“Yeah, well… As the proverb goes, ‘An easy shepherd makes the wolf void wool.’” Caron stands and turns away, walking to the wall where the chair lays overturned. He grips the handle of the sledgehammer and swings it in an arc, hitting the camera. It explodes in shards of plastic and glass. Chips of brick rain down on the floor.

Caron turns to me and smiles, his dimple both sweet and menacing. My heart aches for how much he reminds me of his brother in some angles of the moonlight. His light brown hair looks darker. His features become more intense, like Eli’s. I blink my painful imaginings away, focusing on the real man before me as he tilts his head. “What’s with the bound wrists?” he asks.

“I like a bit of bondage.”

Caron laughs. He steps closer, the hammer thudding next to his boot like a heavy cane. I shift my head, hissing with discomfort as I watch him draw near.

“I’m not trying to kill you,” I say. He laughs again.

“Clearly. You’re on the floor.” Caron swings the hammer like a pendulum, just a gentle tap that hits my knee, but the reflex forces my leg to jerk and sends pain shooting up to my hip. I scream, tears gathering in my eyes. “I don’t think you’ll be doing much of anything.”

“I was trying to bring you back,” I say. I swallow the bile that climbs my throat. I can’t seem to get enough air in my breath as it grows shallow. “The FBI is coming for you. I wanted to bring you back for him.”

Caron taps my knee again with another swing. A desperate, aching sound erupts from my chest when my leg moves. The room swirls like I’m swimming in a raging sea.

“I don’t want to go back to some shitty, unimportant life with parents who always belittled my views and forced their religious manipulations on me, or a brother who never took my side. What would make you think I would want to reconnect with him? Eli never stood with me when I struggled with our parents or battled the demons that piled up around me. He barely even listened. He just let me slip away. Where was Eli when I hit rock bottom, hmm? Nowhere.”

“He was a child.”

“So was I,” he says with another hit. I bite my split lip to keep from begging him to stop. “I was a child when they kicked me out of the house. I was a child when I overdosed in a friend’s decrepit apartment that smelled like piss and mold. I was a child when I rose above my circumstances, alone. I built my empire from nothing. And now I help people. I help so many people. And anyone who thinks otherwise is just holding me back from doing good in the world. Just like my family held me back. Just like they suffocated my vision of what a meaningful life could be.”

Caron knocks my knee again, harder this time. I scream as my leg grates against the one beneath it. The wet heat of blood soaks through my pants. Black spots creep through my vision and I know I can’t stay awake much longer. There’s no air in this wide-open room. I can’t claim any of it for my own.

“You’re doing so much…good in the world now…torturing me…aren’t you…” I whisper through panting breaths as he leans closer.

“Nothing less than what you deserve, serial killer.” Another knock, another scream. Tears crest my lashes and stream across my face. Caron sighs, his hands tightening around the handle of the hammer as he stands. “But you’re right. Best to get this over with.”

That’s when I hear it. The first siren. And then the distant, beating thrum of a helicopter.

“Do it…” I say. “You’ll only…rot in jail…forever…”

A flash of panicked rage ignites in Caron’s eyes. He strides a few steps toward the window, looking toward the moon as the sound of the helicopter grows louder. He and I both know there’s no running now. Not for either of us.

“All I have to do is tell them you’re a killer,” Caron says as he stalks toward me. “You murdered Nick and Tristan and Cynthia and God knows who else. You lured me to your building and I just managed to subdue you.”

I smile, my eyes full of malice. “Not…my building… It’s…yours…” I whisper, success warming the erratic beats of my heart as I jostle my bound wrists in his direction. “And your story…isn’t super…believable…all things…considered.”

Caron scowls down at me, his face lit with fury, his movements jerky and distressed. I just need to push a little harder, stay awake a little longer. “If I go down, I’m bringing you with me,” he grits out. “You’ll never walk free again.”

I know.

If he survives, he’ll ensure I go to prison too. He’ll pin those deaths and more on me. But if he kills me, he’ll never get out. His whole empire will crumble away.

He just needs to believe in the possibility he could fail.

“I’ve…made sure…that they’ll think…it’s you. Where…do you think…the bodies are? I’ll give you…a hint. They’re not at…my house.”

I let out a triumphant laugh as Caron’s furious, feral growl floods the empty space. It echoes up the walls. The pigeons flap above us and my scream follows their hidden wings as Caron hits my leg hard with the hammer.

And then I see the moment. The decision in his eyes.

Time slows down. Caron’s murderous glare is pinned to me like it’s hooked in my skin. His shoulders roll. He sweeps the sledgehammer behind him in an arc. I look away to the window and the silver moonlight, the blades of the helicopter rattling the weathered panes of glass. Then I close my eyes and think of my aviary, of the record player beneath the bows of the cherry tree, birds singing in the cover of the scented blooms.

I love you, Bria Brooks. 

A shot pierces the cool air and the world all falls away.

OceanofPDF.com

35

OceanofPDF.com

ELI

Sometimes when I close my eyes and remember the first time I saw Bria Brooks, I think of everything I would have done differently. I would have read her thesis proposal in advance, for one. But if I’d gotten up to buy her lunch in Deja Brew, what would have happened next? Maybe she would have found some clever way to shut me down with a cutting remark and a dark smile. Maybe she would have accepted and come to sit at my table. Maybe I would have broken every rule from the start, and things would be different. Everything would be different.

Or maybe we’d still end up right here.

Me, powerless to do anything but watch and wait. Bria, still and silent, bruised and broken. A Grade 2 concussion. Five hours of surgery, plates and screws drilled into her broken bones. Units of blood. Infection. Antibiotics. Tetanus prophylaxis. CT scans, IV bag changes, morphine.

Samuel must be wheeling down the hallway somewhere, pressuring doctors to re-review Bria’s CT results or check for blood clots or give her more pain relief, because a harried nurse enters the room early to administer Bria’s next dose of morphine and check her vitals.

When the nurse leaves and it’s just me and Bria again, I take her hand. I close my eyes. Every time I do, I hear her scream. It’s a terrifying, desperate sound of distress. A fresh burst of panic rises in my chest. You’re too late, I remember thinking so clearly.

I hear their voices, Bria’s and my brother’s, as I rush to follow the glow sticks on the floor. Bria laughs. A furious growl climbs the walls. She screams again as I rush up the stairs. And then it’s that horrible moment, suspended in time.

My brother, with such rage and malice etched in his skin, swinging a sledgehammer, ready to bring it down on Bria’s face as she lies unmoving on the dust and debris.

I don’t hesitate. I just shoot.

Gabe crumples. He’s already dead when he hits the floor.

I rush toward them. Blood flows from a wound in Gabe’s temple. His eyes are open but unseeing. Bria is unconscious, her breathing shallow. Her beautiful face is serene. It seems impossible after the sound of those screams filling the desolate darkness.