Ryall gave it the derision it deserved. ‘What, are you going to shoot me? You?’ One eyebrow raised, his mouth curled into a smile. ‘Anyway, that thing doesn’t even work.’
She hesitated only for a second; she was sure it was a bluff. ‘Yes it does. I tried it out only a few months back,’ she lied. And as she saw his face drop, she knew that it did work. She decided to pile it on. ‘I’m getting quite good with it now.’
Now he looked seriously worried, and raised his hands a bit. She relished the moment, the unfamiliar sense of power over him making her slightly giddy. She should have tried this earlier. She’d hardly ever been able to take control over her own life, let alone anyone else’s.
Ryall met her gaze stonily and shifted a foot back towards Lorena before Nicola waggled the gun at him. ‘I said don’t move.’ A frozen moment between them, then: ‘The phone ringing just then. It was about Mikaya. She tried to take her own life.’
‘What?’ His eyebrows knitted. ‘Is she okay?’
‘She is now.’ Heavy sigh that quickly turned to a sneer. ‘As if you should care. You’re the cause of it.’ She shook her head, her hand tensing on the gun. ‘I let you get away with it with Mikaya for all those years. But not now with Lorena. Not any longer.’
His eyes fixed back on the gun. He leered nervously. ‘You don’t have the guts.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it.’ She moved a step closer.
Ryall could still pick up the tremor in her voice. He was sure that when it came to the crunch, she’d bottle out; but he wasn’t sure enough to take the risk. He desperately needed a distraction. His eyes darted uncertainly, sweat beads raising on his forehead. The bear!
He forced a strained smile. ‘Anyhow, you shoot me — they’ll get it all on film. They’ll know it wasn’t self-defence.’ He pointed. ‘They’ve got a camera in the bear.’
‘What?’ Nicola glanced towards it incredulously. Camera in the bear? She was the one meant to be on pills and alcohol. ‘Can’t you think of a better bluff than that.’ But as soon as she said it, she realized it was almost too ridiculous to be a bluff.
‘No, no — really. What do you think I was doing when you walked in? I was going to rip the bear apart and smash the camera.’
He was insistent, sounded convincing, and Nicola glanced towards Lorena for confirmation. Lorena just numbly nodded, and looking at her wide-eyed and fearful at this drama being played out, Nicola suddenly had something else to give her pause for thought. As much as he might be a monster, Lorena seeing her stepfather shot in front of her was quite another thing.
‘…So why don’t I just finish the job now and destroy the camera,’ he said. ‘Or better still, since you’re such a good shot — why don’t you shoot it out.’
Nicola looked between him and the bear. He was leering challengingly, as if this was some kind of test between them. If she backed down, once again he’d have the edge.
‘Go on,’ he taunted. ‘You’re the crack shot after all.’
She levelled the gun at the bear; but as the shaking of her gun hand became more pronounced, almost out of control, the game was all but over. He could see through the bluff in that second, see her for the sham she was; the pathetic, quivering wreck she’d become. Fifteen seconds of control in fifteen years: in the end all he’d allowed her.
His leer became wider. ‘You haven’t even got the stomach to shoot a toy bear, let alone me.’
She gritted her teeth hard, struggling to control her trembling, determined to prove him wrong.
As Ryall saw her focus her aim and tense to squeeze the trigger, he made his move, lunging towards Lorena.
The gun swung sharply around, the shot zipping above him and smashing through the window behind. He’d jumped down low, most of his body shielded by the bed as he scrambled on the floor and grappled his arms around Lorena from behind.
As he raised again, he had her pinned tight against him: a complete body shield. His eyes jousted with Nicola’s for a second, as if pressing home who was in control now.
‘Move away from the door or I’ll snap her neck.’ He pulled his forearm tighter around Lorena’s throat to demonstrate.
At the other end of the camera, Bell was on a knife’s edge, his heart like a jackhammer as he watched events unfold. As the gun had pointed at the camera, he’d been screaming, ‘No, no! It’s a trick, a trick! If you’re going to shoot anything, shoot him!’ Now he was muttering under his breath. ‘Be careful… be careful. Just hold him off — don’t try anything. The cavalry will be there any minute.’
Bell watched Nicola hesitate for a second, then finally move aside a couple of feet as Ryall edged towards her and backed half a step at a time towards the door with Lorena gripped tight to him. As Nicola followed, they were gone from camera vision; all Bell was left with was the sound.
Nicola had moved aside almost mechanically. Afraid that he might harm Lorena, or just following his command the way she’d become programmed to all these years? Only as he edged towards the top of the stairs did the thought hit her.
‘Where are you going with her?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll decide that once I’m in the car.’ Ryall’s eyes shifted nervously downstairs. They’d know about the hypnosis from the tape, but had he touched Lorena anywhere he shouldn’t? He’d got so used to touching Lorena where he liked when she was under that he just couldn’t recall. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘Here? Who?’ She squinted as if she was having trouble focusing.
He nodded towards Lorena’s bedroom. ‘The bear. They’ve been taping.’ Tired tone: tedium of the long years of having to explain every last detail to cut through her drink and pills stupor.
For Nicola, everything suddenly gelled in that instant. All she had to do was hold him up a couple of minutes. She raised the gun more confidently. ‘Then you’re not leaving.’
That condescending sneer again. ‘You hardly had the stomach to shoot the bear… and both you and I know that you’re not a good enough shot to get me without also hitting Lorena.’ His eyes focused on her gun hand, which started to shake more under his stare.
She found his confidence infuriating: a few words and she felt her own confidence blow to the wind like dandelion seeds. Exactly why he’d got away with everything for so long with Mikaya, and now Lorena. She’d let them down; and now even with a gun in her hand there was nothing she could do to stop him.
She put her other arm up, trying to steady the gun with both hands. But still it shook and wavered wildly.
‘You’re pathetic!’ Ryall grinned at the spectacle. ‘Go back and practice shooting at the bear — then when you’re ready in a couple of years, let me know.’
She tried to face him off a moment longer, but finally crumbled, lowering the gun. He was right: she was pathetic. A hopeless wreck of a woman on the edge. She’d been crazy to even think she had the strength to -
But as he turned to the stairs with a last indignant ‘Pathetic’ and she caught the pleading look in Lorena’s eyes — a fresh spark suddenly rose. A red raw anger that made her eyes sting. Anger and disgust at the shell of a woman she’d become, at what he’d made her. She’d done nothing to help Mikaya — but she couldn’t let him go off now with Lorena! If she didn’t do something now, she never would: one last chance of redemption! And in that moment, there was a window of opportunity: he turned slightly to take the first step on the stairs, his guard down fleetingly as he thought she’d given up the ghost.
She raised the gun and fired in the same motion, before his eyes could settle on her and steal her confidence away again.
But at the last second he’d half-turned towards her — perhaps catching the gun raising in the corner of his eye — and as she saw the splay of red on his side and at the same time on Lorena’s night-dress, it looked like she’d caught Lorena as well.