Suddenly, he seemed pale, beads of sweat popping up in a line across his forehead. ‘She knew about Samir. You know this.’
‘But why? Why did you kill Samir?’
Zack’s voice was weak. ‘I’m not proud of this.’
‘For God’s sake, just tell us,’ Miranda said.
Zack wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Fuck, my arm is burning. I need to go to a hospital.’
‘Tell us!’ Avril snapped.
‘Okay. Okay. It was Samir’s own fault. When he found out what we were planning to do with the app, he told us he wanted out. He was a genius, but he was naive. He hadn’t thought through all the things the app could be used for.’
‘Like using it to stalk people,’ I said.
‘Or to find doppelgängers.’ That was Holly.
Zack looked utterly miserable. ‘He told us he wouldn’t work on it any more, which didn’t matter. We had enough for our in-house guys to take over. But then he said he was going to go on TikTok, tell the world what we were planning. He was totally freaking out, saying we were evil, that his app was only meant to be used to catch criminals, to find missing people, all that shit. I had to stop him. If the word got out before we had everything in place, before Charles had had time to smooth the path, talk to his government contacts, we would be fucked. But it wasn’t—’
Zack didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence. Because in that moment, the door of the living room flew open.
Avril whirled around, towards the door, and two things happened within a few seconds of each other.
First, Zack jumped up and, with Avril facing away from him, leapt on her back, pushing her to the floor. She landed on her belly, with the rifle still in her outstretched hand. Zack punched her between the shoulder blades and she let go of it. But before Zack could get to it, I snatched it up.
Second, Charles walked into the room, holding his own hunting rifle.
He took in the scene, then pointed his gun at me.
41
‘Holly,’ Charles barked.
‘Dad?’ Holly said.
‘Take the gun from him.’
‘From Patrick?’
‘Who else do you think I mean?’
She took a step towards me. She was so used to doing what her dad asked it was almost an automatic reaction. But then she paused.
‘Don’t do this, Holly,’ I said.
Charles’s voice was smooth. ‘It’s for your own safety, Patrick. We’re going to calm everything down. Sort all of this out.’
Still, Holly hesitated. I met her eye, shook my head. She looked agonized. Unable to choose between us.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Miranda said. ‘Give it to me.’
She snatched it before I had a chance to react. What was I going to do, anyway? Shoot her? I had no intention of using the gun. Maybe, too, there was a part of me that didn’t want Holly to have to decide. Maybe I was afraid of which side she would pick.
‘Good girl,’ Charles said to Miranda. ‘You keep hold of it for a moment and stand beside me. Holly, you come here, too.’
This time, she did as he commanded. If he had been working out downstairs, he had changed out of his gym clothes andwas wearing jeans and a black sweater, with trainers on his feet. I wondered how long he’d been standing on the other side of the door; how much he’d heard.
It was interesting that he’d chosen to enter the room as Zack was about to tell us about the decision to kill Samir.
