Page 76 of Heartbreak Bay

Another text comes in.This didn’t need to happen. You could have let it go. Let it go this time.

Another video pops up. I hit play. It’s Javier getting out of the rental car last night in the hospital parking lot.

Another video after that. Pop, in his cabin, washing dishes. Someone filming through his window.

The storm inside me is so violent I don’t knowhowto feel. Terrified. Enraged. Agonized. Horrified. All at the same time, like an explosion under my skin.

And another text.Stay home, Kezia. This isn’t about you.

Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be. Maybe in his mind, it isn’t.

I am not letting go.

I feel my hunter’s blood, rushing hot and fast with every heartbeat.

This isn’t about you.

Oh, it is, you coldhearted bastard. It is.

20

GWEN

I sleep only because I know I must. My family is here. They’re safe. It feels like things are resolving, like our normal lives may be just within reach again.

I’m the only one who knows it’s a lie.

Four hours later, I open my eyes and slip out of bed, waking without any transition at all. No sense of peace. I silently get dressed in jeans, a comfortable shirt, sturdy boots. I can’t risk unlocking my gun safe next to the bed; it will beep, and Sam will wake up immediately. But that’s okay. While he was at the station, I moved my favorite gun, the Sig, to the small living room safe we keep under the couch. Extra mags and another box of ammunition as well.

I pause in the doorway and look back at Sam. He’s fast asleep. I convinced him to take a rare over-the-counter sleep aid last night, and he’s down for the count. Good. He’ll need this. His battle is going to be hard too. In some ways, as hard as mine.

I take in the sight of him and try to etch it on my heart, embed it in my brain. I want to remember this moment of quiet. How he looks. How it feels.

I look in at Lanny, curled on her side, pink-and-purple hair spread out in a colorful fan across her pillow. My beautiful, strong, volatile girl, inches away from being someone the world will have to reckon with on her own terms. I am so proud of her it hurts. Tears roll silently down my cheeks, cool against my hot skin, and I wipe them carefully away before I turn to my son.

Oh, Connor, my complicated, wonderful boy. I love you more than I can ever say. I fear for you most of all, but you always surprise me. Always.I drink in the sight of him tangled in a restless pile of sheets, caught between boy and man, and I think,You will grow up to be like no one else in this world.Not his sadistic, hateful father. Not like me either. Unique and beautiful and mended strong. It’s all I can do not to go in, wake him up, curl him into my arms, and rock him like the baby he used to be.

Closing that last door feels like cutting off pieces of myself.

I collect my holster, my jacket, the Sig, the magazines, the ammo. I add the small ankle holster and .38 revolver, a cop’s emergency gun.

Then I look at the clock.

It’s eight forty-five in the morning. Outside the windows, the sun is up and warm, generous on the grass. Leaves flutter. Cars move on the street as neighbors leave for work. Everything is normal, everywhere but here in the small space of hell I am in.

I don’t have to go. We can face this together. All of us.

I sit down and put my head in my hands, and as I do, my phone alert goes off. I look at it.

Unknown-number text.

A photo of Sam, leaning over the cowling of an airplane.

One of Lanny, taken through her bedroom window as she’s sleeping.

One of Connor, sitting cross-legged on his bed, typing on his computer with his headphones on.

And there’s Vee, in her ridiculous house shoes and pajamas, standing in her doorway talking to a neighbor.

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