“Enough!” Camille howls. She storms in front of me, her gun snapping up, trembling in her grip. But it’s not the gun I’m watching. It’s the pager in her other hand. “I have been so fucking patient with you. I’ve waited and I’ve planned. I forgave you so many fucking times, Holly. But evidently, it means jack shit to you. You won’t love me back?” she spits. “Fine. Stay together. Die together.”
Her thumb hovers.
“No!”
It happens faster than I can think.
Her thumb presses down.
The chain groans.
The axe swings.
The motion jerks, an unnatural shift. The chain creaks again. With a sickening crunch, the blade cleaves through the air. Not toward me. Not toward Theo.
It collides with Camille.
Not clean. Just a glancing crack off her skull. A thick, wetthunkthat sounds like a watermelon being dropped from the top floor of a parking garage. Not enough to kill her.
She stumbles forward, making this guttural noise, somewhere between a scream and a dying animal. The gun clatters from her hand, spins uselessly across the floor.
She sways.
And then pathetically drops like a sack of shit.
Not dead. Just down.
The whole room tilts, my brain sloshing inside my skull like it's trying to evacuate.
No time to think.
The axe swings back. This time for Theo’s head.
I move on instinct. I lunge, slamming into him, and we hit the ground together, chairs and all. The scalpel in his side shoves deeper. A wet, ripping sound that will replay in my nightmares for the rest of my miserable existence.
Theo chokes. It’s the kind of sound you hear right before someone dies.
My shoulder hits the floor at the wrong angle. There’s a bone-splitting crack. White-hot pain detonates through me. I scream so loud I feel it behind my eyes.
And then, miracle of miracles — I feel the rope snag on a jagged bit of the chair.
It tears.
My wrists wrench free.
I don't even hesitate. Don’t even register the pain ripping through my body. Don’t bother untying my legs even.
My brain short-circuits to one, single thought: Kill her.
Get the gun. Shoot her. Bash her fucking face into the floor until it’s nothing but blood and teeth and meat.
For touching him.
For hurting him.
For thinking she could take him away from me.
My vision goes red at the edges. Blood pounds in my ears.
