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He hurt Cassie.
“You left. And you hurt me. Called me names and broke my heart.” Joel starts waving the gun around, looking like a lost little boy. But I know better than to try to take the gun. Not when Laurence is in the room and can get hurt.
Nothing is important except surviving.
Everything else can be fixed.
Everything except death.
“So I had to hurt you. To make it even. But there are two of you. So it doesn’t count.” He smiles again, staring at me like I am an alien. “None of it counts. Our life can be normal again. We can get it back. I can take you back.”
Survive, Casper.
I slowly hold my hands up, palms out, and open my eyes as wide as I can get them. I need to seem pathetic, weak, and nonthreatening. There isn’t any other way to survive.
He has to see me as something he can control.
He’s pacing now, darting from side to side, scratching his head with the barrel of the gun, and I can see that there’s one small opening. Only one way to survive and maybe get out of this. He’s not completely lost.
Not yet.
Hopefully.
“Joel,” I whisper quietly. “You told me that Cole caused the accident. That you hired a PI.”
He stops, going deathly still for a moment before he starts pacing again. Then he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a familiar envelope. The same one he brought me in New York.
“It’s empty,” he cackles mirthlessly. “I needed you to trust me, to need the information I had. To throw him out. And it was perfect. But you didn’t even ask to see it. He crashed when he tried to stop me that night. All you had to do was believe me. I was giving you space, getting ready for your brother to come home. To get better. But now you’re pregnant. I hid in the house, waiting for you. And I saw the way you touched your stomach. You’re pregnant and we can’t have that now, can we?”
He is ranting, and none of what he says makes sense, but I nod like I understand. My hands reflexively cover my stomach, trying to keep him as far away from my baby as I can.
“We can fix that, though.” He points the gun directly at my stomach. “And then we can be together. Like we’re supposed to be. Like we’re meant to be, Cassie. Always.”
I try to move.
To beg him not to shoot.
To take cover.
But it’s too late.
I was wrong.
He’s completely lost, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him.
The gun goes off before I can do anything more than flinch.
With ringing in my ears, and the way he freezes with the smoking gun pointed at me, I think he missed.
Until I hear the cries through the voiceless noise surrounding me.
I turn my head, bracing myself to see Laurence hurt and already trying to come up with a plan to get us out of there.
He isn’t bleeding, though.
He’s crying, staring at me with wide eyes and a finger pointed at me.
Scared eyes with trembling limbs.
