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“I said back the fuck off if you know what’s good for you, boy,” Mr. Mercer grated out, shifting his grip slightly.
I tried to stand again, tried to cry out, but then a soft voice behind me stole my breath.
“Stop.”
And everything did.
Cole and his father both looked over sharply, and when my gaze followed theirs, I blinked.
Mrs. Mercer, the small woman with the frail frame and the nervous eyes, stood several feet inside the door, the abandoned gun clutched in her hands. I could see her chest rising and falling jerkily with uneven breaths, and tremors seemed to quake her entire body.
“Alice.”
Her husband’s voice fell into the silence, commanding and soothing all at once. When I looked back at him, he still held the piece of sharpened metal out toward Cole, but his gaze was fixed on his wife.
He looked almost… relieved.
“It’s all right, Alice.” The soothing command was still in his voice. “I’ve got this under control. Go downstairs. I’ll deal with it.”
She blinked, her eyebrows drawing together slightly. Her gaze flicked to Cole, to the son she’d never been able to protect. He was still standing, still puffed up with rage, but I couldn’t tell how much blood had seeped into his shirt.
How much? Too much? How deep was the cut?
Mrs. Mercer’s gaze shifted back to her husband, and she blinked again, as if she was trying to clear her vision of the awful sight before her, to wake up from this nightmare. Her eyelashes fluttered, and her lips trembled.
“Alice,” Cole’s father repeated calmly. “Go downstairs.”
Her tongue darted out to lick her lips, and she took a single step backward, as if she couldn’t stop herself from obeying his command.
Then she hesitated.
“Do you remember what you told me the night you killed Charlotte?” she asked softly, her throat working as she stared at her husband. “One more time, you said. Just one more time.”
She blinked again, her eyelashes fluttering like a trapped bird’s wings.
“Just one more.”
Her voice was barely a whisper, but her hands were steady when she pulled the trigger.
The sound was like a thunderclap in the large space, so loud and final it seemed to stop my heart.
A bullet hole opened up in Mr. Mercer’s forehead, and his head whipped back as the muscles in his body all gave out at once. He crumpled backward, death stealing him away so fast his face didn’t even have time to register the surprise of it.
Alice swung the gun over my head, aiming toward the cluster of men behind me. Her face was pale, and something about it had hardened—as if some piece of her had changed and would never go back to the way it had been.
“On your knees,” she said softly, her voice still thin and strained.
But there was a murmured grunt as the two older men complied, and I turned to watch as the three boys shoved them down onto their stomachs on the hard concrete floor.
A heavy thud behind me made my stomach drop.
When I turned back around, Cole was on the floor near his father. A plaintive wail ripped through the silence, and didn’t know if it came from me or from Alice.
Maybe it came from both of us.
Then she was running, and I was crawling, trying desperately to reach the black-haired boy who was lying prone and too, too still on the floor.
She reached him before I did, falling to her knees beside him, and this time, I knew the horrible sobbing sound fell from her lips, not mine.
