When I got to the front, I tried another quick look. He was right there, less than ten yards away now, and moving at a run. This was it. One of us was going down.
I stood up fast, with a two-hand grip on the Glock, ready to fire—but I never got that far. At the moment I came eye to eye with Guidice, another shot sounded from farther off.
Guidice stumbled hard and fell, face-first onto the street with his arms splayed out in front of him. He didn’t even try to catch himself.
“Alex!”
I looked over and saw Bree coming down the front steps of our house. Her own Glock 19 was up, still pointed in Guidice’s direction where he lay.
“Are you all right?” she shouted.
“I’m fine,” I said.
She’d gotten him in the neck, I saw. Probably hit the carotid artery, too, from the way his blood was pumping. A pool of it had started to spread on the pavement around him.
Sampson was outside now, too, close behind Bree. “EMTs are on the way,” he said, and stopped short when he saw Guidice.
I tore my shirt off and pressed it to the wound at his neck, but there was no way to stop the bleeding. Not with a shirt. I think Guidice knew it, too. He struggled to roll over and looked me in the eye, where I was kneeling next to him.
“Congratulations,” he slurred out. “Didn’t think you had it in you—”
“Yeah, well think again,” Bree said, her own voice shaking.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Where’s Rebecca Reilly? Did you take her, Guidice? Was it you? Are you Russell?”
I was still putting the pieces all together, but if I was right about this, I also knew I didn’t have much time here. He was nearly gone already.
Guidice grabbed my arm then, and pulled himself a few inches off the pavement. He tried to swallow back whatever was clogging his throat, and his jaw went slack.
“Tell my girls . . . tell them—”
“Answer my question first!” I said. Even then I was fighting my own feelings. It was everything I could do to keep from stepping back and letting him bleed all the way out.
Before I could say anything else, Guidice convulsed. He spit up a large amount of blood all over himself, shuddered one more time, and then went still. When his head fell back on the street, his eyes were open—still on me. At least, it seemed that way.
I could hear a siren somewhere, coming closer.
“That’s it,” Sampson said. “He’s gone.”
“He can rot in hell,” Bree said.
When I looked at her, she had an expression on her face I’d never seen before. She’s the most caring person I know. In a way, it was as if everything I’d been feeling had shifted to her.
She was crying again, too. Thinking about poor Ava, no doubt. Whatever else Guidice may have done, he’d used her as nothing more than a pawn, just to get back at me.
The most we could say now was that no more lives would be wasted in Ron Guidice’s name. I suppose if this were any other case, it might feel good to know that.
But not this time. Rebecca Reilly was still out there somewhere. And Ava was dead. Nothing was going to make us feel better about how all of this had gone down. Certainly not right away. We’d have to get there on our own, and in our own time.
Still, somehow, I knew we would.
Epilogue
CIRCLE OF LIFE
CHAPTER
109