Page 58 of Bitter Falls

Sam steps into it. Into my chaos and rage and fear. He puts his hands on my face, and the touch stills me a little. Centers me. I catch a breath, and he stares into my eyes. “Gwen,” he says. “If you want to go, we’ll go. No more questions.”

I am so grateful for that I nearly choke on the swell of relief. I sag into his embrace for a warm, precious second, and I feel safe there. I know it’s an illusion, but it helps.

When I push back, I say, “Thank you for trusting me.”

“Always,” he replies, low in his throat. And I realize that it’s true. Hedoestrust me. And I haven’t given him that same respect, not consistently. He’s not demanding for me to explain. He’s just trusting my instincts. “Come on. Let’s get packed and go.”

I stop to open up the gun safe under the couch, and take out the weapon I keep there. I grab extra ammo from the supply I keep behind books on the bookcase. All of it goes into a backpack. When it comes to clothes, I just grab a couple of changes and shove them in on top. Doesn’t matter if it looks good. Shirts, pants, underwear. Good enough. Sam’s shoving toiletries into a bag and tossing it to me to throw in as he heads for his side of the closet.

Five minutes.

Lanny and Connor are done ahead of us, which is flat-out amazing; I’m zipping the backpack when Sam freezes for a second and says, “Shit. I forgot to tell you. There’s a police cruiser out on the road, they want to take us to the station. Lanny needs to give a statement about what happened at Killing Rock.”

“We’re not going,” I tell him. “They’re not going to arrest her, Sam. Not tonight anyway. And we can make amends on that tomorrow.” I’m afraid right now. Deeply, viscerally afraid that everything,everythingis going to go completely wrong. If the Assembly of Saints thinks I know where Carol is, they’ll come for us. Or they’ll just come for revenge. Or to find out what we know. Or...any of a thousand reasons, and I know, because ice-cold Carol is afraid of these people, that I cannot risk my family here. I want to huntthem. I don’t want them to huntme. Stillhouse Lake no longer feels safe to me. It feels like a trap.

“Okay,” he says. Another gift of trust. He takes the backpack.

I hear the doorbell ring, and absolute terror bolts through me. I move the borrowed Browning in the holster until it’s snug against the small of my back. I draw the gun and ease ahead of Sam. “Lanny,” I say, as she turns toward me, eyes wide. “Open the safe room.”

She drops the backpack she’s holding and runs to push the chairs and dining room table another foot back. Our safe room—original to this house when we bought it—isn’t fancy, but it’s secure, and she clicks open the hidden door in the wall and starts keying in the code. I leave her to that and look out the peephole.

There’s a Norton police cruiser parked in our driveway with its red and blue lights flashing, and two uniformed officers standing there on the porch. I can’t see their faces; the brims of their caps throw dark shadows. But the uniforms look authentic.

“False alarm,” I say to Sam, and put my gun away. I hear Lanny still pressing buttons. She’s trying too hard; she’s erroring out the code. “Lanny, it’s okay. Never mind. Kezia sent a cruiser. I’m going to send them away, and then we’re out of here.”

“Kezia was pretty firm that she wanted her statement immediately,” Sam warns.

“And I’m going to tell them, very politely, to fuck off.”

I disarm the system and open the door.

That’s my mistake, but I don’t know it for a few long seconds. All I see is uniforms...and then I see the faces. One of them has a beard.

There are no Norton cops with beards.It’s a rule. And their uniforms don’t fit.

They’ve taken out the cops.

I go for my gun, but I’m already too late; the first man started moving the second the door opened, and now he stiff-arms it and forces me back, and his gun is inhishand while mine is still holstered. He puts the barrel to my forehead and drives me backward. Shock blows through me like an explosion, but it leaves something else: rage and fear, tearing along my nerves and pooling cold in my stomach.

I back away. He follows and keeps the gun to my head. One slight pressure on that trigger and I’m gone. I want to look for my kids, but I don’t dare. I can only pray they’re getting into that safe room.

Oh God, Sam...“Sam!” I say sharply. I raise my hands. It’s a gesture of surrender.

It also shows him the gun clipped on the back of my belt. I’m between the incoming intruders and him. If he’s fast...

He’s fast.

I feel the tug on the back of my jeans, and then Sam is stepping sideways and aiming my gun. “Drop it,” he tells the fake cop. I can feel the menace in his voice like a heat wave shivering the air.

But then the man’s partneralsosteps in, and he’s holding a shotgun. He racks and raises it, and I can almost sense the moment that Sam does the bloody calculus. If he fires, the shotgun blast takes us both out. He’s outgunned, and I’m the hostage.

I hear beeps. Lanny’s at the safe room door, and she’s going to get it open. My kids are going to be okay.

“Hey,” the second fake cop says. “You. Girl. Stop. Get over here now, or I blow both their heads off. You. Asshole. Put the gun on the floor and kick it to me.”

“Lanny, get in the goddamn safe room!” Sam snaps. I can hear my daughter crying. She’s trying. I hear the rapid beeping of the locking mechanism refusing the code she’s entered. I used to drill them on this stuff, made sure they could enter the code at a moment’s notice. We’d made it a game.

But this ismy fault. I stopped drilling them. I stopped insisting that we be that ready, that careful, that paranoid.

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