Page 101 of Heartbreak Bay

Kez steps forward, gun in hand.

Oh God. I remember now. I was trying to tell her the gun was empty. I drag the backup magazine from my pocket, but when I try to slide it to her, I miss. It skids into the shadows. Too far for her to reach.

She drops the gun and pulls the knife from her belt.

I can’t let her die for me.

“Just go, Kez,” I hear myself say. “Please. Go and live for your baby.”

The noise in my head is quieting. Everything is quieting except the steady promise of my pulsebeat. I’m still hurting, but something gives me strength.

In that silence, I hear my children whispering,You can do this, Mom. You can.

I stand up. I balance myself on one leg, drag the other. I move to stand with Kezia.

Shoulder to shoulder.

Jonathan stands there staring at me. He doesn’t scare me anymore. I’m not frightened of anything. I don’t even feel the pain so much.

“Do you know who I am now?” I ask. “And do you know whoyouare?” I sound steady. I am steady.

He tilts his head. Shadows fill the hollow on the side of his head.

“I do,” he says. “I finally do.”

He reverses the shotgun in one smooth motion, sticks the barrel in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. The explosion fills the lighthouse. Echoes up as the blood sprays, and what’s left of Jonathan Bruce Watson slides boneless to the floor.

Kez grabs me when I start to topple, and eases me down. She puts her arms around me and holds my back to her chest, and then we’re both sitting down. Nothing but the sound of the sea, and a faint, distant whine.

Sirens. Those are sirens.

I say, “I tried to kill you.”

“You’re a bad shot,” she says. “Thank God. Help’s coming, Gwen. Sam did it.”

I can’t take my eyes off the pitiful ruin of a man. A shell. A monster animated by hate.Love is selfishness. Greed,he said. Maybe he really believed that. Maybe he wasn’t sane enough to believe anything at all.

“He made his choice,” I whisper.

We’ve made ours.

We’re going to live.

EPILOGUE

The cavalry, when it finally arrives, seems a hundred strong. State and federal agents, paramedics, swarming like a kicked colony of fire ants. I’m taken away in an ambulance, while Kezia stays to answer questions; it doesn’t escape my notice that I’m handcuffed to the gurney, but I don’t care about that. I just want to sleep, especially once they shoot me up for the pain.

It takes days to unwind the story to absolutely no one’s satisfaction except the cold case departments across the country who are finally able to put their open cases to bed with a firm, finalSOLVEDstamped on the front. There are twenty-three bodies in the cannery. Every one of them has a file neatly labeled in a cabinet at the top level of the lighthouse, where Jonathan kept meticulous records. He wasn’t lying about any of it ... not about the fact that his victims were guilty, at least. Penny Carlson had killed at least ten people. She’d killed her children, the man and woman at the remote house, and arguably Detective Prester, plus left five more in her wake of destruction over the years.

She was one of theleastguilty of those he’d forced to play his game.

When the news breaks, some clever duck at the WilmingtonStar-Newslabels him The Fisherman, and it sticks. I don’t know if Jonathan would be happy he has a serial killer nickname, or appalled. I’d rather not try to work it out.

Jonathan left a video accounting of every single one of hiscases; I’m sure it’ll be fodder for psychologists and profilers for years to come. In my case, he’d applied his usual methods. The Lost Angels had been hideously easy to leverage against us. Dr.Dave, the man Sam turned to for information, had been the one to provide Melvin’s letter to Jonathan, as well as the posters. MalusNavis’s posts had neveraskedanyone to put up those posters. Had neveraskedpeople to stalk Vee or threaten my children. But hate has a life of its own. He didn’t need to do much to kindle the fire and let it smoke us out.

Sheryl had been easy to manipulate too. She could have turned away. Said no. Loved her children more than the millions of dollars he dangled as bait. Everything after that one crucial night was collateral damage, her making the same choice again and again to chase her reward.

But Jonathan chosefirst.

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