Andy felt the tip of her finger slip through the hole in her skin.
She had been shot.
She leaned her head back against the wall. She sucked in air through her teeth and tried not to pass out.
Edwin Van Wees was on the floor of his office. Broken glass was scattered around his body. Pieces of paper. Blood. The MacBook that Andy had used to find out about her mother.
Laura.
Andy reached out, her fingers brushing the edge of the burner phone. The screen was cracked. She closed her eyes, concentrated on listening. Was that her mother’s voice? Was she still on the phone?
A woman’s scream came from the other side of the house.
Andy’s heart stopped.
The second scream was louder, abruptly cut off by a loud smack.
Andy clamped her jaw shut so she would not scream, too.
Clara.
Andy couldn’t stay frozen this time. She had to do something. Her legs shook as she tried to push herself up against the wall. The pain almost ripped her open. She had to hunch over to stop the cramping. Blood dribbled from the bullet hole in her side. Andy’s legs shook as she tried to move forward. This was her fault. All of it. Laura had warned her to be careful and still, Andy had led them here.
They.
To kill Edwin. To kill Clara.
Andy’s shoulder slid along the wall as she tried to find Clara, to give herself up, to stop this awful mess she had made. Her feet got caught up on the rug. Pain sliced into her side. Her head bumped against the photographs that lined the hallway. She had to stop to catch her breath. Her eyes kept going in and out of focus. She stared at the pictures on the wall. Different frames, different poses, some color, some black and white. Clara and Edwin with two women around Andy’s age. A few snapshots of the women when they were younger, in high school, in kindergarten, and then—
Toddler Andy in the snow.
Andy felt numb as she stared at the image of her younger self.
Was it Edwin’s hand she had been holding? The adjacent photo showed baby Andy sitting in Clara and Edwin’s lap. Laura had cut Andy out of their lives and superimposed her onto the stock photo of the fake Randall grandparents.
“Nice, right?”
Andy turned her head. She had been expecting to find Mike, but it was a woman’s voice. A woman she knew all too well.
Paula Kunde stood at the end of the hallway.
She pointed a familiar-looking revolver at Andy. “Thanks for leaving this for me in your car. Did you rub off the serial number, or was that Mommy?”
Andy didn’t answer. She couldn’t catch her breath.
“You’re hyperventilating,” Paula said. “Pick up the phone.”
Andy turned her head. The burner phone was on the floor behind her. In the stillness, she could hear her mother wailing.
“Jesus.” Paula stomped down the hall, scooped up the phone and held it to her ear. “Shut up, Dumb Bitch.”
Laura didn’t shut up. Her tinny voice was vibrating with rage.
Paula turned on the speakerphone.
“. . . touch a fucking hair on her—”
“She’s dying.” Paula smiled at Laura’s abrupt silence. She held the phone under Andy’s chin. “Tell her, sweetheart.”
Andy clutched her hand to her side. She could feel the blood seeping out of her.
“Andrea?” Laura said. “Please, talk to—”
“Mom . . .”
“Oh, my darling,” Laura cried. “Are you okay?”
Andy broke down, a strangled cry coming from deep inside her body. “Mom—”
“What happened? Please—oh, God, please tell me you’re okay!”
“I—” Andy didn’t know if she could get the words out. “I was shot. She shot me in the—”
“That’s enough.” Paula raised the gun and Andy went silent. She told Laura, “You know what I want, Dumb Bitch.”
“Edwin—”
“Is dead.” Paula raised her eyebrows at Andy, as if this was a game.
“You stupid fucking idiot,” Laura hissed. “He’s the only one who knows—”
“Shut up with your bullshit,” Paula said. “You know where it is. How much time do you need?”
“I can—” Laura stopped. “Two days.”
“Sure, no problem.” Paula grinned at Andy. “Maybe your kid will go into shock before she bleeds out.”
“You fucking cunt.”
Andy was rattled by the hateful words. She had never heard her mother like this.
Laura said, “I will slice open your fucking throat if you hurt my daughter. Do you understand me?”
“You dumb bitch,” Paula said. “I’m hurting her right now.”
Andy saw a flash.
Everything went black.
Andy was aware that something was wrong even before she opened her eyes. There was not a moment where it all came back to her, because she had never for a moment forgotten what had happened.
She had been shot. She was inside the trunk of a car. Her hands and feet were bound by some configuration of handcuffs. A towel was duct-taped around her waist to stanch the bleeding. The gag in her mouth had a rubber ball that made it hard for her to breathe because her nose was filled with blood from being pistol-whipped into unconsciousness.
As with everything else, Andy could recall the blows from the revolver. She hadn’t really blacked out. She had felt more as if she’d been caught between the edge of sleep and wakefulness. When Andy was in art school, she had craved that stasis because it was where she found her best ideas. Her mind seemingly blank but still working through the various shades of black and white she would elicit from her pencil.
Did she have a concussion?
She should’ve been panicked, but the panic had gurgled back down like water circling a drain. An hour ago? Two hours? Now, her only overriding feeling was intense discomfort. Her lip was split. Her cheek felt bruised. Her eye was swollen. Her hands were numb. Her wrists had fallen asleep. If she lay the right way, if she kept her spine bent, if her breathing remained shallow, the burning in her side was manageable.
The guilt was another matter.
In her head, Andy kept playing back what happened inside the farmhouse, trying to identify the point at which everything had gone wrong. Edwin had told her to leave. Could Andy have left before the front of his shirt was ripped open by the bullets riddling his back?
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Click-click-click-click.
The revolver’s cylinder spinning.
Andy tried to analyze Clara’s two different screams, the startled quality of the first one, the smack that had cut off the second one. Not a hand slapping or a fist punching. Paula had struck Andy with the revolver. Had Clara suffered a similar fate? Had she awoken dazed in her own kitchen, walked down the hallway and found Edwin lying dead?
Or had she never opened her eyes again?
Andy cried out as the car hit a bump in the road.
Paula slowed for a turn. Andy felt the change in speed, the pull of gravity. The glow of the brake lights filled the darkness. Andy saw the stub of the emergency trunk release that Paula had cut off so that Andy could not escape.
They were in a rental car with Texas plates. Andy had seen as much when she’d been shoved into the trunk. Paula couldn’t fly with the gun. She must have driven from Austin, the same as Andy, but Andy had been checking sporadically for Mike. Which meant that Paula had known exactly where Andy would eventually end up. She had played right into the bitch’s hands.
Andy tasted bile in her throat.
Why hadn’t she listened to her mother?
The car slowed again, but this time came to a full stop.
Paula had stopped once before. Twenty minutes ago? Thirty? Andy wasn’t sure. She had tried to keep count, but her eyes kept closing and she’d end up having to jerk herself awake and start all over again.
Was she dying?
Her brain felt weirdly indifferent to everything that was happening. She was terrified, but her heart was not pounding, her hands were not sweating. She was hurting, but she wasn’t hyperventilating or crying or begging for it to stop.
Was she in shock?
Andy heard the clicking of a turn signal.
The car wheels bumped onto a gravel road.
She tried not to remember all the horror movies that started with a car driving down a gravel road to a deserted campsite or an abandoned shack.
“No.” She said the word aloud into the darkness of the trunk. She would not let her panic ramp up again, because it would only make her blind to any opportunities of escape. Andy was being held hostage. Laura had something that Paula wanted. Paula would not kill Andy until she got that thing.
Right?
The brakes whined as the car stopped again. This time, the engine turned off. The driver side door opened, then closed.
Andy waited for the trunk to open. She had gone through all kinds of scenarios in her head of what she was going to do when she saw Paula again, primary among them to raise her feet and kick the bitch in the face. The problem was, you needed stomach muscles to raise your feet, and Andy could barely breathe without feeling like a blow torch was blazing open her side.
She let her head rest on the floor of the trunk. She listened for sounds. All she could hear was the engine block cooling.
Click-click-click-click.
Like the cylinder spinning in the gun, but slower.
Andy started counting to give herself something to do. Being stuck in the Reliant, then Mike’s truck, for so many hours had made her the type of person who said things out loud just to break the monotony.
“One,” she mumbled. “Two . . . three . . .”
She was at nine hundred and eight-five when the trunk finally opened.
Andy blinked. It was dark outside, no moon in the sky. The only light came from the stairwell across from the open trunk. She had no idea where they were, except for another shitty motel in another shitty town.
“Look at me.” Paula jammed the revolver underneath Andy’s chin. “Don’t fuck with me or I’ll shoot you again. All right?”
Andy nodded.
Paula tucked the gun into the waist of her jeans. She worked the keys into the handcuffs. Andy groaned with relief when her arms and legs were finally released. She clawed at the ball gag. The pink leather straps snapped in the back. It looked like something from a 50 Shades of Grey catalog.
Paula had the revolver out again. She glanced around the parking lot. “Get out and keep your mouth shut.”
Andy tried to move, but the wound and her long confinement made it impossible.
“Christ.” Paula jerked Andy up by her arm.
Andy could only roll, falling against the bumper and stumbling to the ground. There was so much pain in her body that she could not locate one source. Blood dribbled from her mouth. She had bitten her own tongue. Her feet were beset by pins and needles as the circulation returned.
“Stand up.” Paula grabbed Andy’s arm and pulled her to her feet.
Andy howled, bending over at the waist to stop the spasms.
“Stop whining,” Paula said. “Put this on.”
Andy recognized the white polo button-down from the blue Samsonite suitcase. Part of Laura’s go-bag from the Carrollton storage unit.
“Hurry.” Paula looked around the parking lot again as she helped Andy into the shirt. “If you’re thinking about screaming, don’t. I can’t shoot you, but I can shoot anybody who tries to help you.”
Andy started on the buttons. “What did you do to Clara?”
“Your second mommy?” She chuckled at Andy’s expression. “She raised you for almost two years, her and Edwin. Did you know that?”
Andy was desperate not to give her a reaction. She kept her head down, watched her fingers work the buttons.
Had Edwin looked at her like her father because he was her father?
Paula said, “They wanted to keep you, but Jane took you for herself because that’s the kind of selfish bitch she is.” Paula was watching Andy carefully. “Seems like you’re not surprised to hear that your mother’s real name is Jane.”
“Why did you kill Edwin?”
“Jesus, kid.” She grabbed some handcuffs from the trunk. “Did you go through your entire life with a fish hook in your mouth?”
Andy mumbled, “Evidently.”
Paula slammed the trunk shut. She picked up two plastic bags in one hand. The gun went into the waist of her jeans, but she kept her hand on the grip. “Move.”
“Is Edwin—” Andy tried to think of a clever way of tricking her into admitting the truth, but her brain was incapable of any acrobatics. “Is he my father?”
“If he was your father, I would’ve already shot you in the chest and shit in the hole.” She waved for Andy to get moving. “Up the stairs.”
Andy found walking relatively easy, but climbing the stairs almost cut her in two. She kept her hand on her side, but there was no way to stop the feeling of a knife twisting her flesh. Each time she lifted her foot, she wanted to scream. Screaming would probably bring people out of their rooms, then Paula would shoot them, then Andy would have more than Edwin Van Wees and Clara Bellamy’s deaths on her conscience.
“Left,” Paula said.
Andy walked down a long, dark hallway. Shadows danced in front of her eyes. The nausea had returned. The dull pain had become sharp again. She had to put her hand to the wall so she would not trip or fall over. Why was she going along with everything like a lemming? Why didn’t she scream in the parking lot? People didn’t run out to help anymore. They would call the police, and then the police would—
“Here.” Paula waved the keycard to open the door.
Andy entered the room ahead of her. The lights were already on. Two queen-sized beds, a television, a desk, small bistro table with two matching chairs. The bathroom was by the door. The curtains were closed on the window that probably looked out onto the parking lot.
Paula dropped the plastic grocery bags onto the table. Bottles of water. Fruit. Potato chips.
Andy sniffed. Blood rolled down her throat. She felt like the entire left side of her face was filled with hot water.
“All right.” Paula’s hand rested on the butt of the gun. “Go ahead and holler if you want. This entire wing is empty, and anyway, this ain’t the kind of hotel where people worry if they hear a gal begging for help.”
Andy stared all of her hate into the woman.
Paula grinned, feeding off the rage. “If you need to piss, do it now. I won’t offer again.”
Andy tried to close the bathroom door, but Paula stopped her. She watched Andy labor to sit on the toilet without using her stomach muscles. A yelp slipped from Andy’s lips as her ass hit the seat. She had to lean over her knees to keep the pain at bay. Normally, Andy’s bladder was shy, but after so long in the car, she had no problem going.
Standing was another matter. Her knees started to straighten and then she was back on the toilet, groaning.
“Fucksakes.” Paula yanked up Andy by the armpit. She zipped and buttoned Andy’s jeans like she was three, then shoved her into the room. “Go sit down at the table.”
Andy kept her back bent as she navigated her way into the rickety chair. The side of her body lit up like a bolt of lightning.
Paula shoved the chair underneath the table. “You need to do what I say when I say it.”
“Fuck you.” The words slipped out before Andy could stop them.
“Fuck you, too.” Paula grabbed Andy’s left arm. She clamped a handcuff on her wrist, then jerked her hand under the table and attached the cuff to the metal base.
Andy pulled at the restraint. The table rattled. She pressed her forehead to the top.
Why hadn’t she gone to Idaho?
Paula said, “If your mother caught the first flight out, she won’t be here for at least another two hours.” She found an ibuprofen bottle in one of the bags. She used her teeth to rip off the safety seal. “How bad does it hurt?”
“Like I’ve been shot, you fucking psycho.”
“Fair enough.” Instead of being mad, Paula seemed delighted by Andy’s anger. She put four gelcaps on the table. She opened one of the bottles of water. “Barbecue or regular?”
Andy stared at her.
Paula held up two bags of potato chips. “You have to eat something or you’ll get a tummy ache from the pills.”
Andy didn’t know what to say but, “Barbecue.”
Paula opened the bag with help from her teeth. She unwrapped two sandwiches. “Mustard and mayo?”
Andy nodded, watching the madwoman who’d shot and kidnapped her use a plastic knife to spread mayonnaise and mustard onto the bread of her turkey sandwich.
Why was this happening?
“Eat at least half.” Paula slid over the sandwich and started adding mustard to her own. “I mean it, kid. Half. Then you can take the pills.”
Andy picked it up, but she had an idiotic flash of the sandwich squirting out of the hole in her side. And then she remembered, “You’re not supposed to eat before surgery.”
Paula stared at her.
“The bullet. I mean, if—when—my mom gets here, and—”
“They won’t operate. Easier to let the bullet stay inside. It’s infection you should be worried about. That shit’ll kill you.” Paula turned on the television. She channeled around until she found Animal Planet, then muted the sound.
Pitbulls and Parolees.
“This is a good episode.” Paula swiveled back around. She squirted mayonnaise onto her sandwich. “I wish they’d had this program at Danbury.”
Andy watched her use the plastic knife to evenly spread the mayo across the bread.
This should’ve felt strange, but it didn’t feel strange. Why would it? Andy had started the week by watching her mother kill a kid, then Andy had murdered a gun for hire, then she was on the run and kicking a thug in the balls and getting one, maybe two more people killed, so why wouldn’t it feel natural to be handcuffed to a table, watching parolees try to reform abused animals with a psycho ex-con college professor?
Paula pressed the sandwich back together. She tugged at the scarf around her neck, the same scarf she had been wearing two and a half days ago in Austin.
Andy said, “I thought you’d been suffocated.”
Paula took a large bite. She spoke with her mouth full. “I’m getting a cold. You gotta keep your neck warm to stop the coughing.”
Andy didn’t bother to correct the asinine health advice. A cold explained Paula’s raspy voice, but Andy said, “Your eye—”
“Your fucking mother.” Food dropped from Paula’s mouth, but she kept talking. “She whacked me in the head. They didn’t do shit for me in jail. The left one went white, I got an infection in the right one. Still sensitive to light, so that’s why I wear the sunglasses. Thanks to your mom, that’s been my look for thirty-two years.”
Interesting math.
Paula said, “What else you wanna know?”
Andy felt like she had nothing left to lose. She asked, “You sent the guy to Mom’s house, right? To torture her?”
“Samuel Godfrey Beckett.” Paula snorted, then coughed when the sandwich went down the wrong way. “Worth the money just for his stupid name. I thought for sure Jane would give it up. She’s never been good at confrontation. Then again, she killed that kid in the diner. I about shit myself when I recognized her face on the news. Fucking Laura Oliver. Living on a goddamn beach while the rest of us rotted in jail.”
Andy pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth. The gun was still tucked into Paula’s jeans, but her hands were occupied with eating. Could Andy push the table into Paula’s gut, reach over with her free hand and grab the gun?
“What else, kid?”
Andy mentally walked herself through the motions. None of them worked out. Her handcuffed wrist was stretched too far under the table. She would end up impaling herself if she reached for the gun with her free hand.
“Come on.” Paula bit off another chunk of sandwich. “Ask me all the questions you can’t ask your mother.”
Andy looked away. At the ugly floral bedspread. At the door almost twenty feet away. Paula was offering her everything, but after searching for so long, Andy didn’t just want answers. She wanted an explanation, and that was something she could only get from her mother.
Paula looked for a napkin in the bag. “You turning shy on me?”
Andy did not want to, but she asked, “How will I know you’re telling the truth?”
“I’m more honest than that whore you call a mother.”
Andy chewed at the tip of her already sore tongue to keep from lashing out. “Who did you kill?”
“Some bitch who tried to stab me in prison. They couldn’t prosecute me for Norway. Maplecroft wasn’t my fault. Quarter was the one who snatched her. The other stuff wasn’t on me.” She stopped to chew. “I pleaded guilty to fleeing the scene of a crime. That got me six years, the bitch I shivved was self-defense, but they took me up to two dimes. Ask another question.”
“How did you get your job at the university?”
“They were looking for a diversity hire and I lucked up with my sad sack reformed felon story. Ask another.”
“Is Clara okay?”
“Ha, good try. How about this: why do I hate your dumb bitch of a mother?”
Andy waited, but Paula was waiting, too.
Andy made her tone as bored and disinterested as she could, asking, “Why do you hate my mother?”
“She turned on us. All of us except Edwin and Clara, but that was only because she wanted to control them.” Paula waited for a reaction that Andy could not give her. “Jane was put into witness protection in exchange for her testimony. She got a sweetheart deal because the clock was literally ticking. We had another bomb ready to go, but her big fucking mouth stopped it all.”
Andy searched Paula’s expression for guile, but she saw none.
Witness protection.
Andy tried to wrap her brain around the information, to figure out how it made her feel. Laura had lied to her, but Andy had become accustomed to the fact that her mother lied. Maybe what she was feeling was a slight sense of relief. All of this time, Andy had assumed that Laura was a criminal. And she was a criminal, but she had actually done something good by turning them all in.
Right?
Paula said, “The pigs still put her in prison for two years. They can do that, you know. Even with witness protection. And Jane did some heinous shit. We all did, but we did it for the cause. Jane did it because she was a spoiled bitch who got bored spending her daddy’s money.”
“QuellCorp,” Andy said.
“Billions,” Paula said. “All from the suffering and exploitation of the sick.”
“So you’re holding me ransom for money?”
“Hell no. I don’t want her fucking blood money. This has nothing to do with QuellCorp. The family divested years ago. None of them have anything to do with it. Except raking in the dough from their stock options.”
Andy wondered if that’s where the cash came from in the Reliant. You had to pay taxes on stock gains, but if Laura was in witness protection, then everything would be above-board.
Right?
Paula said, “Jane never told you any of this?”
Andy didn’t bother to confirm what the woman already knew.
“Did she tell you who your father is?”
Andy kept her mouth shut. She knew who her father was.
“Don’t you want to know?”
Gordon was her father. He had raised her, taken care of her, put up with her maddening silences and indecision.
Paula gave a heavy, disappointed sigh. “Nicholas Harp. She never told you?”
Andy felt her curiosity rise, but not for the obvious reason. She recognized the name from the Wikipedia page. Harp had died of an overdose years before Andy was born.
She told Paula, “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. Nick is the leader of the Army of the Changing World. Everybody should know his name, but especially you.”
“Wiki said that Clayton Morrow—”
“Nicholas Harp. That’s your father’s chosen name. Half of that bullshit on Wikipedia is lies. The other half is speculation.” Paula leaned across the table, excited. “The Army of the Changing World stood for something. We really were going to change the world. Then your mother lost her nerve and it all turned into a shitshow.”
Andy shook her head, because all they had done was kill people and terrorize the country. “That professor was murdered in San Francisco. Most of the people in your group are dead. Martin Queller was assassinated.”
“You mean, your grandfather?”
Andy felt jarred. She had not had time to make the connection.
Martin Queller was her grandfather.
He had been married to Annette Queller, her grandmother.
Which meant that Jasper Queller, the asshole billionaire, was her uncle.
Was Laura a billionaire, too?
“Finally putting it together, huh?” Paula tossed a stray piece of deli meat into her mouth. “Your father has been in prison for three decades because of Jane. She kept you away from him. You could’ve had a relationship, gotten to know who he is, but she denied you that honor.”
Andy knew exactly who Clayton Morrow was, and she wanted nothing to do with him. He was not her father any more than Jerry Randall was. She had to believe that, because the alternative would have her curled into a ball on the floor.
“Come on.” Paula wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Give me some more questions.”
Andy thought through the last few days, the list of unknowns she had jotted down after meeting Paula. “What changed your mind back in Austin? One minute you were telling me to leave, the next minute you were telling me to look for Clara Bellamy.”
Paula nodded, as if she approved of the question. “The pig whose nuts you marshmallowed. I figured you wouldn’t have done that if you were working with your mother.”
“What?”
“The pig. The US marshal.”
Andy felt a flush work its way up her neck.
“You fucked up his shit. That bitch was lying on my front porch for an hour.”
Andy leaned her head onto the table so that Paula couldn’t see her face.
Mike.
The Marshal Service was in charge of administering the witness protection program. They could make all the driver’s licenses they wanted because making new documents was part of their job—fake birth certificates and fake tax returns and even fake obituaries for a made-up guy named Jerry Randall.
Andy felt her bowels swirl.
Mike was Laura’s handler. That’s why he was at the hospital when she came out. Was that why he was following Andy? Was he trying to help her because she had unwittingly been in the program, too?
Had she taken out the only person who might be able to save them from this monster?
“Hey.” Paula rapped her knuckles on the table. “More questions. Spit ’em out. We got nothing better to do.”
Andy shook her head. She tried to put together Mike’s involvement since the beginning. His truck in the Hazeltons’ driveway with his rabbit’s foot keychain. The magnetic signs he changed out with each new city.
The GPS tracker on the cooler.
Mike must have planted it while Andy was passed out in the Muscle Shoals motel. Then he’d gone across the street for a congratulatory beer and improvised when Andy walked through the door.
She had assumed that he was friends with the bartender, but guys like Mike made friends wherever they went.
“Hey,” Paula repeated. “Focus on me, kid. If you’re not going to keep me entertained, then I’m gonna truss you back up and watch my shows.”
Andy had to shake her head to clear it. She lifted her chin up, rested it against her free hand. She didn’t know what else to do but return to her list. “Why did you send me to find Clara?”
“Bitch refused to talk to me back when she had her marbles, and Edwin threatened to rat me to my P.O. I was hoping seeing you would trigger her memories. Then I could snatch you up and you could give me the information and happy ending for everybody. Except Edwin got in the way. But you know what? Fuck him for working Jane’s deal to keep her out of prison for thirty years.” Paula crammed a handful of chips into her mouth. “Your mother was part of a conspiracy to kill your grandfather. She watched Alexandra Maplecroft die. She was there when Quarter was shot in the heart. She helped drive the van to the farm. She was with us one hundred percent every step of the way.”
“Until she wasn’t,” Andy said, because that was the part that she wanted to hold onto.
“Yeah, well, we took down the Chicago Mercantile before it was all over.” She caught Andy’s blank look. “That’s where commodities are exchanged. Derivatives. You’ve heard of those? And Nick was on his way into Manhattan when they caught him trying to blow up the Stock Exchange. It would’ve been glorious.”
Andy had watched along with everyone else planes hitting buildings and trucks mowing down pedestrians and all of the horrors in between. She knew that attacks like that were not glorious, just as she knew that no matter what these crazy groups tried to take down, it always got rebuilt—taller, stronger, better.
She asked Paula, “So why am I here? What do you want from my mom?”
“Took you long enough to get to that question,” Paula said. “Jane has some papers your uncle Jasper signed.”
Uncle Jasper.
Andy couldn’t get used to having a family, though she wasn’t sure the Quellers were a family that she wanted.
Paula said, “Nick’s been up for parole six times in the last twelve years.” She wadded up the potato chip bag and threw it toward the trash can. “Every single fucking time, Jasper Fucking Queller climbs up on his podium wearing his stupid Air Force insignia and American flag pin and starts whining about how Nick killed his father and infected his brother and made him lose his sister and wah-wah-wah.”
“Infected his brother?”
“Nick had nothing to do with that. Your uncle was a fag. He died of AIDS.”
Andy physically reeled from the invective.
Paula snorted. “Your generation and its fucking political correctness.”
“Your generation and its fucking homophobia.”
Paula snorted again. “Christ, if I’d known all it took to make your balls drop was to shoot you, I would’ve done you the favor back in Austin.”
Andy closed her eyes for a second. She hated this brutal back and forth. “What’s in the papers? Why are they so important?”
“Fraud.” Paula raised her eyebrows, waiting for Andy to react. “Queller Healthcare was kicking patients out on the street, but still billing the state for their care.”
Andy waited for more, but apparently, that was it. She asked, “And . . . ?”
“What do you mean, and . . . ?”
“I could go online right now and find dozens of videos showing poor people being kicked out of hospitals.” Andy shrugged. “The hospitals just apologize and pay a fine. Sometimes they don’t even do that. Nobody loses their job, except maybe the security guard who was following orders.”
Paula was clearly thrown by her nonchalance. “It’s still a crime.”
“Okay.”
“Do you ever watch the news or read a paper? Jasper Queller wants to be president.”
Andy wasn’t so sure that a fraud conviction would stop him. Paula was still fighting by 1980s rules, before spin doctors and crisis management teams had become part of the vernacular. All Jasper would have to do was go on an apology tour, cry a little, and he’d be more popular than before it all started.
Paula crossed her arms. She had a smug look on her face. “Trust me, Jasper will crumble at the first whiff of scandal. All he cares about is the Queller family reputation. We’ll work him like a marionette.”
Andy had to be missing something. She tried to work it out. “You saw my mom on TV. You hired a guy to torture her for the location of these documents, and now you’re holding me ransom for them because you’re going to blackmail Jasper into being silent so Clayton—Nick—will be paroled?”
“It’s not rocket science, kid.”
It wasn’t even model rocket science.
How had her mother fallen in with these idiots?
Paula said, “I’ve got everything ready for Nick when he gets out. We’ll get some art for the walls, find the right furniture. Nick has such a great eye. I wouldn’t presume to choose those things without him.”
Andy remembered the institutional blandness inside of Paula’s house. Twenty years in prison, at least a decade on the outside, and she was still waiting for Clayton Morrow to tell her what to do.
She asked, “Did Nick put you up to this?” She remembered something Paula had said. “That’s why you haven’t killed me, right? Because I’m his daughter.”
She grinned. “I guess you’re not as stupid as you look.”
Andy heard a cell phone vibrating.
Paula searched the bags and found the broken burner phone. She winked at Andy before answering. “What is it, Dumb Bitch?” Her eyebrows went up. “Porter Motel. I know you’re familiar. Room 310.”
Andy watched her close the phone. “She’s on her way?”
“She’s here. Guess she used some of those Queller billions to charter a flight.” Paula stood up. She adjusted the gun in her waistband. “We’re in Valparaiso, Indiana. I figured you’d want to see where you were born.”
Andy had already chewed her tongue raw. She started on her cheek.
“Dumb Bitch was too good to be thrown into the general prison population. Edwin wrangled her a stay in the Porter County jail. She was in solitary the whole time, but so fucking what? Beats worrying some bitch is gonna shiv you in the back because you said her ass was big.”
Andy’s brain couldn’t handle all the information at once. She said, “What about—”
Paula took off her scarf and shoved it deep into Andy’s mouth.
“Sorry, kid, but I can’t be distracted by your bullshit.” She got on her knees and released the handcuff from the base of the table. “Put your right arm underneath.”
Andy stretched both arms toward the base, and Paula ratcheted down the cuffs.
“Uhn,” Andy tried. The scarf was shoved too far down her throat. She tried to work it out with her tongue.
“If your mom does what she’s supposed to do, you’ll be fine.” Paula took a spool of clothesline out of the bag. She bound Andy’s ankles to the chair leg. “Just in case you get any ideas.”
Andy started to cough. The more she struggled to push out the scarf, the deeper it went.
“You know your dead uncle tried to hang himself with this stuff once?” She reached into the plastic bag again. She found a pair of scissors. She used her teeth to break them out of the packaging. “No, I guess you don’t know. Left a scar on his neck, here—” She used the tip of the scissors to point to her neck, just below a smattering of dark moles.
Andy hoped she had skin cancer.
“Jasper saved him that time.” Paula cut the end of the clothesline. “Andy was always needing saving. Weird that your mom calls you by his name.”
Laura didn’t like to call Andy by her dead brother’s name. She winced every time she used anything other than Andrea.
Paula checked the handcuffs again, then the knots, to make sure they were secure. “All right. I’m gonna pee.” She stuck the scissors into her back pocket. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Andy waited until the bathroom door shut, then she looked for something stupid to do. The burner phone was still on the table. Her hands were out of the question, but maybe she could use her head. She tried to inch the chair forward but the burning was so intense that vomit spilled up her throat.
The scarf pushed it back down.
Fuck.
Andy let her eyes scan the room from floor to ceiling. Ice bucket and plastic cups on the desk under the TV. Water bottles. Trash can. Andy wrapped her fingers around the base of the table. She tested the weight as much as she could. Too heavy. And also, she had a bullet inside her body. Even if she managed to bite back the pain and lift the table, she would fall flat on her face because her ankles were tied to the chair.
The toilet flushed. The sink faucet ran. Paula came out with a towel in her hands. She tossed it onto the desk. Instead of addressing Andy, she sat down on the edge of the bed and watched television.
Andy let her forehead rest on the table. She closed her eyes. She felt a groan vibrate inside of her throat. It was too much. All of it was just too damn much.
Mike was a US marshal.
Her mother was in the witness protection program.
Her birth father was a murderous cult leader.
Edwin Van Wees was dead.
Clara Bellamy—
Andy could still clearly hear the smack that had cut off Clara’s scream.
The click-click-click-click of the revolver’s cylinder.
The ballerina and the lawyer had taken care of Andy for the first two years of her life, and she had not remembered one detail about them.
There was a sound in the hallway.
Andy’s heart jumped. She raised her head.
Two knocks rattled the door, then there was a pause, then another knock.
Paula snorted. “Your mom thinks she’s being sneaky getting here sooner than she said.” She turned off the TV. She pressed her finger to her lips as if Andy was capable of anything but silence.
The revolver was in Paula’s hand by the time she opened the door.
Mom.
Andy started to cry. She couldn’t help it. The relief was so overwhelming that she felt like her heart was going to explode.
Their eyes met.
Laura shook her head once, but Andy didn’t know why.
Don’t do anything?
This is the end?
Paula jammed the gun in Laura’s face. “Move it. Hurry.”
Laura leaned heavily on an aluminum cane as she walked into the room. Her coat was wrapped around her shoulders. Her face was drawn. She looked frail, like a woman twice her age. She asked Andy, “Are you okay?”
Andy nodded, alarmed by her mother’s fragile appearance. She’d had almost a week to recover from her injuries. Was she sick again? Did she get an infection from the wound in her leg, the knife cut in her hand?
“Where are they?” Paula pressed the muzzle of the gun to the back of Laura’s head. “The files. Where are they?”
Laura kept her gaze locked with Andy’s. It was like a laser beam between them. Andy could remember the same look passing between them when the nurses were wheeling Laura into surgery, off to radiation therapy, into the chemo ward.
This was her mother. This woman, this stranger, had always been Andy’s mother.
“Come on,” Paula said. “Where—”
Laura shrugged her right shoulder, letting the coat slip to the floor. Her left arm was in a sling instead of strapped to her waist. A packet of file folders was tucked inside. The splint from the hospital was gone. She was wearing an Ace bandage that ballooned around her hand. Her swollen fingers curled from the opening like a cat’s tongue.
Paula snatched away the files and opened them on the desk under the TV. The gun stayed trained on Laura while she thumbed through the pages. Paula’s head swiveled back and forth like she was afraid Laura would pounce. “Is this all of them?”
“It’s enough.” Laura still would not look away from Andy.
What was she trying to say?
“Spread your legs.” Paula roughly patted down Laura with her hands, clapping up and down her body. “Take off the sling.”
Laura didn’t move.
“Now,” Paula said, an edge to her voice that Andy had never heard before.
Was Paula afraid? Was the fearless bitch really scared of Laura?
“Take it off,” Paula repeated. Her body was tense. She was shifting her weight back and forth between her feet. “Now, Dumb Bitch.”
Laura sighed as she rested the cane against the bed. She reached up to her neck. She found the Velcro closure and carefully pulled away the sling. She held her wrapped hand away from her body. “I’m not wearing a wire.”
Paula lifted Laura’s shirt, ran her finger around the waistband.
Laura’s eyes found Andy. She shook her head again, just once.
Why?
Paula said, “Sit on the bed.”
“You have what you asked for.” Laura’s voice was calm, almost cold. “Let us go and no one else will get hurt.”
Paula jammed the gun into Laura’s face. “You’re the only one who’s going to get hurt.”
Laura nodded at Andy, as if this was exactly what she had expected. She finally looked at Paula. “I’ll stay. Let her go.”
No! The word got caught in Andy’s throat. She worked furiously to spit out the scarf. No!
“Sit down.” Paula shoved her mother back onto the bed. There was no way for Laura to catch herself with one arm. She fell on her side. Andy watched her mother’s expression contort in pain.
Anger seized Andy like a fever. She started groaning, snorting, making every noise she could manage.
Paula kicked away the aluminum cane. “Your daughter’s going to watch you die.”
Laura said nothing.
“Take this.” Paula tossed the spool of clothesline at Laura.
She caught it with one hand. Her eyes went to Andy. Then she looked back at Paula.
What? Andy wanted to scream. What am I supposed to do?
Laura held up the spool. “Is this supposed to make me feel sad?”
“It’s supposed to tie you up like a pig so I can gut you.”
Gut you?
Andy started pulling at the handcuffs. She pressed her chest into the edge of the table. The pain was almost unbearable, but she had to do something.
“Penny, stop this.” Laura slid toward the edge of the bed. “Nick wouldn’t want—”
“What the fuck do you know about what Nick wants?” Paula gripped the gun with both hands. She was shaking with fury. “You fucking cold bitch.”
“I was his lover for six years. I gave birth to his child.” Laura’s feet went flat to the ground. “Do you think he’d want his daughter to witness her mother’s brutal murder?”
“I should just shoot you,” Paula said. “Do you see my eye? Do you see what you did to me?”
“I’m actually quite proud of that.”
Paula swung the gun into Laura’s face.
Smack.
Andy felt her stomach clench as Laura struggled to stay upright.
Paula raised the gun again.
Andy squeezed her eyes closed, but she heard the horrible crunching sound of metal hitting bone. She was back at the farmhouse. Edwin was dead. Clara had screamed her first scream, then—
Click-click-click-click.
The cylinder spinning in the revolver.
Andy’s eyes opened.
“Fucking bitch.” Paula struck Laura across the face again. The skin had opened. Her mouth was bleeding.
Mom! Andy’s yell came out like a grunt. Mom!
“It’s gonna get worse,” Paula told Andy. “Pace yourself.”
Mom! Andy yelled. She looked at Laura, then looked at the gun, then looked back at Laura.
Think about it!
Why was Paula threatening to gut her? Why hadn’t she shot Clara at the farmhouse? Why wasn’t she shooting Laura and Andy right now?
The clicking back at the farmhouse was the sound of Paula checking to see if all of the cartridges in the revolver were spent.
She didn’t have any bullets left in the gun.
Mom! Andy shook the chair so hard that fresh blood oozed out of her side. The table bumped into her chest. She twisted her wrists, trying to hold up her hands so that Laura could see them.
Look! Andy groaned, straining her vocal cords, begging her mother for attention.
Laura took another blow from the gun. Her head rolled to the side. She was dazed from the beating.
Mom! Andy shook the table harder. Her wrists were raw. She waved her hands, furiously trying to get Laura’s attention.
“Come on, kid,” Paula said. “All you’re gonna do is knock yourself over.”
Andy grunted, shaking her hands in the air so hard that the cuffs cut into her skin.
Look!
With painful slowness, Laura’s eyes finally focused on Andy’s hands.
Four fingers raised on the left. One finger raised on the right.
The same number of fingers Laura had shown Jonah Helsinger at the diner.
It’s why you haven’t pulled the trigger yet. There’s only one bullet left.
While Laura watched, Andy raised the thumb of her left hand.
Six fingers.
Six bullets.
The gun was empty.
Laura sat up on the bed.
Paula was thrown by her sudden recovery from the beating, which was exactly what Laura needed.
She grabbed the gun with her right hand. Her left hand corkscrewed through the air, punching Paula square in the throat.
Everything stopped.
Neither woman moved.
Laura’s fist was pressed to the front of Paula’s neck.
Paula’s hand was wrapped around Laura’s arm.
A clock was ticking somewhere in the room.
Andy heard a gurgling sound.
Laura wrested away her injured hand.
A ribbon of red sagged into the collar of Paula’s shirt. Her throat had been sliced open, the skin gaping in a crescent-shaped wound.
Blood dripped from the razorblade Laura held between her fingers.
I will slice open your fucking throat if you hurt my daughter.
That was why Laura wasn’t wearing the splint. She needed her fingers free so that she could hold onto the blade and punch it into Paula’s neck.
Paula coughed a spray of blood. She was shaking—not from fear this time, but from white hot fury.
Laura leaned in. She whispered something into Paula’s ear.
Rage flickered like a candle in her eyes. Paula coughed again. Her lips trembled. Her fingers. Her eyelids.
Andy pressed her forehead down to the table.
She found herself feeling detached from the carnage. She wasn’t shocked by sudden violence anymore. She finally understood the serenity on her mother’s face when she had killed Jonah Helsinger.
She had seen it all before.