I’m dying.
She reached behind her, and with her last bit of strength she pulled the blade free.
She eyed Megan, her breaths coming in quick gasps.
“You’re dead,” taunted Megan.
“So are you, bitch,” snarled Michelle, blood pooling in her mouth and garbling her words.
She threw the knife.
It missed badly and hit the wall, falling harmlessly to the floor.
As Michelle sat there helplessly on her haunches, her life rapidly draining away, Megan lined up the kill shot: an elbow strike to the back of Michelle’s neck that would shatter her medulla and instantly end her life.
She leaped to deliver this final shot.
And Edgar Roy pivoted.
In his one-of-a-kind brain it was suddenly thirty years ago and Edgar Roy, then only six years old and the object of his father’s sexual assault, pivoted. And struck. The man fell. The eyes turned glassy. The breathing ceased. The man died. Right there in the farmhouse kitchen.
Then, like an old black-and-white TV suddenly transformed to an HD flatscreen, the old images vanished and Roy was squarely returned to the present.
The six-foot-eight Edgar Roy slammed the kitchen knife he’d snatched off the floor into Megan Riley’s torso with such force that the petite woman was lifted a foot off the floor. A moment later the staggering velocity of Roy’s thrust catapulted Megan Riley violently against the wall. She struck it hard and slid down to the floor. She looked dumbly at the knife buried to the hilt in her heaving chest; the other end had cut her heart nearly in two. She attempted to pull it free. Her hands were around it. They gave one tug and then stopped. The fingers slipped off the handle. Her arms fell to her sides. Her head leaned against her shoulder. She gave one last shuddering breath.
And then she died.
Edgar Roy stood there for a few moments.
I pivoted. My sister did not pivot. I buried the knife into my father. My sister did not. I pivoted. I killed the beast. I killed my father.
His long-lost memory, his only such one, was finally back with him.
He rushed to Michelle’s side and checked her pulse.
He couldn’t find one.
The door burst open.
He turned to see Sean and his sister standing there.
“Please, help her,” cried out Roy.
Sean raced forward. They had phoned for an ambulance on the way over, just in case.
It had been a good call.
The EMTs flooded into the room seconds later and started feverishly working on Michelle. It did not look good. Too many pints of her blood already lay spilled on the floor. They rushed her out on a stretcher, and Sean climbed into the ambulance right before the doors clunked shut.
The FBI agents started assessing what had happened inside the safe house that had turned out to be anything but.
Roy sat slumped against one wall. His sister knelt down next to him. As an agent came up to them she said, “Give us a minute, will you?”
The Fed nodded and backed off.
Roy glanced at the bloodied Riley, who sat dead against the other wall, the knife still sticking out of her. She looked like a large, ghoulish doll on display.
“I killed her,” he told his sister.
“I know.”
“She was trying to kill Michelle.”
“I know that too, Eddie. You saved her life. You did the right thing.”
He shook his head stubbornly. “We don’t know that. She might still die.”
“She might. But you gave her a chance.”
He looked down, seemed as though he might be sick.
He looked up at her again. “I killed Dad.”
She sat down beside him, took his head, and leaned it against her chest.
He said, “All this time I couldn’t remember. I… I just thought you had done it. You’ve… always protected me.”
“That time, Eddie, you defended yourself. And you saved me. You did the right thing. You did nothing wrong. Do you understand that?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Eddie, do you understand that? You did nothing wrong.” She said this last part with urgency.
“I understand.” He swallowed a sob. “They took away my St. Michael’s medal.”
“I know. I can get you another one.”
He glanced over at dead Megan. “I don’t think I need it. Not anymore.”
“I don’t think you do, either.”
He started to cry and his sister held him.
The melancholy sounds of the ambulance carrying the horribly injured Michelle Maxwell dwindled away until there was only silence.
CHAPTER 88
THE HOSPITAL ROOM was colder than any morgue Sean had been in. It was dark, too. Most of the lights came from little machines that were making weird noises, signaling life or heralding approaching death.
He sat hunched over in the chair, his hands clasping hers, his forehead resting on the bed rail.
Michelle Maxwell was covered by a web of IV lines filled with things Sean had never heard of flowing into her body and carrying other things away.
She had died three times. Once in the ambulance. Once on the operating table. And once right here in this bed. She’d actually flatlined while he was holding her hand. The Code Blue was sent out and the crash team hurtled in and did their magic, pulling her back from the grave while Sean had watched helplessly from the doorway.
The doctor told Sean, “That knife did a lot of damage. She almost bled out. But she’s young and in incredible physical shape, otherwise she never would have made it this far.”
“Will that be enough?” he’d asked. “To bring her all the way back?”
“We can only hope,” the surgeon had said. “But frankly one more episode like that and we’ll be hard-pressed to hold her.”
And with that comment most of Sean’s hope had evaporated.
He lifted his head when he heard them come in.
Kelly Paul was with her brother.
Edgar Roy’s face still carried the wounds from his encounter with Megan Riley, or whatever her real name was. She was dead, that was all Sean cared about.
Paul drew close and stared at Michelle before touching Sean on the shoulder. “I’m sorry. It should never have happened.”
“Things happen,” said Sean in a low voice. “They happen all the time. Shitty things, to people trying to do the right thing.” He eyed her brother. “And she wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. I owe you everything, Edgar, I really do.”
“I owe the same to you, Mr. King,” Roy said quietly.
Paul asked, “How is she doing?”
“Day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. They can’t tell me if she’ll ever wake up. But I’ll be here when she does.”
He straightened and turned to look at her. “Quantrell and Foster?”
“Taking turns selling each other out. Even if the prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence before, they do now.”
“Where’d they get the six bodies to plant in the barn?”
“From all over. People they knew were totally off the grid.”
Paul leaned forward and took Sean’s hand. “It was my mission to bring these people down, not hers. I accomplished the mission but I failed her. I failed both of you.”
“I came here to basically say the same thing.”
They all turned to find James Harkes in the doorway. He wore his black suit, white shirt, and black tie. His body was rigid, his features just as tight as his body. He moved forward to join them. He looked down at Michelle and then quickly glanced away.