They were so agonizingly still.
My legs began to shake and it was all I could do to stay on my feet, but falling was not an option.
He had her.
He had my Rosalee.
“Hey, Daddy! Hey, Willow,” she chirped. “Look, Uncle Trent bought me a book about animals. It has llamas and everything.”
He grinned at Caven, slimy and baleful. “I sure did. Uncle Trent’s the best. Right?”
“Right,” she replied.
“Rosalee, come here,” Caven rumbled, taking a long stride forward. “Right now. Come here.”
She started to slide off the couch, but all at once, Trent’s arm snaked around her and he slapped a hand over her mouth. As he stood up, he leveled the gun on his brother’s chest.
“Please stop!” I cried, darting forward as she dangled in his arms like a rag doll.
His gun swung to me, and just as fast, Caven sidestepped in front of me.
“No!” Caven boomed, lifting his hands in surrender. “This is not about them. This is about me and you. Let them go and I’ll give you whatever you want.”
He cocked his head to the side. “What I wanted was for you to keep your fucking mouth shut.” He jerked his chin toward the hall. “Do you see that? You did that. You told Jenn about the goddamn pictures and left me with no fucking choice. My own wife and you fucking killed her.”
My pulse thundered in my ears, the fear from the past almost as debilitating as the panic in the present.
This wasn’t happening.
Not again.
Not again.
When I heard Rosalee’s muffled scream, I moved around Caven, unable to hide for a second longer while she was in the arms of the beast.
Tears were rolling down her face as she kicked her legs and had both arms outstretched for Caven. Her eyes. Oh, God, the confusion and terror in her bulging eyes were like a million arrows falling from the sky. I didn’t want this for her. I’d have given my life right then and there if it meant she never had to know a fear like that.
“It’s okay, baby,” Caven choked out. “It’s okay. Daddy’s right here. Just relax.”
His reassurances only made her fight even harder, and my chest constricted as Trent’s fingers bit into the side of her face.
“Please. You’re hurting her,” I pleaded.
“And you,” Trent snarled, his gun once again training on me. “You and your fucking sister have been nothing but a pain in my ass for years. If I’d known there were two of you, I’d have killed you both at the same goddamn time.”
“What?” I gasped, his confession penetrating my brain one syllable at a time. “You…you killed her?” That wasn’t possible. It’d been a car accident.
An accident just like the first of Malcom Lowe’s first twelve victims.
I blanched as his verbal knife slid, slow and violent, into my gut.
“She was a cokehead who deserved far worse than what I gave her. The crazy bitch was constantly asking for me at the station and following me home from work. She and that worthless piece of shit, Aaron White, camped out in front of my house, taking pictures like they were at a fucking zoo. I’ve never had a dead woman blackmail me before. Or man for that matter. Good old Aaron can attest to that from the morgue.”
He shifted Rosalee in his arm and cracked his neck. “Everything would have been fine until you, like a cockroach, came back. I knew you were a liar from the moment I saw you. I’d already killed Hadley Banks. There was no fucking way she was sitting in my brother’s house, waiting to blow out her birthday candles. You should have stayed gone, Willow. You should have fucking stayed gone. And none of this would have happened.”
He suddenly turned the gun to Rosalee’s temple.
I screamed, tears springing to my eyes, but Caven lurched forward. His jaw so hard that it was magic that his teeth hadn’t crumbled.
“Stop! Stop. She’s Mom, Trent. She’s the only part of Mom we have left. Just give her to me. I’ll give you all the cash you need, and this can all be over.”
He swung the gun back on Caven. “Fuck Mom! She liked to run her mouth too. Dad warned me over and over again that you were just like her and you would flip on us the first chance you got.”
“Dad was a fucking psychopath.”
“But he was right about you. You were all set to turn him into the police with those Polaroids. You didn’t give a damn about