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Nothing.
“Toomey, back away now. Slowly,” I repeated.
Still nothing.
“Toomey!” I moved closer.
Toomey shook the gun at Slone, even though Slone wasn’t looking up to see Toomey’s frustration.
Instead, he was still curled around the baby—the baby that was screaming her head off at having to be pressed to the floor and contained. He was protecting the girl with his life.
“Give her to me!” Toomey bellowed. “Give her to me, and I won’t shoot you.”
“Toomey,” I said quietly, trying to bring Toomey’s attention to me and not Slone. “Toomey, look at me.”
Toomey didn’t even look up. He was so focused on Slone and the baby that he might as well have not cared at all.
“Toomey,” I moved closer, gun in hand, and repositioned myself for a better angle.
It served to put a solid brick wall at Toomey’s back, meaning if I had to shoot, the bullet wouldn’t get launched into the rest of the school once it passed through Toomey.
But, hopefully, that wouldn’t be happening.
Except, in the next few seconds, I realized how stupid that was of me to think. Toomey wasn’t rational.
Toomey was completely and utterly irrational.
His eyes were not focused on outward threat. They were only focused on Slone with a single-minded focused that bordered on scary.
A trained professional he was not. Not anymore, anyway.
“She’s mine,” Toomey repeated. “My name might not be on the birth certificate, but anyone with a head can see that she’s mine.”
Slone was crying now.
Big, heart-wrenching sobs.
He cocked the gun he was holding, then walked up and began to place the barrel against Slone’s forehead.
That’s when I shot.
I didn’t feel, in my professional opinion, that Toomey was going to stop.
Maybe I should’ve done things differently.
Maybe I should’ve tried to disarm him.
But then he might’ve shot the baby.
Or Slone.
And I just couldn’t live with that on my conscience.
The bullet ripped through Toomey’s upper arm, tearing through flesh and spraying blood against the white walls seconds later.
Toomey fell to the ground, the gun still in his hand, and stared at me in shock.
He no longer was blind to me.
He saw me most clearly, now.
“I was supposed to help Bailey,” he murmured. “He wanted me to give him a gun. Give him a ride to the airport. But I was just… so fucking mad. Now I’m all she has. And I want her.”
Well, that was never going to happen.
Not ever.
Something in which he read in my eyes.
“She’s not yours,” I said. “She’s his.”
“She’s mine, you stupid goddamn moron!” Slone said. “My name’s on the birth certificate. I’m raising her. Abilene literally called me to the hospital the day she was born, said that she was mine, and that she would stay that way. And do you really think that this was the way to go about this?” he asked honestly. “Because if you’d really felt like there was a question, you could’ve taken this to court.”
Toomey laughed at him, picking his gun hand up to aim once again at Slone.
“You think they would’ve taken that baby away from you?” he snorted. “That baby was yours in every legal sense of the word. And I was just the stupid fuck that slept with a high school student. That’s statutory rape, man. But I loved her.”
And before either of us could say a word, the gun was now pointed at Toomey’s head.
“Don’t do it,” I said, my gun dropping slightly.
“It’s funny. I never really thought I’d go out this way.”
Then he pulled the trigger.
Pieces of his brain matter and gore sprayed all over Slone.
Luckily the baby was still covered by Slone’s body.
Otherwise she would’ve been wearing it, too.
Seconds later, Slone rolled over and sat up, his face a mask of shock and horror.
He was looking at Toomey with a gray tint to his face.
“Back up,” I ordered Slone.
Slone didn’t move.
So I moved him by catching him by the shirt and tugging him backward so the blood didn’t start seeping into the kid’s pants.
Still Slone stared.
But the words that came out of his mouth made me feel for him.
“I… there are things that never added up with Abilene,” he murmured. “I just… things never added up. And now they never will.” He looked at me then. “What if he was right?”
For some reason I couldn’t stop myself from reassuring him.
I looked Slone dead in the eyes and said, “She’s yours, man. You can tell by the dimples. Neither Toomey nor Abilene had them. Dimples are hereditary.”
I didn’t know if that was true.
Hell, I only knew that I didn’t want to see that look on Slone’s face anymore.
“Abilene was raped.”
I blinked. “What?”
“That’s what he said. He was sleeping with Abilene. He told me before you came in the door. Said that she and him had a thing, but something happened and he had to back off. When he went to pursue her again, she’d started hanging with me. I knew that she was fucked up… knew it the second that she asked for me to fu…make love to her. I don’t know why I did it. I just… shit. I felt terrible. So I did. And look where it got me.”
