The man rotated his head toward Kelly, and Elise’s insides scrambled. They couldn’t reach any of the guns on the floor. She grabbed Sean’s arm, pleading—demanding that he do something. From the way he looked at her, she knew he was trying.
“What am I to do with you?” the man asked Kelly.
She stood with her hands locked next to her sides, her hair covering part of her face. With each step the man took toward her, she took one back, the tall man seeming to relish the chase. He rotated his gun in a circle. “Spin around for me.”
She didn’t move.
“You deaf?”
Her lips parted, but she said nothing.
“Spin for me.”
He stuck his pistol out toward the others. “How about I blow one of their kneecaps out right now? We’ll start with the little one. Sound good to you?”
“Don’t. Please,” Kelly said.
“Spin.”
Elise’s skin crawled. Kelly spun, but he demanded it slower. So, she closed her eyes and did as he asked. “You remember what the boss said earlier. Your shirt belongs to me.”
Kelly froze. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Give me your shirt.”
The garage door downstairs screeched in its tracks. A tear rolled down Kelly’s cheek. She gripped the edges of her shirt and paused. Looked over at her niece.
“Stop looking at them.”
She pulled her sweatshirt off and tossed it to the ground, now standing in a tank top, covering herself with both arms.
“Your other shirt.”
She sighed and grabbed the straps on her shoulders. She yanked it up when the tall man shouted, “Slow it down.”
She obeyed, now standing topless before him. “Well, look at those,” the man said.
Elise pulled Molly into her chest, shielding her eyes. Kelly reached to cover herself, but the man shouted for her to stop. He commanded her to drop her pants.
Elise looked at Sean. He was trying in the subtlest way, dipped below the edge of the bed, to reach out further. But his hand was a foot short of the table, let alone the contents on top. She racked her mind for a solution that would extend his reach.
The tall man was no longer paying attention to him. Kelly stood naked before him, and his focus was on her. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Elise turned away, knowing this would be the first time but not the last—imagining what these people had in store for later. Again and again. And again. For all of them.
“Lay on the bed. On your stomach.”
She crawled on top of the mattress.
“Make it sexier.”
Kelly choked up. Sean strained, blood dripping from the cuffs tearing into his skin, but could only get another few inches and nothing more.
As Kelly lay atop the bed, shaking, the man said, “Ass up.”
She raised her hips a little and turned her head toward the others, her eyes red. The man wrestled with the front of his pants. Elise mouthed to her that she was sorry—God, this was her fault—holding her daughter, but knowing there was no consolation. Forgive me, she thought, please, I didn’t know. But there was nothing she could say to a person about to have the deepest parts of her soul violated. A part of her that should be kept safe but was now raw and exposed.
A place where goodness lived but would soon die.
Chapter 21
HIS STRAINING WAS getting him nowhere. Each attempt to reach the gun sank the handcuff deeper into his skin. But he tried again.
Kelly gasped, and Sean turned his head. He didn’t want to see, but he turned anyway. Frustration was brewing on the tall man’s face, the man looking down at Kelly, his scowl growing angrier. Sean made another try at the nightstand but collapsed in defeat.
The tall man said something, staring right at Sean.
He froze like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Where’s the lube?” he said again. Sean hadn’t heard him the first time.
Sean’s hand shook as he pointed to the nightstand. The same nightstand with the gun. The tall man tumbled over the bed, his pants at his ankles, and reached out for it. Grabbed at the top drawer and jerked it toward himself. The nightstand tipped forward—Sean had always meant to fix that poor center of gravity—and the contents on top spilled onto the floor before it rocked back into place. Elise gripped his arm. The tall man waddled back and flipped the cap off the lubrication.
With the tall man’s attention back on Kelly, Sean stretched his arm out toward the gun safe that was now on the ground. He gritted his teeth and reached as far as he could.
Still short.
His flashlight lay just out of reach of his fingertips. He jerked his hand forward but couldn’t get it. Couldn’t give up. With his teeth clenched, suppressing a scream, blood trickling down his wrists, he jerked forward one more time and his fingertips stuck to the flashlight. He flexed and pulled his fingers, inching it closer millimeter by millimeter.
His heart’s thumping drowned out almost all the noise around him. He finally took the flashlight in his hand. With his extended reach, he got the edge of the flashlight around the side of the clock and slid it a hair toward himself. He looked back at the tall man—wishing he hadn’t—and saw that the man, mouth hanging open, was not paying attention to him. Sean’s wrist was flashing white hot, screaming for him to stop the abuse. He extended the flashlight again and nicked the corner of the safe. Did it again. Each motion moving it a little closer.
The tall man jumped backward and looked between Sean and Elise. “What’re you doing?” he said.
A light beeping sounded through the room, and Sean raised his pistol up over the mattress. The tall man screamed, but it was cut short by the gun popping and a hollow-pointed bullet drilling into his chest. He whirled back. Sean fired three more times after that to make sure he wouldn’t get up, the last bullet catching the tall man just below his larynx. He wasn’t aiming for it, but he’d take it.
The sound of the gunshots had reverberated off the walls, crushingly loud, so now an intense ringing sustained in his ears. A thin, acrid smoke dissipated into the air. His hand didn’t shake. After the second shot, he didn’t even think about squeezing the trigger, as if something had clicked into place, and clicked perfectly. He lowered his weapon, and the realization rushed over him.
He had killed a man.
And he would do it again if he had to.
The world seemed distant and hollow like he was watching a slow-motion version of his life. Soon the voices came back. His wife, as if miles away, was calling to him. He looked at her but couldn’t hear her words. Kelly’s sobs entered the foreground as if appearing out of nowhere. A Doppler Effect in progress, gaining momentum until he was thrust back into the world in terrifying crescendo.
“Sean,” Elise yelled out.
He looked at the door. Someone had to have heard the gunshots. They might come back to see what was happening—they might just leave, and they were taking everything. Everything. If they got away—
Kelly, now on the other side of the bed to cover herself, was sobbing. “Kelly, Kelly,” Sean called after her.
Her eyes rose over the bed.
“Kelly, you have to listen to me,” he said, his neck cranking every few seconds to look at the door. “You need to be brave. You need to check the man for keys to get me out of these cuffs.”
The rapist lay at the foot of the bed, his leg twitching every few seconds. She wouldn’t look at him. “Kelly. Please. They are taking every ounce of food from us right now. If they leave, we’ll have nothing. We’ll all starve.”