JANE COULDN’T SPEAK with her mouth bound with the tape. Cal hurried her down the street. Toward the crash site. She could see her mother’s Volvo parked along the side. Is he just going to hand me over to her and hope no one believes me at the asylum? But as they got closer, she saw her mother wasn’t in the driver’s seat.
Jane screamed under the gag and tried to spin out of his grip. Cal locked the gun on her head. “The memories are gone, right? It’s all going to be gone soon. You killed my boy. He…he wanted to get you away from this. From me. He begged. You were both crying as you drove.”
Cruel blows of memory, pressing upon her. His gun to her head, like then, like now. She fought back tears. Don’t let him hurt me, David, please don’t let him hurt me. Let me go, Mr. Hall, please, I won’t tell.
David’s voice, an echo in her brain: Dad, let her go, let her go, she won’t talk. Please, Dad. You can’t be serious; you can’t hurt Jane. Are you going to send her to those people? You can’t. Please, Dad, please.
“He unbuckled his seat belt and grabbed the wheel from you. You screamed ‘I hate you’ at me, he screamed he loved you. And the car crashed. Him trying to help you escape. My son, my wonderful son. You took him from me. I blame you.” His hand in her hair yanking her along. She tore at the tape, scoring her cheek.
“Taking you to your mama,” he said, and they rounded the line of cedars and oaks onto the stony decline. She saw Trevor’s truck, parked, twenty feet from the edge. Her eyes went wide.
Oh, no, Trevor couldn’t be here, he couldn’t, Cal would kill him. Where was her mother?
Cal skirted the truck, saw it was empty, gun pointed into the cab. He cussed under his breath and started dragging her toward the edge, in a hurry now. “Down there with her,” he said. “You and her dead, then Perri. Rid of you all that ruined my life and I go on, the crazy wife who’s been targeting people connected to the crash gets blamed, boom. All will pay. Finally.”
The blame for David’s death had twisted something in him: the affair with Laurel, leading to her father’s death, leading to the crash, leading to Perri leaving him. A seed of blame that had turned into a strangling vine. A man who could not see the blame was all on him.
She fought him. She tore at the tape and tried to scream.
“Go ahead, get the tape off,” he said, and she realized he didn’t want it to be on her once he threw her from the cliff. Mom. Down there with her. Oh, no, no, no. What had he done? He ripped the tape from her face and from her hair. He pulled her to the edge and looked down, as if aiming his throwing of her and said, “What the hell?” She saw what he saw as she fought to pull away.
Trevor. Trevor was halfway down the cliff, descending, half-hidden by an outcrop of rock and a thick oak branch. She couldn’t see her mother. Cal tried to aim his gun down at Trevor and fire. Jane knocked him back from the edge, her arm still clasped in his iron grip. If she shoved him over the edge, she would go over with him.
Fine. She couldn’t let him hurt anyone else. She was never going to be whole again anyway. She realized he couldn’t shoot her and still make it look like she’d killed herself and Perri and her mom. That gave her a momentary advantage. She was small and he was big—not as big as Trevor but solid—but he wasn’t expecting her to move toward the drop.
She started shoving him toward the edge. He realized her intent and his face contorted in shock. He fired the gun down toward Trevor, and Jane heard a cry of pain.
Then he swung the gun around toward her, his eyes bright with hate.
No.