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“Oh don’t worry, she said she was sorry later. She said she shouldn’t have said it like that, but that she had to be so blunt because sometimes I get these stupid ideas in my head and can’t be talked out of them.”
“This must be a million-dollar home, Luke,” I say gently. “Not many people can afford it. That doesn’t make you any less of a man. It doesn’t make you a failure.”
His head snaps up all of a sudden and his posture straightens. He readjusts his grip on the gun, asking, “Is that what you think, Meghan? That I’m a failure?”
“No,” I say swiftly, briskly. “No, not at all. I would never think that. You’re a good man, Luke. An incredible nurse. Think of all the patients you’ve taken care of over the years, of all the people you’ve saved.”
“Don’t patronize me. Don’t fucking patronize me.”
I don’t try telling him I’m not because he can see through me.
I change tack. “What do you want from us? What do you want with Sienna?” I ask, letting my eyes go to her, wondering if he laid his hands on her, if he touched her. “Did he hurt you?” I ask her, but she shakes her head, tears running down her face.
“You and Sienna are going to help me find a way out of this,” Luke says, and I understand. He took her as a hostage because he needs our help getting out of the city and getting away.
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “We can do that. What do you need, Luke? Money? A car? I can rent a car for you and give you as much money as you need to get away from here. I have money saved. I just need to get it out of the bank.” I have the rest of my grandmother’s inheritance, what wasn’t already stolen from me.
Luke snickers. “How do you think you’re just going to walk out of the bank with that kind of money?” he asks. I could. But I couldn’t do it in a day and I couldn’t do it tonight, not when the bank is already closed.
“The ATM then. Let me and Sienna go to the ATM and I’ll take out as much as I can, as much as it lets us. We’ll bring it back.”
“Be honest with me, Meghan,” he says, raising his voice, the barrel of the gun pressing harder against Sienna’s head, who breaks down, pressing her eyes closed tight, waiting for the gun to go off. “What are the odds of you coming back if I let Sienna leave?”
“Then let Sienna go,” I beg. “Keep me. Please. Let her go. I’ll stay here while she goes and gets the money from the ATM. It should be enough to get you out of the state, if I rent you a car. The police are looking for you, Luke. I don’t know that you can rent a car yourself. You need me. Let Sienna go get the money, and I will make arrangements for a car.”
I want to ask him why, how he could do this, how he could hurt all those women.
I want to ask him if he really thinks he can get away with it. Wherever he goes, the police will be looking for him. If he shoots Sienna and me, it will be so much worse, murder in addition to rape.
“Is that okay, Luke?” I ask, pleading, desperate, when he says nothing. “If Sienna goes to get cash from the ATM and I stay here with you to make arrangements for a rental car, so you can leave?”
Luke hears something then. His head darts toward the stairs, listening, and then he turns back to face me, eyes narrowing. “Did you call the police, Meghan? Did you tell them where I am?”
My throat tightens.
“Answer me!” he screams in my silence, his voice resounding. Beside him, Sienna tries to lean forward, to fold herself into a ball, wrapping her arms around her knees, rocking. He doesn’t like it. Sienna gives a short, sharp cry of pain as he snatches her by the hair, righting her so that she’s on her knees again, whimpering. He holds on to her hair. Sienna is crying harder now, and it’s desperate, heaving as the barrel digs further in and she braces herself to die.
“No,” I say. “Honest to God, Luke, I did not call the police. I swear to you, on my life, on Sienna’s life,” I say, stepping forward by instinct but, as I do, Luke turns the gun toward me, and I stop short, and then he brings the gun around to Sienna again, which is so much worse. “You told me to come alone and I did. I’m not lying to you, Luke. I promise. I wouldn’t lie to—”
There is no advanced warning before the sound of a loud, deafening blast slices through the night from behind, followed by another; a bright yellow flash of light temporarily brightens the room before it all goes black again, the flash as the bullet escapes Luke’s gun. Luke falls back as Sienna falls forward, crashing face-first to the ground, and then there is blood, oceans of it on the subfloor, spreading.
I race toward Sienna. An officer appears from out of nowhere and steps in my way, and I pummel into him. He catches me, holding me. “Ma’am,” he says. “You can’t go in there.” He won’t let me past. I rain blows on his chest with my fists and I scream, an agonizing scream. My legs give, and I half fall, but the officer catches me. He rights me, he holds me up.
“Sienna! Sienna baby,” I call out over the officer’s shoulder. “I’m right here.” I look the officer in the eye, gathering strength. “Let me see my daughter,” I demand of him. “Let me go. Get your fucking hands off me. Is she okay? Is she alright?”
There is blood everywhere. On her clothes. Her skin. Her hair is red with it.
She lies on the floor unmoving, hung at an impossible angle with her arms bent beneath her and her hair fanned around her head, turning red, and I wonder if I deserve this, if this is the price I’ll pay for killing Caitlin Beckett.
Twenty-Nine
The EMTs come and take Sienna out to the ambulance on a stretcher. I trail behind, someone holding me by an elbow, helping guide me down the stairs and outside where it’s begun to snow.
As a crowd gathers in the street, the EMTs load Sienna into the back of the ambulance, where the bright ceiling lights make the blood all the more evident. There is no end to the amount of blood on her and the paramedics quickly apply themselves to finding where the bullet went in and how to stop the bleeding.
I hang back, watching, as if in a nightmare. I don’t even notice the cold. I don’t know I’m shaking until someone wraps a blanket around my shoulders from behind. I don’t see it happen. I don’t feel it happen. I just know that all of a sudden the blanket is there, limp, barely hanging on and then it starts to fall, and someone comes and rights it. They anchor it to my hand, and I find myself vaguely clutching a fistful of wool as I go over it again and again in my mind: how the police crept into the house from behind and shot Luke before the gun in his own hand went off.
Luke is dead. He lies inside the house as police come and go from it, circling the area with crime scene tape. Lights and sirens fill the night, multiplying. Reporters come. There are video cameras, microphones, spotlights, though they’re all in my peripheral vision because I can’t tear my eyes away from Sienna in the back of the ambulance.
