I DROPPED MY AIM.
Blood was seeping from between Regan’s fingers. He steadied himself against the ground with one hand, his expression unreadable. It would have been too easy to take his life then. I was exhausted. My resolve was gone. All I wanted was for Regan to be gone from my life, taking all the pain he had brought with him.
But it wasn’t going to happen like this.
“I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t kill a wounded, unarmed man on his knees in a fucking barn.”
“I can,” Tox suggested, taking the gun from me.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “Help me tie hi—”
A crash split the air, so sudden and loud it made all three of us jump. Vada’s head was turned toward me, the bullet hole in her cheek running blood over the side of her face, a grotesque half-mask of red. Her hand was still on the leg of the foldout table that she had yanked backward, causing the table to fold in on itself and crash to the floor.
As we watched, Vada’s unfocused eyes fell closed.
In her last act, she had caused a desperate distraction. The shock of the noise was enough to draw my and Tox’s attention away from Regan for just a second.
That was all the time he needed to escape.