was trying to do splits, with absolutely no success.
 
That was funny, but the highlight in the photo was by far the look on Damien’s face in the background.
 
It was a mixture of admiration/horror/confusion.
 
I must have been taking the picture, because Bianca was off to the side, doubled over laughing, and I wasn’t next to her.
 

Javier flicked me another picturing, still smiling widely.

This one was a close-up of a still laughing Bianca.
 
Her eyes were twinkling as she looked directly into the camera.
 
It was a great picture of her, though she wouldn’t notice or care how beautiful she’d looked in a bright green dress that night, her pale hair hanging smooth around her shoulders.
 
I made a note to get a copy of it for James, who would love a picture of her laughing like that as much as I did.
 
I sometimes thought that our fast friendship had been kind of like joining a club, one made up of men that thought that Bianca Karlsson was the most perfect woman on the planet.
     

Javier flipped me another picture, giggling harder than ever.
 
I joined him with one glance at the image.

This one was of Murphy lying on his back on the ground.
 
He held his arms up straight in front of him.
 
His suit jacket and tie were crumpled all over the floor around him.
 
I remembered that they’d gotten that way during his impromptu strip tease.

Marnie stood next to him in the photo, caught mid-curtsy motion.
 
Javier flicked me another picture.
 

Murphy was making a valiant effort at bench-pressing the tiny woman.
 

Javier flicked me another picture.
 

The same tiny woman had collapsed onto him, and they were both laughing at his failure.
 
We laughed even harder at the memory.

“I’m going to miss that job,” I said wistfully.

“Well, we don’t have to miss the people, which were what made it great.
 
What do you want to bet that Damien and Murphy will be regulars at our bar?”

I smiled at him.
 
“You’re so right.
 
We’ll probably have to kick them out at closing time every night.”
 
The thought filled me with warmth.
 
Our lives were changing, yes, but they were only getting better.

Javier was playing more than helping me pack, and I couldn’t have cared less.
 
I didn’t mind doing it myself, and would have preferred his company, help or no.

I reached up to pull a box down from the top of my closet and felt his arms wrap around me from behind.
 
He nuzzled into the middle of my back, purposely tickling me with his nose, and I turned into him with a laugh, pushing him until the back of his knees touched the bed.
 
He fell back with a laugh, and I followed him down.

He tried to get up, but he’d started it, and I intended to finish it.
 
I tickled him mercilessly, wrestling with him on the bed, pictures and clothes falling off with our exuberance.
 

“Uncle,” he cried, still giggling.
 
“Uncle!”

I let up, kissing him.
 
He practically melted underneath me.
 
I loved it.
 
I could feel how I affected him, and I treasured that.
 
I pulled back, stroking his cheek as I gazed into his eyes.
 

He opened his mouth to say something, but a loud bang made his breath catch.
 

I tensed for one long moment, still staring at him, before I sprang into action.
 

I stood up, pointing at him.
 
“Stay here, and stay down, ok?”
 

He swallowed.
 
“Was that a gunshot?” he asked in a very small noise.

“I’m not sure what that was,” I lied.
 
“But I just need to go check on Bianca.”
 

I was already striding to the bedroom door before he spoke again.

“Don’t go, Stephan.
 
Please.
 
I love you.
 
Don’t put yourself in danger.”

I looked at him, my heart in my eyes.
 
“I love you, too.
 
Stay down.
 
I have to make sure she’s safe, Javier.
 
I couldn’t bear it if she were hurt.”

I tried to appear calm as I closed the bedroom behind me, but I was tearing through the house like a madman the second it closed.
 
A second and third gunshot had sounded by the time I reached my back door.
 
My heart was trying to pound right out of my chest with the fear.
 
I couldn’t lose her.
 
I was a survivor by nature, but I knew that I wouldn’t survive
that
.

I unlocked, opened, and tore through that door in an instant, fueled by blind terror.
 
If that monster had hurt her, if he had so much as bruised her, I swore that I would tear him apart with my bare hands.
 

A fourth shot sounded just before I vaulted over the tall barrier desperately, scraping my hands with the effort.
 
I landed on the other side, taking in the bloody scene before me with shock and horror.
 

Bianca’s father straightened over the fallen form of Blake.
 
His chest was bloody, bloody circles blooming on his chest, but he was still standing. He held a small pistol in his beefy hand.
 
It was so small against those huge hands that it almost looked like a toy.
 

Another body lay in the yard.
 
Patterson, I thought, but I couldn’t even spare him a glance as Sven Sr. pointed the gun at Blake, aiming to take another shot.
 

“No,” I shouted, rushing at him.
 

He turned impossibly fast for such a big man.
 
He smiled at me through bloody teeth as he aimed into my chest and fired.

My last thought was one of relief.
 
Bianca wasn’t amidst the casualties.
 

BIANCA

I stepped outside, into a bloody nightmare, my eyes going unerringly to the crumpled figure of Stephan.
 
I didn’t make a sound, but my face was wet with tears.
 

He has to be okay
, I told myself.
 
I could survive a lot of things, but I knew that losing Stephan wasn’t one of them.
 

I was so intent on this thought that I didn’t even look at the monster amidst the carnage for long moments.
 
I had made my way closer to Stephan before I raised my eyes to those pale blue ones that looked so much like my own.
 

It was like staring into the eyes of a rabid animal, his malevolence written in every tense line of his face.
 
It was hard to imagine that he had ever been a sane person, looking at him now.
 
But
had
he ever been sane?
 
I couldn’t have said.
 
Perhaps sanity had never been the question.
 
He wasn’t even a human to me, but a monstrous demon that destroyed and terrified.
 
And the only one who had ever been able to act as protection between him and me now lay crumpled at my feet, red circles on his chest.
 
He had finally done it.
 
The monster had broken me.
       

My instinct was to freeze, and so I watched without moving as he approached, some awful expression that was shaped like a smile overtaking his face.
 

I didn’t have that violent thing inside of me like my father did.
 
I didn’t have an urge to hurt anyone, not for any reason.
 
It wasn’t even an urge that I understood.
 
Or at least I hadn’t
—
not until Stephan lay crumpled at my feet.
 

My eyes moved from that horrible face and to the tiny pistol at my father’s side.
 
I watched it like a lifeline, letting him see what I was looking at
—
what I’d fixated on.
 

He laughed, a dry cackle, and the madness of the laugh made me note, in an absentminded kind of way, that he was on something.
 
Some kind of drug was racing through him, making him crazier, making him stronger, anesthetized to both pain and fear.
 
The man had been a beast
without
some drug jacking up his system, so it was hardly a reassuring realization.

“
I warned you, sotnos.
 
I warned you that if you went to the police, no one could keep you safe from me, but you didn’t believe me.
 
And now your friend is dead.
 
Was it worth it?”

I whimpered, a wholly involuntary sound.
 
He can’t be dead
, I told myself.
 
I had to believe it, or I would just crumple into a heap on the ground myself, and never get back up.
 

My eyes were still glued to that little pistol in his hand.
 

He laughed again, waving it at me.
 
“You can’t take your eyes off this.
 
You think this will help you?
 
You don’t have the nerve, just like your mother.
 
You couldn’t hurt a fly.
 
Worthless, mewling women.”

He held it right in front of my face, smiling grimly, his bloodshot, crazy eyes glued to mine, their maniacal gleam piercing me.
 
“Take it, if you dare.
 
See what happens, sotnos.”

I never looked away from his eyes.
 
I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t hated him, but I felt it now like a fresh wound.
 
I could kill him without remorse, I realized.
 
He had done that to me, finally broken that part of me.
 
I would not regret if he were dead, even if it was at my hand.
 
I would be putting down a wild beast on a killing rampage.
 
The only regret could be what he’d managed to do before he was stopped.

I wasn’t my mother, though I could wish that I had only taken after her.
 
As much as I wanted to run from the notion, I had enough of my father in me at least for
this
.
 
It wasn’t even a question, not even a split second of indecision, not with Stephan lying motionless at my feet.
 
I had erred grievously, I saw clearly, in keeping his secret, in living in fear.
 
Far better if he had killed me back then for turning him in than to let him wreak all of this destruction now.
 
That was my regret, and I felt it keenly as I looked at him, surrounded by his victims.
 

If only I had looked beyond my own fear of what he had done, and thought about all that he was still capable of doing.

Yes, holding my silence for all those years was my regret, but it was my
only
regret.
 
This thing I was about to do I would
not
regret, not for a moment.

I had no words for him.
 
Nothing would do my hatred justice, and he wouldn’t hear them besides.
 
He had never valued me, and you didn’t hear someone you didn’t value.
 
My words couldn’t touch him.
 
So I didn’t bother to tell him how I felt.
 
I
showed
him.

He handed that gun to me with no hesitation, no fear, and I took it, turning it into him with the same motion.
 
I shoved it hard into his chest, aiming for his heart.
 
I squeezed the trigger, barely even feeling the gun’s recoil in my hand as it fired into him.
 

Foolishly, I thought that would be the end of it.
 

The monster laughed, wrenching the gun out of my hand.
 
I’d shot him in his chest, a chest already red with his own blood, and he only laughed.
 
I got this sudden crazy notion that he really wasn’t human.
 
How was he still standing?

He opened his mouth, and blood sprayed my face as he spoke.
 
“My turn, sotnos.”
 

He gripped my hair, pulling my head back, holding it immobile.
 
I began to struggle, but it was no good.
 

He put the gun inside of my mouth with no effort at all, pushing my own hand over the handle, that maniac’s smile still fixed on his face.
 

I jerked my face from side to side, caught between his hand in my hair and the gun in my mouth.
 
I was still shaking my head desperately when two simultaneous gunshots sounded.
 
The world went black.