She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,231

someone out of what he may have told them to do if you phrase yourself properly, if you break through. I think the alcohol may help to speed that up, cut through to the subconscious, but it’s tough to say for sure.” He looked back at Hobson. “What do you say, can we trust you with a gun?”

I’m not gonna lie, when Hobson went to the table near Preacher and Adella and picked up some kind of long-range rifle, less than ten feet from Cammie and her daughter, the tension in the air was palpable. Even Hobson appeared nervous. The only person who didn’t seem worried was Cammie.

She smiled at him and nodded toward a box of ammunition on the corner of the table. “444 Marlins. You could drop a grizzly with those.”

Hobson loaded the rifle with practiced ease, pointed it toward the back wall, and peered into the sight. “I can work with this.” He looked back at Adella and Preacher. “Where do you want me?”

Adella tossed him a handheld radio and nodded toward one of Dunk’s men standing outside our door. “Cortez will take you up to the the roof. You can help cover the woods. Most of our guys are good up close, but we only have a handful of sharpshooters.”

Hobson nodded, scooped up the box of ammunition, a pair of headphones, gave Cammie a wink, and disappeared down the hall behind the one called Cortez.

When he was gone, my father returned his gaze to me. “We need to talk about your girlfriend, Jack.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“She could kill all of us. She’s not in control, and she’s getting worse,” Cammie said. “I’ve got a daughter to think about. We need to secure her.”

“Stella’s not gonna hurt anyone. If we’re going to talk about anything, we should discuss who called Charter from Whidbey. They’re already here. Got here right after us. Gotta wonder if someone is tipping them off. Detective Fogel said whoever called told Charter where we were. Stella was out cold. My father and Hobson were tied up. That leaves you and Preacher.”

“How do we know that detective of yours was even telling the truth?”

“Was it you?”

“No, it wasn’t me,” Cammie insisted. “And I trust Preacher. It wasn’t him, either.”

“Then who?”

Darby looked up from her coloring book, then returned to the half-completed image of Spongebob.

Cammie frowned. “She was with me, and she can’t talk. She has no idea what Charter is, and I can guarantee she doesn’t know the number. Don’t look at her that way. Get that thought out of your head right now.”

Adella’s radio crackled.

“Adella, get to the roof. Twelve vans now.”

Preacher, who had remained silent through all of this, scooped up a radio, noise-canceling headphones, ammunition for the Walther PPK in his shoulder holster, and an assault rifle. “Neither of us made that call, kid. Drop the conspiracy theory bullshit. We’ve got work to do. I’m going with Adella.” He tossed a radio to Cammie. “You need me, you call. I’ll come right back, okay?”

Cammie set the radio between her and Darby and nodded.

Then they were gone.

My father watched them leave before turning back to me. “For what it’s worth, Richard and Emma were scared of her, of Stella. She couldn’t hurt them, probably something genetic, but they knew what she could do to anyone else. At one point, Richard called me, must have been three o’clock in the morning. He told me he had this nightmare where he went into Stella’s nursery and smothered her with a pillow. In the dream, he said it felt like the right thing to do. When he woke, the feeling lingered, and that frightened him more than anything. He said, for a few minutes, he lay there in bed and actually thought about it. The right thing to do. Then the guilt set in. When he called to tell me this, about halfway through the call, I realized he wasn’t just telling me about a bad dream, he was feeling me out. In his own way, he was trying to figure out if I thought it was the right thing to do. I gotta tell you, Jack. I thought long and hard on that, and I never did work out an answer. In the years that followed, hearing about all those she killed, that last call from Richard has replayed in my head more times than I’d care to admit.”

I took several steps back toward the bathroom and Stella’s cot.

My father raised his hands