Catrina
I am the puzzle piece that you think will fit but doesn’t. The color is a little off, the edges don’t sit quite flush. You can’t force it. Though you might try.
I float above them, watch my poor, still body, legs akimbo, arms spread like I’m making a snow angel. Blood pours from a wound in my head. I am shattered.
Joshua is wailing, the sound of his voice carrying like a siren.
Joshua was a thief. The cybersecurity expert who was an expert at siphoning funds from the accounts of his clients. A little here, a little there—tiny amounts that amounted to a lot which he funneled into a Bitcoin account. He was slowly becoming very, very rich with his stolen funds, about to retire to Costa Rica or someplace warm and cheap. I was hoping to go with him when all was said and done, or so I like to tell myself. That maybe in some other universe there was a happy ending for me. There was something between me and Joshua, a connection. We were family. So, why not cobble together a kind of family with him? Like I said, the enterprise with Mako was my last endeavor to clean up my biological father’s biological mess.
Best laid plans and all of that. I’ve learned my lesson, I think. It was never up to me.
Ah, well.
Cricket’s sobs turn to screams. Honestly, I can’t believe that little slut killed me. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her.
Bruce rushes for Hannah, who lets out a groan of pain. The only one who is silent is Mako, holding Liza’s motionless form. After a moment, he looks up to survey the scene. Is that a smile on his face?
He wins again.
Or so he thinks.
Then the Feds rush in. And even though I failed in ending Mako, it’s an end to him for sure.
Now I am above it all. The watcher.
I see Liza being rolled out on a stretcher, lifted into a waiting ambulance.
Mako is led away in handcuffs to a waiting SUV. I’d expected him to be screaming and railing, but he is quiet and pliant. Exhausted. Maybe even relieved.
Sometimes it’s a relief to be done with it all, all the lies and bad actions, all the cover-ups, and shady deals. It takes so much energy.
I should know.
Hannah walks back into Elegant Overlook, Bruce beside her. She has been bandaged. Bruce is holding her good hand, a tender arm around her. Hannah is watching her brother. Bruce is talking to her, but she’s not hearing him. She’s just watching Mako, her face a mask of sadness, disappointment, anger.
Joshua sits in the back of an SUV, his hands cuffed, as well. His face is bruised and bloody, head resting against the glass.
Cricket is alone, standing by the trees, stunned and pale.
She killed me. The handmaiden. The one I had figured as a princess, easy to manage. But when the going got tough, she picked up the gun and fired.
Who says there are no more surprises?
I float higher.
A woman in white wanders in and out of the trees looking for the lost children she will never find.
Off in the distance, a little girl wades into Tearwater Lake, wailing for a mama who will never come.
“Wow,” says my dad. “We always called you kitten. But you’re the wolf.”
“Oh?”
“You really blew their house down.”
I look at them. They’re all broken pieces, just like me. Trying to make themselves fit.
“They deserved it,” I say. We all deserve what we get, don’t we?
“If you say so.”
He is all stardust and rain, fading into the night sky, then fading back in.
I watch him. He’s beautiful. He was a beautiful man with dark eyes and high cheekbones, a wide, laughing mouth. I wish I’d had his DNA in me. I wish I had been more like him, even though he was a broken piece, too.
And then, just as dawn breaks the horizon, I see him arrive, driving fast, then skidding to a stop.
And for a moment I feel a tug back to that ugly world I left behind.
Henry.
“My sister,” I hear him say. “She’s here. She needs help.”
It’s not long after that that they roll me out, too. The coroner’s assistant, a tiny, bespectacled redhead, opens the bag for him. Henry stares a moment. Then he drops to his knees and starts to weep. It’s not pretty. Men shouldn’t cry.
The young woman puts a hand on his shoulder.
“That’s her,” he says.
“I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry, too. But he’ll be okay. He’s one of the good ones. Some of us, maybe most of us, we turned out okay in spite of our biology. And the bad ones? Well, I’ve rooted them out. I’ve done my part. A kind of justice has been served.
Boris the pedophile committed suicide.
Marta the enabler had a tragic fall from a roof.
Brad the tech mogul who laundered money for drug dealers ran afoul of clients who ended the relationship the only way they knew how. Decapitation.
Mickey who raped a young girl and then denied it. And there’s more.
Mickey’s game at Red World was being investigated with the help of his brother-in-law, as a haven for bad men looking to groom and lure young girls and boys into sending nude photos of themselves for sale on the dark web. Mickey who embezzled money; the transfer that he made from his computer tonight the one action the Feds needed to take him down. Mickey who was a workplace predator, with at least six women waiting to come forward.
All of whom confessed on tape to Trina, his assistant.
There are others. I could go on.
Each project has been a subtle long game that had the desired result. Cleaning up the mess my father made.
This final one, it didn’t go as planned. To say the least.
But so it goes.
Now that my watch is over, I relinquish control.
“Want to go for a ride, kid?” says my dad.
The Indian gleams and rumbles. He loved that thing. He loved me, too, the best he could. None of us is perfect. Or even close.
“Yeah, Dad. Let’s ride.”