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“I didn’t kill them,” her father said. “Becca, if you know I’m the Guide, then you know there are things we can get away with. Shooting someone in public is not one of them.”
“Do you hate me?” she said. Her voice cracked at the end.
“What?” He shook his head. “Becca—no—”
“Do you?” she cried. “You left me. You left me. And now you’re back, and you’ve tried to kill me twice—”
“I have not tried to kill you. I’m trying to keep the Merrick brothers away from you. When I left, I did it to protect you. Do you understand me? I’m trying to protect you.”
“Bullshit.” She wished she knew how to c**k the gun, just for effect. But she was worried she’d shoot him by accident.
She heard sirens.
Holy. Crap.
Her breath was shaking. “Talk fast.”
“No one knew about you,” he said. “Your mother isn’t one of us, and I wanted to keep you out of it. I wasn’t even sure you’d come into your abilities. But when you were eleven, a girl died, and the Merrick brothers were involved. A Guide was called.” He was looking at her significantly. “Me, Becca. They wanted me to take care of it.”
The gun was heavy. She felt her arms starting to waver. “I still don’t understand.”
“We lived in the same town! You went to school with one of them. When I went to the house—well, their mother was very convincing.” His tone was grim. “She knew about you, Becca. For the first time, someone had leverage against me.”
“Skip to the part where you left,” she snapped.
“Damn it, Becca! That’s why I left. She swore to leave you alone if I did—and she kept that promise. I couldn’t take the chance of someone else finding out. I didn’t want this for you. The pain of having to destroy others, the regret—” His eyes flicked up, to Hunter, hardening for an instant. “I didn’t want you to be another teenager trained to kill. But then I got called for the family again—only to find out their parents had died in a fire. Now another Guide has been killed—apparently they’re terrorizing the other families in town—”
The sirens were getting closer. She was so mad she almost couldn’t see straight. “The Merricks are terrorizing the other families? Didn’t you ever think to check your facts? You’ve been gone for years. You shouldn’t be here now. You’re helping nothing.” Her voice broke again, and she started to lower the gun. “You’re hurting everyone, just like before.”
“Becca.” His voice softened. “Becca, please.”
She started to waver. She had no idea what was true anymore.
She tightened her grip on the gun. It suddenly felt like it was falling, slipping out of her hands.
No, that was her. Falling because of the earthquake.
CHAPTER 40
“Holy shit! It worked!” Chris had his hands pressed to the concrete. The floor had started to move.
A lot.
“It worked!” he said again, bracing his hands against the floor. He recognized his brother’s power. He knew it. He knew it.
“Yeah,” Nick said, and it sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth. “This feels great.”
The floor shook harder. Nick swore, and his voice vibrated with the rocking of the earth. “I’m g-going to k-kill Michael.”
Steel started to whine and creak from pressure, and Chris heard bolts pop somewhere across the room. Metal sheeting ripped from a wall or the ceiling and rattled onto the concrete floor, a deafening sound.
Chris had a moment of panic. Were they underground? Was this a basement?
“Air!” cried Nick. “New air. Check the door.”
Chris scrambled across the floor, terrified that any moment a sheet of metal was going to come crashing down on his head, and he’d be as incapacitated as Nick. The trembling floor kept throwing him off, and it took him too long to find it.
But when he did, it was open. He had to fight with the hinges to convince it to let him through, but suddenly he was outside the freezer, in a small corridor. They were in a basement. A flight of stairs sat just to his left.
