And it broke my fucking heart.
Chapter 23
Alice was bowed over her son’s fallen body when I reached them, her thin, frail frame shaking with sobs. She didn’t stop me when I crawled up beside her, and although his chest was soaked with blood, I felt it moving beneath my hands.
Stay alive, Cole. Please, please, stay alive.
The two of us kept vigil over his form, bound together by fear stronger than words, as a flurry of activity burst up behind us.
Someone was calling 9-1-1, telling the dispatcher we need an ambulance and the police. I heard the low tones of Mason’s voice, then his father’s. Then Mason shouting, and the other two boys restraining him. Calming him.
I heard it all, and some part of my brain processed it, but I couldn’t focus on it.
Not until I knew Cole would be okay. That he would live.
After what might’ve been twenty minutes or might’ve been two hours, a hand fell on my shoulder.
“Hey, Legs. We’ve gotta get you looked at, okay?”
Finn’s face was stark, his eyes hollow, every bit of sunshine snuffed out of his expression.
People had arrived. Men in uniform and paramedics. Several of them gathered around Cole, and I scooted back to let them work, my gaze landing on the two medics who’d squatted down beside his dad’s body.
I heard one of them mutter, “DOA,” and then two more paramedics converged on me, shining a light into my eyes, wiping away the blood on my lips, and running probing fingers over my ankle.
Cole was lifted onto a stretcher and carried away, and I wanted to cry with relief and fear. He was getting help, and I knew that was good, but they were taking him away from me, and a part of me couldn’t help but feel like I’d never see him again.
As he disappeared from sight, officers pulled Alice to her feet, and it was only when they hauled her hands behind her back that I realized she’d still been holding the gun.
But she couldn’t be in trouble, right?
She’d saved us.
She’d killed her husband to save us.
“Ma’am, what happened here?”
When the officer started to question her, she looked down to me as she answered, and I didn’t think her words were meant for him at all.
“It wa
s Adam,” she whispered softly, her voice broken and dull. “It was always about Adam. When we started Element Investments, they let him in on it because of your mother. But they never liked him. Kept him on the outside.”
Squaring her shoulders, she seemed to gather herself. Then she looked back up at the police officer in front of her, jerking her chin toward her husband, whose body was now covered with a sheet. “That man, Richard Mercer, killed two people—Adam Pierce and Charlotte Hildebrand.”
The officer’s eyes widened as his brows rose. “When was this?”
“Years ago.” She shook her head as she said it, as if realizing as she spoke just how long she’d kept that secret. “We… all of us except for Adam and Charlotte… stole from the company. Adam found out, and they killed him. But Charlotte saw it happen. She loved Adam. And she saw…”
Cole’s mother looked like she was going into shock. Her face was ashen, and her whole body had started to shake. The officer questioning her must’ve realized it too, because he gestured to two of his compatriots, and they started to lead her away.
But she dug her heels in, putting up as much resistance as her tiny body would allow, and turned back to me one more time, her face contorted with pain.
“They made her promise to keep quiet. And she said she would. But she hated us—hated us so much. And in the end…” Her gaze shot back to her husband, fear flickering in her eyes, like he might rise from the dead and terrorize her again. “In the end… it didn’t matter. He never believed her anyway.”
“Ma’am, you need to come with us.”
She stopped resisting the men who held her arms, shifting her focus back to me as she resumed walking. “I’m sorry. I tried. I sent Erin to help you—I just wanted to help. I never thought you’d come back.”