“I thought she seemed pretty nice.”
“Yeah? Well, you didn’t work for her.”
“Jory, let’s say Les hadn’t turned out to be a two-timing liar. Let’s say this hadn’t all blown up in your face…” Des thought she heard the creak of floorboards in the dining hall. She glanced at the doorway, but there was no one approaching. “Would you have gone through with it?”
“Gone through with what, Des?” asked Jory, frowning at her.
“Would you have married Les?”
“To get Jase out of my life? Oh, absolutely.” Jory seemed quite certain of this. Frighteningly so. “I believe that a really strong case can be made that Jase needs serious long-term care in a residential treatment facility.”
“By that you mean a mental hospital?”
“Well, yeah. And with the financial resources of Astrid’s Castle behind me, I could have done that. Actually put him somewhere. Actually had a life of my own. He’ll never be able to function independently, Des. I swore to my dad on his deathbed that I’d take care of him, and I have. I’ve kept my word. I’ve been a good daughter and a good sister. But, God, when is it my turn? When do I get to take care of me?” She sat there in bitter, angry silence for a moment. “You have no idea what it’s like being stuck with Jase. No idea just how deeply and intensely I hate him. How much I wish he’d never been born. How much I wish-”
A sudden flurry of sound interrupted her.
It was the sound of Mitch getting shoved through the doorway, looking ashen with fright.
Behind him, Jase stood there with a crazed expression on his face and a thirty-eight pointed at the small of Mitch’s back. “You told me you loved me!” he sobbed at his sister, utterly freaked out. “No one else, just me”
“I do love you, sweetie,” Jory gulped, her eyes bugging with panic.
“You’d better put down that gun, Jase,” Des told him quietly, her own weapon still trained on Jory under the table. She did not want to show it to Jase. It might set him off. She did swing it ever so slowly over in his direction. Only, there was a wooden kitchen chair in between them. She had no clear shot at him. Not where he was standing. “Put it down right now. You don’t want to make a bad situation any worse, do you?”
“You lied to me!” he wailed at Jory, ignoring Des completely. “When we were parked together at the station, you said we’d have everything we ever wanted. That it was all for us. And you never meant any of it.”
“I did, too,” Jory swore. “Honest, I did.”
“You hate me! You want to have me locked up! I just heard you.”
“Sweetie, that’s just a story I made up,” Jory said soothingly. “It’s not the real truth, I swear to you.”
“Put down that gun, Jase,” Des repeated, wondering if she’d ever be able to unravel the real truth. Whose idea it was to bump off Norma. What Les had promised Jory for her help. What she had promised him in return. With Les gone, there was no way to know. “Where did he find that thing, anyhow?” she asked Mitch, her voice low and calm.
“Behind the bar in the taproom,” Mitch answered tightly.
“Is everyone okay in there?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Mitch replied, struggling to keep his own voice steady. “No one’s been hurt. Nothing bad has happened. It’s not too late to just put the gun down, Jase. We can sit right here and talk, the four of us. We’re all friends here.”
Jase didn’t respond, didn’t budge. Just stood right where he was, gun in hand, his eyes bulging with rage and hurt and confusion.
Des couldn’t blame him. The only thing he’d been able to count on his whole life was Jory’s love. Now he didn’t have that. Didn’t have anything. “Mitch is right, Jase,” she said. “Listen to Mitch. You trust him, don’t you? Why don’t you sit down with us, and we’ll talk this out.”
“Please sit, sweetie.” Jory managed a coaxing smile, her eyes shining at Jase. “It’s going to be okay. You don’t have to worry. You know I love you. Everything I do is for us. All for us.”
Jase considered Jory’s plea carefully. For a brief instant, Des thought that he was giving in to her. The gun drooped slightly in his hand, and some of the coiled tension eased out of his shoulders. Until, that is, whatever it was that held Jase Hearn together suddenly snapped deep down inside of him, like a rubber band that has been stretched too tight. And he mouthed these words: “There’s no us.”
Before he whirled and shot his sister full in the face.
Jory made a single, awful choking noise as she pitched over backward from the table, a gaping hole where her left eye had just been.
Right away, Des was up on her feet, squeezing off a round of her own at Jase. But she was a split second too late. He’d already gotten off another shot-this one at her. She took it in the forearm of her gun hand, sending her own shot harmlessly into the wall. Her right hand went numb instantly, the SIG dropping to the floor with a thunk.
Now Jase was dashing out the kitchen door into the courtyard, still clutching his thirty-eight.
And Mitch was diving to the floor for her SIG and starting out the door after him.
Des cried out, “No, Mitch! Let him go!” Wondering what on earth that sweet, chubby fool could possibly be thinking.
But she was too late. Mitch was already gone.
CHAPTER 17
Here is what Mitch was asking himself as he went rushing out the kitchen door after Jase, SIG-Sauer in hand and Des yelling after him to stop:
What in the hell am I doing?
He was a card-carrying creature of the darkened screening room, a wielder of a flashlight pen, a critic-not some gun-toting lawman. So why was he doing this? Why was he chasing Jase Hearn across the castle courtyard, tramping his way through deep snow and ice, panting for breath, his chest heaving?
Because there is no one else.
Because he’d just seen Jase murder his own sister and shoot Des’s arm to pieces. Because Jase would get away if he didn’t go after him. Because he knew this guy and, strangely enough, liked this guy. And because, well, it wasn’t coming from his head, this impulse to chase after him. It came from Mitch’s hands, which had picked up the gun from the floor without hesitation. It came from his feet, which just kept moving forward as he slip-slided and crashed his way through the snow, the sun breaking out overhead. It came from being cooped up in that cold, dark castle since last night, witnessing one person after another get strangled, hatcheted, shot. And he’d just plain had enough.
So he ran, Des’s gun feeling heavy and unfamiliar in his hand.
Jase was sprinting like mad out ahead of him, stumbling, falling, getting back up. He could definitely hear Mitch’s footsteps behind him. He kept looking over his shoulder at him, eyes wild with fear. And as Jase neared the drawbridge over the frozen moat, he spun around and opened fire.
Mitch immediately pancaked himself to the snow as two shots whizzed right over him. He did not return fire. There was no point. No way he could hit Jase Hearn from this distance. Besides, he didn’t want to shoot him.