Page 110 of Till Death Do Us Part

“Stop! Don’t touch anything else!”

I ignored them. I clasped my hand around the ring in her pocket, slipped it out, and I put it back on my finger. Her eyes shone.

“That’s better,” I said.

“Now step away,” the guard shouted, straining his voice. “Hands up. And don’t move without being told to!”

I smiled. “Of course. I wouldn’t dream of causing problems.”

I moved in a blink. He fired a shot, but he’d expected me to go straight at him, and it plinked off the metal behind me as I grabbed him by the arm, twisting around and thrusting him in front just as the rain of gunfire came down and hit him from every angle. I snatched the gun from his hand as he went limp, and I squeezed off three shots, downing the two on the other far corners and one of the close ones, and I threw the body aside when one of the others lunged at me, catching him off-guard and giving me the opening to hit the gun out of his hand and shove him backwards off the edge, where he went down with a scream just as the last one jumped me from behind. I twisted with the momentum, and I slammed his head down onto the steel railing and then shoved him out over the edge, gripping him by the throat and holding him out over the drop.

“Where’s Glenn?” I said.

“He’s—he went back to headquarters,” he choked. “You’re—a monster. A traitor.”

I clutched his throat tighter, squeezing until I could feel it collapsing. “I’m loyal to one person,” I said. “And you… hurt her.”

He let out a guttural, choked scream through his broken throat as I shoved him off the edge, down towards the dizzying ground below, and for just one instant, the sensation of it clutched at me, seeing him fall.

My mother’s face looking up at me as she screamed, falling down, down…

“Vera,” Elaine gasped, and it shook me out of the moment of madness. I whirled back on her, dropping to her level and untying her bindings.

“We’re getting you out,” I said.

“Vera, wait, it’s Quayle—he’s—”

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. I sensed his presence, like a rotten odor, even before the footsteps came ringing around the corner, and I whirled back to see him with a gun out, trained squarely ahead.

Not on me. On Elaine.

He put his finger on the trigger, and he pulled.

Chapter 55

elaine

The gun fired with a crack that rang through the night, and I winced, my hands in front of my face, but I didn’t feel anything.

Slowly, I opened my eyes, and my heart lurched at the sight.

Vera, in front of me, clutching her shoulder. Her blood pooled around her hand, and she stared down Quayle with fire in her eyes.

She’d jumped in front. Taken the bullet for me.

Oh, God. With her shooting arm injured, we didn’t stand a chance against Quayle.

“You,” Vera said, her voice low, gravelly. “Am I ever glad to see you here, Quayle.”

“Vera, wait,” I said thickly. “You can’t possibly… we can bargain and try to—”

“Elaine.” She spoke quietly, but it was just enough to stop me. She kept her gaze fixed on Quayle, who stood just at the edge of the spotlight at the other end, his pallid features past in ghostly white light. “You already took away everything I loved once. I won’t let you so much as lay a finger on my wife.”

My heart surged and broke all at once. How she’d come for me. How she’d put the ring on. How she said it like I was what she loved now.

And how that was going to kill her now.

Quayle didn’t speak, just held his gun out. Vera clutched hers tighter, blood running down her arm and dripping off her fingers.