Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,123

calculating part of my mind that Jonathan wants to access and put in control. It’s trying to tell me that shooting her is a mercy, and I don’t know, maybe it would be. Or maybe it’s just the action of a killer. Melvin wants me to do it.

That’s exactly why I can’t.

Jonathan lost something huge when his skull was crushed. I don’t know what it was—what precise brain function should be there and isn’t—but what’s left is an emotionlessly logical decision-making process. He wins because he’s taken emotion out of the equation. Because he’s got the unique ability to endure.

I take a deep breath, and when I stand up, I waver for a second. The gun is such an easy choice. So easy. It would spare her. It would spare me, too, in a sense.

I sit down next to Sheryl, looking down at her. I put my hand on her cheek and I say, “I’m here, Penny Carlson. I see you. I’m right here. Everything is okay. I know you hurt. I know you’re confused. But I’m right here with you.”

This is so cruel. So cruel I can barely look at what I’m doing. But her blood supply is low, almost gone, and so is her bag of pain medication. I sit and talk to her. She answers me in low, disjointed sentences, and then she starts to make sense as the meds lose effectiveness. We talk about her folks. She cries. We talk about being out in the sunlight and flowers and grass, and how the wind moves through the trees. I sing to her, low and quiet. Toward the end, when the bag is almost dry, she looks at me and her eyes focus and she says, “Are you here to kill me? ’Cause I did that to my kids?” Her eyes fill with tears. “I did. I did that. Why did he make me do that?”

He didn’t. I know that, not because he told me but because he prides himself on control. He makes other people do terrible things. He baits them with whatever they want. What’s the old saying? You can’t cheat an honest man. But all of us, to some level or other, are dishonest.

Even saints fail.

I can’t take her hand, but I keep my palm pressed against her forehead. Just letting her feel the contact. “Penny, did he ask you to do anything else since that night?”

“It hurts,” she says, with a strange sort of surprise. She takes in a sharp breath. Her voice trembles as she says, “It’s hurting, can you make it stop? Please?”

“I will,” I tell her. It hurts to say it. “Did he ask you to do anything else, sweetheart?”

She’s crying. Her breath is coming raggedly now. Faster. “I can’t feel my arms. I can’t move them.”

“You’re okay,” I whisper, and stroke her forehead. “Can you answer my question?”

She blinks, gulps, and says, “I had to. There were two people that saw us on the road. Had to do it.” That’s the man and woman Kezia found dead. “I was just protecting us.”

“Did he ask you to do it?”

“He said—he just said it was a problem. It hurts, oh God—” Her voice is thin now. She’s breathing faster, more shallowly. Her skin is turning pale. The blood supply that was keeping her brain and organs oxygenated is leaving her fast. She’s bleeding out. “I didn’t want to. I needed to. Or I’d lose everything.”

I don’t have the heart to ask her about Prester. About anyone or anything else. I feel nothing but horror and revulsion and a strange, awful compassion for her right now, a naked connection of human to human, when all I can do is stay and bear witness.

“Hold me,” she whispers. “Mommy—” She starts screaming uncontrollably. She’s trembling all over. It’s horrible, but I don’t hesitate; I rest her head on my lap, and I let my tears fall. I kiss her forehead and tell her it’ll be okay, okay, okay, until she’s no longer screaming, until it’s just ragged, convulsive whimpering. Until it slows to a whisper. Until she’s just . . . gone.

It takes an eternity for her labored, wet breathing to finally hitch to a stop.

I sit there. Unmoving. There isn’t a sound except for the last of her blood dripping into the drain.

Jonathan’s voice says, “Crisis reveals character.” I hear locks unfastening at the door. “All choices have consequences.”

I find my voice, because I have to. I have no wish to speak to