PERRI RAN. SHE was beyond looking for a phone or a gun, she just wanted out of the house. She burst from the mansion. No sign of Cal or Jane. Cal’s car was there, but she didn’t have the electronic key. She ran past the open gate and onto the empty road.
If she turned left, she could run downhill to Old Travis, wave down a car. She felt sure Cal had not turned in that direction.
He was taking Jane to the crash site. She knew it with certainty. This scheme of his was falling apart and Cal was cleaning house. He was going to kill Jane Norton, the girl she’d hated with a fiery heart for the past two years.
For one moment she wavered. Then she turned and ran right.
She could hear the injured Marcolin howling, chasing her. He had a gun and she had nothing. She ran down the street, the curve bringing Laurel’s red Volvo, parked, into view.
She heard a muffled scream, the crack of a shot.
David. David, I’m coming.
She turned and saw her husband and Jane fighting near the edge of the cliff. In front of a large black truck that was parked there.
The truck. She opened the unlocked door; the keys were in the cup holder. She started the engine and laid on the horn. Jane stared at her for one second, then tried to shove Cal over the side. Instead he picked her up, pinning her arms, and moved toward the edge, yelling over his shoulder at Perri to get out of the truck, he’d explain everything.
He was going to throw Jane off the cliff. Laurel’s car—he must have already killed her. He’d killed Brent Norton. He’d framed Perri as Liv Danger, using her computer. And she’d played right into his hands, let him use her hate against her.
Not anymore. She started the truck, put it into gear, and powered it toward him, starting to slide down the steepness of the rocky decline.
* * *
Cal hauled Jane to the edge. He could simply drop her; she fought. Not like this, not like this, not where I was supposed to die before, she thought. At the edge he looked down and saw Trevor kneeling on the ground and holding aloft a gun—Laurel’s—to fire it. Cal retreated, stumbling back, and Jane broke free, running to the right, toward the clutch of gnarled, thirsty cedars closest to the edge.
He looked up at the roar of the truck. Perri hit Cal straight on as she slammed on the brakes.
Cal flew well over the cliff’s edge, a look of soft surprise on his face, and fell into the maze of tree branches with a choked scream.
Trevor’s truck slid on the slope, tires fighting for purchase as Perri stood on the brakes, and Jane, stumbling, clutching at a tree, saw Perri’s face through the windshield. Calm, resigned, staring back at her as the truck spun and then dropped over the edge with a thundering crash.
Jane froze behind the stunted cedar she’d grabbed in her mad scramble, the tree closest to the edge.
No. Perri and Trevor and her mom. No.
She heard footsteps sliding down the stone. Marcolin, his eyes red, holding a gun, stumbling down to survey the carnage. She crouched behind the tree and picked up a rock. He was fixed on the truck he’d just seen plummet into the canopy of oaks and cedars below.
Jane hit him, hard from behind, and he dropped to his knees. She hit him again, and then again, the rock messy with blood. He groaned and she hit him in the face. Twice. Three times. He made a choking noise.
She took his gun from him and then peered over the side.
The truck, in its spin as Perri tried to stop, had gone over backside first, smashing through the branches, landing rear-first and then falling onto its side. In the cab she could see Perri, lying still, not moving. Beyond the wreck she saw, through a gap in the branches, Trevor and her mother. He must have pulled her mother clear as the truck roared over the precipice.
“Mom!” she screamed. “Trevor!”
“Your mom’s hurt bad, we need an ambulance,” Trevor called out.
Jane went back to Marcolin’s moaning form and took an orange phone from his pocket. She dialed 9-1-1, and for the second time teams rushed to the isolated cliffside on High Oaks.
Jane crawled back to the cliff’s edge. Trevor ran to the truck’s cab, peering inside, trying to see if Perri was still alive. Jane watched, gasping, listening to the emergency operator tell her that help was on the way. Please don’t be dead. Please, Mom. Please, Perri. Please. Please.