Page 14 of The Kill Clause
I put the gun to his temple. “Drop your weapon.” He does so, and I back him out of the closet and into the bedroom.
He lifts his hands, eyes trained on me through the balaclava.
I recognize him just as, with several swift movements, he unarms me, sweeps my legs out from under me, and straddles me. A single blow to the face has me stunned, the room spinning. As a woman, you have to hope it never comes down to hand-to-hand combat. His weight is crushing my chest; his knees pin my arms. If it comes down to strength and weight, a woman in a fight is fucked. I lie beneath him thinking about my mother, my father, Nora. I turn my head toward the closet and see Apple staring at me from the darkness, eyes wide with fear. I use my last ounce of strength to mouth a single word.
“Run.”
She does. Swift and silent, tiny legs pumping, clutching her tattered bunny, she’s past us and gone. He doesn’t seem to notice her. I hope she doesn’t see her father, but at the moment I’m just glad she won’t have to watch a person die before her eyes. I feel a release of all the things outside my control.
This life. It’s so much work.
“At least take off your mask, Drake.”
He hesitates a second, then peels it back.
“Nothing personal,” he says, breath ragged.
“I never liked your cooking,” I say. “I faked it.”
He smiles at that, then closes his hands around my throat. I see something I haven’t seen in him before. A terribleblankness, an abyss in those eyes. And I disappear into their darkness, wondering what’s waiting on the other side. I let the peace envelop me, don’t even offer a final struggle.
Then he freezes, hands release, and air rushes back as his head explodes, a horrifying viscous spray of blood and brain matter. He lingers in time, the top of his head gone, one blank eye staring; then he topples over heavily.
Standing behind him is Julian.
“You really need to start answering your phone,” he says.
I cough violently, my throat aching. Try to wipe the gore from my face. Then I roll onto my side and vomit.
“You didn’t train him to watch his back?” he says, helping me to my feet. We’re moving toward the door, my eyes scanning the space for the kid.
“Apple,” I croak. “The baby.”
He looks around. Her door is closed, and I wonder if she’s hidden herself in there.
“We can’t take her,” he says with more gentleness than I would have imagined. “The police will come. She’ll be okay.”
She won’t be. I know this for a fact. But he’s right that we can’t take her. That she’ll have to survive in whatever way she can after this night. Already in the distance I hear the sirens.
“Let’s go,” he says, tugging me from the house.
The night is frigid, sky full of stars. I look back; the Christmas tree glitters. I see the slumped form of Bryce’s body cast in glimmering lights. Above, a shooting star tears the sky. Santa’s sleigh?
“Where?” I manage, my voice painful in my throat.
“You still have the go bag? The safe house?” he asks.
I nod.
“All right, then,” he says. “That’s what we do until we can figure out a plan.”
I grab the bag from my car, and we climb into his SUV, parked outside the gate. In the car, we drive, take the dark back roads north, silent. What plan? I wonder. She’ll hunt us both down. She’ll never give up.
“How did you know?” I ask finally.
He nods toward the back seat, and I see the file. Inside, my image, a shot snapped as I left another job. I hardly recognize myself, deathly pale, all in black. That same blank stare I saw on Drake. There’s a red stamp across my photo. It reads:Armed and extremely dangerous.
I am exactly what she made me.
