Rose kicked the door in just as we cleared the threshold of the storage room. I slammed the door behind Richard, listened as the deadbolts engaged with robotic precision, then moved to the far corner, my back against the wall. I kept the .38 out, and I kept it pointed right at him.
Richard took a step in my direction, but I shook my head. “You stay right there, or I’ll put a fresh bullet in you.”
Rose kicked at the door, but it wasn’t budging. Three more kicks—rapid, violent, wrenching—and then a final thud as she flung her whole body against the door. She shot at the handle, but it held. Another blast and the shrieking alarm ceased. And then I heard Rose’s voice on the other side of the wood.
“I got no quarrel with you, girl. You open this door, and you can walk out safe and sound. Richard too. It’s the bones I want.”
I ignored her—no way I was falling for that line. I switched the gun to one hand, pulled up the shop’s security monitor with the other. One click, and I got a panoramic 360 of the front room, brilliant in the blaze of Richard’s headlights, then a quick switch shot to the outside cameras, which were a blizzard of black and white.
Richard pressed his hand against his shoulder. “This is all my fault. I should have seen this coming sooner.”
“Yeah, you should have. But this isn’t about you, it’s about a whole line of dark-skinned descendants who don’t even know they’re Amberdeckers.”
He was pale, and in shock, but I saw no surprise on his face.
Anger bloomed in my chest. “You knew all of this too, didn’t you?”
He stared at the far wall. “Rose told me that part when I found the bones the first time. She needed me to understand why that second set of bones could never see the light of day. She said it was necessary to protect the family, that if I really cared about her and Evie and Chelsea, I’d do what she asked. And God help me, I almost did it, but I couldn’t go through with it. I told Rose I had, though, and she believed me. Until you found the bones in the wall.”
“How did you figure out where Braxton’s bones were?”
“Once I decided Lucius hadn’t had help that night, I decided he had to have hidden them somewhere near the chapel. And then I remembered the pry bar you found out in the field.”
I remembered it too. Hefty, solid, deadly. “You mean the murder weapon.”
Richard winced. “Yeah. And I wondered why anyone would have needed it. The coffin wasn’t locked, and Lucius had Dexter’s keys to the chapel.”
“He needed it for the flagstones. To pry them up so that he could hide the bones underneath.”
Richard nodded. “So a couple of hours ago, I drove up through the park and went in the back way, so that Rose wouldn’t see me. Found the stone he’d hidden them under first try.” He grimaced and pulled his arm tighter to his chest. “I started putting everything together the night you came to the encampment. I decided Rose must have come for the bones the night of the reburial, to destroy them like she thought I’d destroyed the girl’s, and then when she found Lucius there, and an empty coffin, and that pry bar…”
So that was what Trey had seen in Richard’s face the night we met him in the woods—the painful growing realization that the woman he’d served for thirty years was a killer.
“I knew Rose was a hard woman, but I never figured she would…” He tilted his head back against the wall, closed his eyes. “I thought I knew her, but I didn’t. And I’m done with her.”
I heard regret in his voice, but also the bitterness and anger that come from deep betrayal. And then I understood.
“You’re in love with her, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve never said anything about any of it.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not getting out of here alive. She’s a crack shot. And she’s got nothing to lose.”
He didn’t look at me, but I could see he was disgusted with himself. Not as disgusted as I was, but pretty disgusted nonetheless. In the hall, Rose rattled the door again, and his attention jerked that way.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “That door is UL-rated Level Four, which means Rose isn’t getting in without a tank. So settle in. We’re going to be here for a while.”
But Richard wasn’t going to make it a while, as Rose probably knew. He was still bleeding and getting paler. I pulled Trey’s brand new first aid kit from the shelf and kicked it over with my foot.
He reached for the box, looking sad and hurt and angry all at once. “You don’t have to stand over there. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“All the same.”
“Tai—”
“I let you in my safe room. That’s as far as I’m going. Now get some gauze and bandages and tie that up before you die.”
He got to work clumsily. In the silence I could hear Rose in the shop, opening drawers, rifling through boxes, overturning shelves, looking for anything she could use to get into the room. Richard opened the gauze with his teeth, winced in pain as he fumbled with the wrapping.
I cursed, tucked the gun into the small of my back. “Give me that.”
He did. I pressed the bandage against the seeping hole, then wound the gauze to hold it in place. It was still bleeding profusely, and his skin had gone ashen.
“I figured out that Nate killed Braxton and Josephina,” I said. “Violet knew the whole story too.”
“They’ve all known the story, Tai. Every generation of them.”
“Evie and Chelsea?”
He shook his head. “No. Rose gave the secret to me instead. And it was going to die with me.”
I felt the anger rise again. “Braxton took a bullet between the eyes. The girl was shot in the back, the ME says. Running for her life. You were good with letting their stories die with you too?”
He shuddered, but not from horror or guilt. He was going down fast. The wound probably wasn’t fatal, not of itself, but the loss of blood and rising shock would get him soon. And then I’d have an unconscious person to deal with, and I had enough on my hands. I went back to the door, pressed my ear against it. The shots came fast—pow pow pow—and I jumped back, my heart banging in my chest.
But the door held. Of course it did.
I took my .38 in hand again. At least we had ammo, enough to last till Doomsday. We, I thought bitterly. As if Richard were on my side. He was on the side of whoever wasn’t trying to kill him. Rose had time on her side—up to a point—so she could afford to be patient and thorough. But she could never be as thorough as Trey. The door would hold. I had faith.
“And Brenda?” I said. “You did figure out that Rose was the one who shot her, right?”
“I had no proof.”
“But you knew.”
He refused to even look at me. “I didn’t want to admit it, but yeah. I knew.”
My temper sizzled. “So you know that was supposed to have been me that night, bleeding out on the pavement. How far were you willing to go for her, Richard? What was next, pulling the trigger yourself?”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s going to kill us both now.”
“Not in this room, she won’t.”
Richard coughed, grimaced in pain. I tried to gauge how much blood he’d lost and couldn’t, not beneath the heavy coat. I felt the first nibble of fear—maybe he was right, maybe there was no way out.
I pulled my phone out and checked it one more time, but there was still no service. I cursed. “Freaking blizzard.”
Richard screwed up his eyes at me. “That’s not why your phone’s not working.”
“What do you mean?”
He glared. “How do you think I figured out she was the one who shot Brenda? She stole my jammer, Tai, the one I use in field to keep the boys from using their cell phones. It’s how she kept the security system from going off when she broke in, how she planned on keeping you from calling the police.”
I crossed the room quickly and knelt in front of him. “Are you telling me the towers aren’t flooded, that the only thing keeping me from calling 911 is your jammer?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Where is it?”
“In her truck, most likely.”
“How do you stop it?”
“Push the power button.”
I stood up. Suddenly I had a Plan B. Not that the cops could get to us with the snow screaming down, the roads slick with black ice and blocked with accidents. But if Rose somehow managed to breech the safe room, at least there was a chance…
One the screen, Rose leveled the shotgun and shot at the door again, this time in pure thwarted anger. I watched her pace the front room, running down her options. As long as the police couldn’t arrive, it was a standoff, but she was running out of ideas. That was a bad thing. People without ideas were two steps from desperation, and if she got desperate, she’d get reckless.
“It’s okay if you run,” Richard said, his voice hoarse. “Your Uncle Dexter—”
“—wouldn’t have left you for that crazy woman to murder, and neither am I. Regardless of what went on before, you tried to do right at the end. So—”
And then I heard it. A rustling at the window. A quick look at the screen told me it wasn’t Rose, who was still banging around in the front room. I swung the gun toward the window, but I saw nothing except the snow and ice beating against the panes. But then I heard it again. Not a rustling. Three light taps. And then I heard the voice, barely above a whisper.
“Tai! It’s me.”
I lowered the gun as disbelief washed over me. “Trey?”