Page 106 of Every Step She Takes
No. I don’t care if I only knew Jamison for a few months as a child. Nothing I knew of him then and nothing anyone else has said of him since would allow him to be that person. His story makes perfect sense. He thought Isabella was dead, and he did what he’d been raised to do. Call Karla.
He called Karla, and she’s the one who saw her chance, and I don’t know why, but motive doesn’t matter at this moment. I’m watching Karla sneak into Jamison’s cottage, intent on that front room. She thinks Jamison is in there alone, and I don’t know what she plans, but she isn’t sneaking up to surprise him. She’s creeping through the house, cell phone in her hand–
She twists against the wall, and my gaze falls to her hand, and what I see there isnota cell phone.
Karla has a gun.
Holy shit. Karla has a gun.
Even as my stomach convulses, I inwardly snarl at myself for my stupidity. I’m hiding in this damned closet, waiting for her to arrive, my gut telling me she will come for him, and yet it failed to foresee that damned gun in her hand?
Did I think Karla – fifty-something Karla, who probably doesn’t even have time for spin classes – was going to confront a twenty-three-year-old action-movie star without a weapon?
I did not foresee this because I didn’t want to foresee it. I wanted to believe Karla cared enough for these kids that she only came to talk to Jamison, to persuade him.
I’d planned to step from this closet and confront her myself. Now, seeing that gun, I realize my terrible mistake. I take a deep breath and ease back into the closet. I need to warn Marco and stay here–
Molly hears Karla, then. I’d put her into the bedroom with a chew toy, and she’d been quiet, but now there is clearly someone else in the building, and she wants out. Between puppy yips, Karla’s shoes squeak as she halts.
She knows something is wrong, and if there was any doubt, it evaporates when Molly begins flinging herself against the door, yowling. Being locked in a room is foreign enough, but to have someone inside the houseignoringher? That is a mistake, and the puppy yowls her confusion and concern, telling Karla, beyond any doubt, that no one is in the front room watching TV.
I need to get out of here. Now.
I ease open the closet door and tiptoe to the back one. I twist the knob just as Karla’s shoes squeak again. She’s coming back my way.
I throw open the back door and run. I tear through the small yard, my gaze fixed on the woods twenty feet away–
“Stop, Lucy.”
In the movie version, I’d lunge for the forest and somehow reach it despite it being at least ten feet away. Or I’d dodge and weave until I was safely in the trees. In reality, I know that if I even try that, she’ll shoot me in the back.
So I turn, hands raised. Karla stands there, and I hope – I still hope – that I won’t see a gun in her hand. Maybe it really was her cell phone, or maybe she’s hiding the gun, hoping not to need to resort to that.
The gun is there. Right there. Pointing straight at me.
Karla came to kill me.
The thought barely settles, ice cold in my stomach, before it’s steamrolled by the truth, one even worse.
Karla didn’t know I was here. She couldn’t have come for me.
Karla came to kill Jamison.
“Suicide?” I say, and my voice is eerily calm.
Her brows shoot up. “You think I’m going to kill myself, Lucy?”
“Of course not. You came to shoot Jamison. You were just going to make it look like suicide. He has a history of it, after all. You’d shoot him and tell the police you came to talk to him because you knew he’d killed Isabella. You were coming to help Jamie turn himself in, and you arrived to discover he’d found another solution to his problem.”
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. I see by the flicker of consternation that I’m right – or close enough to it.
“Where is he?” she says.
Now I’m the one lifting my brows. “You really think I’d tell you?”
“Yes, because you have a choice to make, Lucy. Two solutions tothisproblem. One, I can shoot you and frame him. You came to beg for his help, and – being Isabella’s actual killer – he shot you. Two, I finish this, and we say Jamie took his own life. He would eventually, anyway, especially with Isabella gone. This only speeds up the inevitable.”
Especially with Isabella gone.
