Page 74 of ’Til You Break

“I can’t.” I shake my head, trying to steady myself. “Muffin’s still in my room.”

“Go get him, now. But don’t come back this way. Leave through the sliding door.” He helps me to my feet and urges me forward.

“You’re not coming?” I’ve come too close to losing him too many times tonight to leave him again.

“I have to take care of...” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.

This time... I understand.

After meeting these men, I know some souls are too far gone to save.

I hurry down the hallway without him and find Muffin panicking in my bedroom. I scoop him into my arms and race for the sliding door.

The moment I step into the cool night air...

A single gunshot echoes through Vik’s house.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Vik

The fire did what fires do.

The firefighters arrived before the police and quickly brought the blaze under control. But with gasoline as an accelerant, there was no saving the structure.

Within minutes, my house and everything in it was gone.

Oddly enough... I’m okay with that.

Deep down, I know that it was never really my home. It was a fortress. A place to plan and scheme. Somewhere I planned to bring about the downfall of the men who’d haunted me for decades.

I take comfort in the thought that, out of these ashes, Hannah and I can rise together.

“Run it by me again,” Police Officer Reggy Sutherland says, scratching the side of his head with the back of a cheap pen. “You weren’t home when the three men broke into your house?”

“Hannah heard glass breaking and called me. I got into a car accident rushing back, but I thought her life was in danger, and I couldn’t stay there.”

It might come out that I held the Texan at gunpoint to get his keys. But I’ve already made sure he’s been well compensated. If he hasn’t already, he’ll find a small fortune waiting in the trunk of his undamaged Bronco. Hopefully enough to stop him from looking any deeper into what happened tonight.

“Sure, I get that,” Reggy says, “but what I can’t figure out is how you busted in there, bloody and beaten from a car wreck, and still managed to take out all three of them.”

He scribbles something on his clipboard before shaking his head.

“Adrenaline’s one crazy mother.” I don’t volunteer any more information than I have to.

Hannah says almost nothing at all. Believing she’d been tied to a chair and left to burn alive, Reggy puts her silence down to shock.

All of his questions are directed at me. And I’ve given him exactly the answers he needs to close the case, backed by one final piece of evidence I’ve kept until now.

“My thoughts exactly. And if you need it, I’ve got the camera footage of them breaking in. Up until one of them killed the feed.”

The final nail in their coffin. I have untouched footage of them crossing the garden, smashing the windows and tying Hannah to a chair. The recording cuts out shortly before I arrive. No doubt when they started tearing the house apart.

“We’re going to need a copy of that,” he says. “Actually... I’d like to see it now, if you’ve got it.”

I nod and hand him my phone. There’s no audio. It doesn’t need it.

The paramedics give Hannah and me one final examination, which reinforces everything I’ve already told the police. The injuries from the crash speak for themselves. As do the cuts and bruises Hannah picked up tonight.