Snarling, he came down the stairs at a clip.
Fontana fired into the dirt a foot in front of him, stopping him cold. “Don’t test me, old man. I’ve done the required range time and then some. I’ve got seven more, and getting closer only ups my odds of success. And they were fine from the gazebo.”
“You little bitch, I should’ve taken care of you when I had the chance. Believe you me, I thought about it plenty. Romans 12:19: leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written.”
“Right back ’atcha,” she murmured, resetting him dead-center in her sights as the scream of sirens rose in the distance.
In the end, he was too irrational to listen. The flash of silver as he drew a knife from his coat wasn’t unexpected, but Fontana’s quick adjustment, lowering the gun to take out his left kneecap instead of his heart, was.
He howled in pain and lurched forward another foot, slashing her forearm as he went down.
Taking a gulp of woodsmoke and turned earth, Fontanacrossed to him, wedged her boot over his windpipe, and kicked the knife from his hand. Blood streamed down his leg, soaking the withered grass in crimson the color of the sunset surrounding them.
“I’m the devil who just made sure you’ll never walk again,” she whispered as a police car charged down the cottage’s drive. “And that’s nothing compared to what I’ll do next time. You better take door number one. Understand?”
Sighing, she glanced at the ragged sleeve of her new jean jacket.Great.
Andit hurt like hell.
“You let,” he coughed, panted, “me live.”
Because you’re her father, you bastard.
“I wouldn’t count on that, the way you’re bleeding,” she muttered, moving away from Alias Quinn for the last time as Promise’s two-person police department tumbled into her garden.
CAMPBELL
Campbell crossed the pitted hospital parking lot at a jog, the past snapping at his heels like an eager pup withverysharp teeth. The last time he’d been here—riding in the back of his mom’s ambulance—he’d been a petrified kid.
That kid was gone now. And the man standing in his placewas working to strip confusion and misery from his life, one step at a time.
He shivered as he approached, pulling his jacket close. The sky was jet. No stars, no moonlight. A black wash spitting rain, the kind that slid beneath your skin and stole the breath and any warmth from you.
The automatic doors swooshed open, and the smell hit him—sterile, putrid, antiseptic. He wondered how anyone could work here. Then he remembered what his darkroom smelled like and laughed to himself, even though he’d never felt less like laughing.
Jaime flagged him the moment he stepped inside, leaning against an unoccupied visitor’s desk. He looked as unkempt as Campbell had ever seen him—shirt untucked, blood on the knee of his jeans, hair springing in twelve directions—which did nothing to ease Campbell’s anxiety.
“Room 105,” Jaime said, grabbing his sleeve. “But calm down before you go in, okay? She’s going to be fine, a few stitches, but you look like you want to yell at someone. And I’m worried that someone is Fontana.”
Campbell held up his hands, a helpless gesture ofwhathe wasn’t sure.
Surrender?
In one of those blind panics he prided himself on never having, he’d driven like a maniac, telling himself the whole way she’d be fine, because she had to be. He’d finally found his soulmate, a trite expression, but the one that fit, only to have her taken away? It wasn’t until he stopped at the Georgia–South Carolina border to use a payphone, going nuts imagining the worst, that he knew she was going to be all right.
He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. Releasing a breath he’d been holding for hours, he swallowed, throat clicking, the taste of sickness and fear rising up.
He’d never been so scared in his life.
“Maybe you should go home, Campbell. Change clothes, shower. I can sign her out when?—”
“Oh, fuck, no.” He shoved off the wall he’d leaned on for two seconds of comfort. “She’d love that. I show up after everything’s calm, crisis over. When I didn’t know anything about this, how bad it was. She never…” He slid his glasses high, pinched the bridge of his nose, and blew out a tight groan. “She never told me he was coming for her if he got out. The looking-over-the-shoulder thing, the nightmares. I didn’t know, so I left her alone. I ran away, actually, and he found her.”
A blender-mix of pity and compassion settled over Jaime’s face. “She didn’t tell me either, Camp. Not like that. Not all of it.”
“Who am I kidding?” he whispered, sliding his glasses into place. “She’s never going to trust me.”
She had a weapon she knew how to use. A plan for if her father showed up. A strategy. And the willingness to sacrifice herself if it came to that, which it almost had.
