There’s a door to the left. I missed it before; the camera tripod was blocking it. But the tripod’s on its side, and a broken laptop is sparking and flickering next to it.

I sense someone behind me. A shadow, moving fast.

I whirl and pull the trigger.

I realize just one second too late that it isn’t Melvin.

It’s Sam.

The gun clicks.

Empty.

Sam’s breathing hard as he skids to a stop. He’s staring at me with wild eyes, and he’s standing in the spreading pool of Annie’s blood. He’s got a gun, too, and he’s holding it on me as if I’m a dangerous creature he can’t trust. Then he yells, “Put it down, Gwen! Put it down!”

I drop the gun, and it hits my leg painfully enough to jolt me out of my momentary trance. Everything floods me at once, a storm of emotion that I can’t even understand. It rips away the focus, sends me reeling, shaking. The pain is back. So is the fear.

“He’s still here!” I scream at Sam. “Melvin! He’s still here!”

Sam’s staring down at the ruined body of Annie with an expression of pure, visceral horror. It takes him a second to tear his gaze away and fix it on me. “No. He’s out in the hall. He’s dead.”

“What?”

“He took a bullet in the eye. It’s okay. Gwen. He’s down.” He catches me when I fall against him. I feel such an immense sense of exhaustion I think I might die. My heart is hammering like an engine; my body is still intent on running, fighting, even when there’s nothing left to fight. I feel tears shredding me, wild and desperately intense.

“You got him,” I whisper to Sam. “Thank you. God, thank you.”

He holds me so tight it feels like we’re fusing together, and I want that, I want that. “No,” he says. “I didn’t shoot him. You did. Didn’t you?”

It takes me a long, icy second to understand what he’s just said, and why it’s important.

I didn’t shoot Melvin in the eye. I stabbed him. With the gore and blood, it would have looked like a death wound. A shot to the eye. All Melvin had to do was lie down and let Sam go past him.

I grab Sam’s gun and use his shoulder as a rest to aim, because there’s the monster coming just behind him, there’s the tiger, and death is in his eyes.

Melvin is lunging for Sam’s back with a knife.

I stop him with three bullets through the forehead.

He folds at the knees, and then he’s down on his face. He’s still breathing. I can see his back rising and falling, and I want to put another bullet in it, but Sam’s turning now, taking the gun from me.

It’s good he does, because I likely would have shot Agent Lustig, who enters the doorway with his own gun drawn. Sam lowers the weapon, and Lustig takes one look at the two of us, then at the dying man stretched out on the floor. The dead man near the lights. The ruined body of Annie.

“Christ,” Lustig says, and lowers his weapon. “My good Christ, what the hell is this?”

We stand there in silence. Lustig kneels next to Melvin, and we watch my ex-husband’s back rise and fall for three more gasping breaths, and then there’s a long, rattling exhalation that trails into silence.

The devil’s dead. He’s dead. I want to feel . . . what? Good? But there’s none of that. I’m just grateful. Maybe later I’ll feel satisfaction, vengeance, the fulfillment of a long-burning rage.

But right now I’m so grateful I am weeping. I can’t stop.

“Please,” I gasp. I reach for Sam, and he puts his arms around me again. “Please, please tell me they’re okay, please, please . . .”

“They’re okay,” he whispers to me. There’s a stillness to him, a peace, that I need right now. “Connor’s all right. Lanny’s all right. You’re safe. We’re okay. Just breathe.”

My knees give way when we’re halfway down the rotten stairs, and Sam carries me the rest of the way. I’m so tired. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. When I manage to look, he’s putting me in the passenger seat of a sedan, and I’m looking at the rotten, spoiled colonial splendor of Triton Plantation House. It does look like the White House, destroyed by rot and time. A creek runs by the side of the road, sluggish and choked with mud. Bayou country.

Sam and Lustig are outside the car, talking in quiet voices. They’re both shell-shocked. I can hear it. But I’m not. Not anymore.

“Rivard was right. State police never showed. If we hadn’t made it—” Lustig breaks off. “It’s a bloodbath in there. God only knows the bodies we’re going to find around here. How many of these places do they have?”

“Dozens,” Sam says. “But we’ve got Rivard, and once this thing breaks, it’ll shatter everywhere. We’ll find them. All of them.”

I wish they’d burn it down. All of it, ashes and bones. But I know there’s more to this than what I want, and I know that. I’m just so tired that I feel tears sliding cold down my cheeks. I wipe them away with a clumsy, bloody right hand.

That’s Melvin’s blood.

Melvin’s dead.

Mike Lustig leans in and says, “You should thank our boy Sam,” he says. “Saved your life.”

“No,” I tell him. I feel everything slipping away again. “I saved him.”

I sleep.

And I don’t dream at all.

 

 

28

GWEN

One month later

To most people, I look like I’ve recovered. I try hard, for my kids. If I still feel fragile as glass inside, I think only Sam can see it now. Sam, who sees everything. That might have bothered me once, but now I’m glad. I talk to Sam. I even see a psychologist who specializes in trauma recovery. I’m getting better. So are the kids. I made sure they got their own therapy, whether they admitted to needing it or not.

I don’t check the Sicko Patrol anymore, but when I ask, Sam quietly tells me that it’s continuing to roll on with more fire and energy than before. Despite my wishes, I’m the subject of a lot of articles and blogs again. Some think I’m a hero. Many think I got away with murder.

One thing I have to accept: now there’s no hiding from it anymore.

The symbol of that is this house on Stillhouse Lake that we’re reclaiming as our own. It’s not just the four of us; our friends have been here helping. Javier and Kezia. Kezia’s dad, Easy Claremont. Detective Prester and several Norton officers I now know by name. Some of the kids’ school friends and their parents came, too; they all pitched in to repaint the outside of our house and get rid of ugly reminders of the past.