“You’re fucking sick,” Nate adds.
“Penny,” I say, getting her attention only to have Frannie yell for us to stop talking, “look at me.” I drop to my knees so we’re somewhat eye level. Tears steak down her face and her hands shake. Her eyes move to the stairs, her way of silently telling me that Claire is up there. I look at Evan and motion for the stairs, watching as he backs his way up them, his gun never changing position until he’s out of sight.
“I think it’s in your best interests if you all leave. This is none of your business. You’re not even supposed to be alive.”
“I think you’re fucking crazy,” I spit back at her.
There’s a soft whimper coming from Ray; I glance over to see a man scared out of his wits. “It’s going to be okay, Ray,” I tell him, hoping to reassure him.
Frannie makes a move, stepping behind Penny and placing her arm around her neck. “I’m going to count to three then she dies.”
“If she dies, so does your brother. I’ll fucking torture him, Frannie, and I’ll make you watch. You’ll be begging me to end his life, and only when I’ve had enough will I hand you the gun and help you squeeze the trigger, but we won’t aim to kill. No, you see I have twelve rounds in my pistol so each shot will be designed to cause him extreme pain. And the last person he sees will be you as you deliver the final bullet which will end his piece of shit excuse for a life,” I say, making eye contact with her.
The collective gasps in the room don’t catch me off guard. I know what I said is extreme but I mean every word of it. If Penny or Claire die tonight and I don’t go with them, Ted Lawson won’t see a single day in a courtroom.
“Penny, look at me.”
When she does I all but die on the inside. “Claire is safe and you’re going to be just fine.”
The telltale sound of a gun cocking into place fills the room. Everyone is yelling for guns to be dropped, but I’m only focusing on Penny. She’s biting her lip so hard it’s starting to bleed. I want to reach out to her, but can’t right now. Not until the threat is gone.
“I’m going to kill her,” Frannie says, grabbing Penny’s hair and pulling her head back. Before I can stand, the faint sound of glass breaking and Frannie lurching forward catches my attention, but it’s the second gunshot, which has me tackling Penny to the ground in her chair, knocking the wind out of her, so I can protect her body with mine.
PENNY’S SCREAM PIERCES MY ears, causing me to move away slightly. I can’t tell if she’s hurt or freaked out. Probably a bit of both if I had to guess. I’m afraid to move, to leave this position for fear that Penny will be hurt more than she already is because I don’t know where the hell the shot came from.
“She’s down! She’s down!” someone yells from behind me. I can’t tell if it’s Rask or Nate, but I look over both my shoulders to see what they’re talking about and find Frannie on the ground looking lifeless.
“What the fuck?” I hear Evan behind me as he comes thundering down the stairs. I hope that Claire has stayed in her room because she doesn’t need to see her mother tied up like this.
“Is she dead?” I ask Rask who is the closest to the body. He crawls over to her, pushes her gun away, and feels for a pulse.
“She’s gone,” he says. I quickly roll off Penny and pull my knife from my boot to cut the tape from her wrists to free her.
“Where’s Claire?” Penny cries, panic lacing her voice, and I look to Evan for the answer.
“She’s okay. She’s upstairs. I told her to keep her headphones on. I don’t know if she’ll listen to me, but I’m hoping she will. She seems pretty scared.”
“Ah … Amy,” a pained voice sounds from behind me and we all turn toward it.
Penny scrambles away from me and goes to Ray. I turn away again, not wanting to see them together.
“Oh God, Ray,” she screams, getting my attention.
I rush over to her side to find Ray shot and bleeding profusely.
“Who fucking fired their gun?” I yell out, knowing it wasn’t me. I heard the glass break and watched Frannie lurch forward—that’s when I dove for Penny to keep Frannie away from her. “She fucking shot him,” I say as I cut the tape from his wrists so we can lay him down.
“Who shot Frannie?” Evan asks.
I glance from Nate to Rask and they both shake their heads. Rask immediately moves to the window and says, “We must have a shooter outside.”
We all look at each other and back at Ray who is bleeding out on the couch.
“Go,” Rask says, kneeling down in front of Ray, “I’ll see if I can stop the bleeding.”
I reach for Penny, but quickly realize she doesn’t need me; she’s too focused on her husband. It’s the way things should be even though watching her care for him breaks my heart. I want to be selfish and want her to worry about me, but that’s not going to happen.
Nate, Evan, and I grab our guns and head outside, this time with Evan in the lead. My infrared shows a body sitting in the woods, unmoving as we approach. We rush to the edge of the grass and enter the woods.