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46
Catrina
I am the puzzle piece that you think will fit but doesn’t. The color is a little off, the edges don’t sit quite flush. You can’t force it. Though you might try.
I float above them, watch my poor, still body, legs akimbo, arms spread like I’m making a snow angel. Blood pours from a wound in my head. I am shattered.
Joshua is wailing, the sound of his voice carrying like a siren.
Joshua was a thief. The cybersecurity expert who wasan expertat siphoning funds from the accounts of his clients. A little here, a little there—tiny amounts that amounted to a lot which he funneled into a Bitcoin account. He was slowly becoming very, very rich with his stolen funds, about to retire to Costa Rica or someplace warm and cheap. I was hoping to go with him when all was said and done, or so I like to tell myself. That maybe in some other universe there was a happy ending for me. There was something between me and Joshua, a connection. We were family. So, why not cobble together a kind of family with him? Like I said, the enterprise with Mako was my last endeavor to clean up my biological father’s biological mess.
Best laid plans and all of that. I’ve learned my lesson, I think. It was never up to me.
Ah, well.
Cricket’s sobs turn to screams. Honestly, I can’t believe that little slut killed me. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her.
Bruce rushes for Hannah, who lets out a groan of pain. The only one who is silent is Mako, holding Liza’s motionless form. After a moment, he looks up to survey the scene. Is that a smile on his face?
He wins again.
Or so he thinks.
Then the Feds rush in. And even though I failed in ending Mako, it’s an end to him for sure.
Now I am above it all. The watcher.
I see Liza being rolled out on a stretcher, lifted into a waiting ambulance.
Mako is led away in handcuffs to a waiting SUV. I’d expected him to be screaming and railing, but he is quiet and pliant. Exhausted. Maybe even relieved.
Sometimes it’s a relief to be done with it all, all the lies and bad actions, all the cover-ups, and shady deals. It takes so much energy.
I should know.
Hannah walks back into Elegant Overlook, Bruce beside her. She has been bandaged. Bruce is holding her good hand, a tender arm around her. Hannah is watching her brother. Bruce is talking to her, but she’s not hearing him. She’s just watching Mako, her face a mask of sadness, disappointment, anger.
Joshua sits in the back of an SUV, his hands cuffed, as well. His face is bruised and bloody, head resting against the glass.
Cricket is alone, standing by the trees, stunned and pale.
She killed me. The handmaiden. The one I had figured as a princess, easy to manage. But when the going got tough, she picked up the gun and fired.
Who says there are no more surprises?
I float higher.
A woman in white wanders in and out of the trees looking for the lost children she will never find.
Off in the distance, a little girl wades into Tearwater Lake, wailing for a mama who will never come.
“Wow,” says my dad. “We always called you kitten. But you’re the wolf.”
“Oh?”
“You really blew their house down.”
I look at them. They’re all broken pieces, just like me. Trying to make themselves fit.
