AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sure you will.”
“No.”
“Yes. You do it this way and I won’t kill your boyfriend and your sister like I already killed Cunniff.” He shrugs.
I feel all the air come out of me at once.
Like I already killed Cunniff.
“You’re lying,” I say to Champi.
“You’re confusing me with my boss,” he says. He is smiling suddenly.
“This is funny to you?”
He shakes his head. “Endlessly.”
When he finally says he’s tired of talking, he tells me to start writing.
“No,” I say again.
“Yes,” Champi says.“Now.”
I think:Now or never is more like it.
“I’m going to be sick,” I say suddenly, leaning forward, trying anything to distract him. “The damn cancer drugs…”
It is in that moment that the front door opens and Dr. Ben Kalinsky comes walking in, saying, “I’ve got the pizza you didn’t pick up.”
Champi turns without hesitation and fires.
As he does, and I see Ben spin around and go down, not sure where he’s been hit, just that he’s been hit, I roll off the couch and away from Champi and pull the Walther air pistol I’d stuffed into the front of my jeans and underneath my baggy BC hoodie, before I got out of the car at Rob Jacobson’s house, before I ran up the driveway.
Get to Ben.
But Champi first.
Then I’m aiming as well as I can, Joe Champi’s face my target now. I fire, hitting him between the eyes this time even though it’s only a BB gun, and hear him scream as I do.
He’s on the ground now, clawing at his face with his free hand, trying to find me, firing wildly with the .22, the shots sounding like small explosions even with the suppressor, as I crawl behind the couch and get to the table in the front hall, reach up and grab the Glock out of the top drawer, roll toward where Ben is lying just inside the door.
I’m firing real bullets at Joe Champi now from my knees, hand steady, aiming for center mass.
Then the room is quiet again, except for the sound of Ben Kalinsky’s faint, labored breathing.
One Hundred Seventeen
One day later
I HAVEN’T SLEPT,having spent half the night at Southampton Hospital after talking to the police. I know I should be tired, looking to sleep for about a week.
But I’m not tired.
I’m relieved, is what I am.
Feeling very much alive.
And feeling lucky, for the first time in a long time.
