The bedroom ceiling spun above Travis’s head, and the motion was making him sick. He’d never been good on carnival rides or merry-go-rounds. He had a weak stomach, his mother always said.
He was mortally wounded, he knew. Leaving Annie alone had been a stupid move, one he was going to pay for with his life. He’d forgotten all about the gun in the nightstand, and even if he hadn’t, he would have sworn she was still mostly unconscious. Certainly not lively enough to get herself loose, much less get on her feet.
He felt so cold, and he couldn’t move his arms or his legs. Breathing was growing harder with every heartbeat, and there was blood in his mouth. It tasted bitter, and he wondered if all the murders he had committed over the years were responsible. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten to where he was now, lying in a widening pool of his own blood, shot by one of his victims.
He hadn’t started out a killer, he told himself. He hadn’t always been evil. But his mother had left when he was a teenager and Margie soon thereafter. They’d both laughed as they’d walked out of his life, and he couldn’t let them go unpunished. He could hardly have killed his own mother, and he hadn’t been able to find Margie. All the women he’d raped and the ones he’d killed, they were just substitutes.
“So tired,” he mumbled. “I’m so tired.”
As he faded toward unconsciousness, movement at the corner of his eye drew his gaze. When he turned his head, he saw the shimmering image of Kiely Turner. She walked toward him and knelt at his shoulder with a faint smile.
“Did you really think you’d get away with hurting Chase like that twice? And do you really think I’m going to let you die now? Where I am, we get one chance to reach out and touch people in the living world. I’m using mine to save you. I’m so glad I waited. You won’t be dying today.” She reached toward his chest, and he felt a searing-hot pain, like a poker jammed inside his heart. “No, Travis Tyler, you are hereby sentenced to a long, painful, pitiful life. It’s the least I can do for the part I played in the hurt we dealt Chase ten years ago.”
The pain was more than he could bear, but he couldn’t move, physically or mentally, to get away from it. “P-please. It hurts so much.”
Kiely’s smile widened, and the irony of his pleas wasn’t lost on him.
“Oh, honey,” she said before she faded away, leaving the pain behind, “your sorrow is only beginning.”