Jenna screamed.
He pulled the trigger.
The gun fired.
Glass shattered as the tank exploded. Water, in a huge, cascading rush, flooded the room, pouring over the equipment, skimming over the floor.
Cassie lay still as Carter pulled on the rigging and the beam swung to a platform. With keys he found on the ledge, he unlocked her and she collapsed onto the ledge. “Look for blankets,” he yelled as he started mouth-to-mouth, forcing warm air into her lungs, then pressed on her chest. Come on, Cassie, breathe. He tried again. And again. Don’t do this, don’t die. Come on, fight. Don’t let that bastard win!
He heard Jenna climbing the ladder to the landing. “Oh, God, is she—”
With a jolt, Cassie spluttered and coughed, water spewing from her mouth and nose as she turned to her side. She gasped, dragging air into her lungs, and coughed again.
“Oh, honey!” Jenna kneeled over her, wrapped her in a blanket, and cradled her head. “Oh, baby, baby, baby…”
Cassie was crying, shaking, trying to understand, and as she did, her eyes took in Shane Carter standing a few paces behind Jenna. Shivering, she looked down at her naked body, and groggily must’ve put two and two together. “Oh, gross…” She wrapped the blanket closer around her. “Yuk.”
Carter, looking down at dummies of Jenna half-submerged in the icy water stained red from Whitaker’s wounds, couldn’t agree more. Jewelry and props, a broken umbrella and bracelets, floated in the murky red water that collected around the dentist’s chair. A pair of plastic glasses, their lenses shattered, skimmed along the water’s surface.
“I guess I’d better see if he’s still alive,” Carter said, but took his time getting to Whitaker, who stared up at the ceiling where posters of Jenna were tacked. Blood showed in the corners of his mouth and oozed from beneath his back.
Carter waded through the water, leaned down, and felt for a pulse at Whitaker’s throat.
There was none.
Seth Whitaker, aka Steven White, was dead.
Jenna and Cassie were alive.
Things could have ended up worse.
A whole lot worse.
EPILOGUE
“I thought you were through with ‘bullshit’ sessions,” Dr. Randall said nearly ten months later, when Carter arrived on his doorstep.
“I am.” He stepped into the room where he’d spilled his guts for so many months and frowned at the soft leather couch, pastel seascapes, oak bookcase filled with tomes on every kind of psychosis, mental disease or syndrome in the world.
A fern, near the corner, catching the late summer light through the window, flourished, showing off new green fronds.
Randall seemed pleased, as if his prodigal son had finally returned.
They both stood near the window overlooking the parking lot. “I don’t have time to see you right now. I’m on my way out.”
“That’s fine, I won’t need much of your time. I just want to remind you that I’ll be watching, okay? I’ve heard rumors that you’re writing a book.”
“Everyone’s dream.”
“Not mine.”
“Well, we can’t all be authors,” Randall said.
“I heard that it’s loosely based on Seth Whitaker’s obsession with Jenna Hughes.”
Randall touched the edge of his goatee, turned a palm toward the ceiling. “It’s about an unbalanced person obsessed with an ex-movie star.”
“And you’ve had some bites, right? An agent and publisher interested, even Hollywood knocking on your door.”