So empty.
Fegan shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Her face hardened. She stepped closer, forming her right hand into the shape of a gun. Her fierce eyes on Fegan’s, she reached up and placed her fingertips against his forehead. They were cold on his skin as she executed him.
ONE
60
“No,” Fegan said.
She pressed her fingertips against his forehead, harder. Her lips made a silent plosive as she pulled the trigger, and her eyes burned into his.
Fegan took a step back. “No, I did what you wanted.”
She followed, her finger-pistol trained on his head.
“I did it,” he said. “I killed them all. I did them all for you, so you could go. I did what you wanted. Please. Let me go.”
His legs rippled with spent energy and he had to steady himself against the wall. He turned and walked to the door. She came behind him. He could almost feel the bullets strike the back of his head.
“Please,” he said.
The woman walked in step with him, her fingertips against his temple now. He staggered to the bathroom, his feet splashing in the water pooling on the floor. A fractured mirror hung above the washbasin. He looked at the hollows of his face, the darkness under his eyes.
“All I wanted was some peace,” he said. “I just wanted to sleep. That’s all.”
Fegan saw her in the mirror, the finger-pistol locked on him, her eyes clinging to the reflection of his own. “Why didn’t you just take me? Why all this?”
The sound of groaning pipes roamed through the old house as he turned a tap. Spurts of brown water soaked his hands and he rinsed the blood away. When the water cleared he splashed a handful of it on his face, feeling the coarse stubble. He took another handful and brought it to his mouth, swallowing the copper taste.
“Oh, God.” He shut off the tap and wiped his eyes.
He shuffled over to the bathtub and lowered himself to its edge. His body felt so heavy he couldn’t hold it any more. There was a pressure at the small of his back: Campbell’s Glock.
“Please.” He looked up to the woman. “I can have a life.”
She stepped forward and returned her fingers to his forehead. Fegan reached up and took her hand in his. A thought flashed in his mind: he had never reached out and touched her before. She had touched him, but he had never touched her. He wrapped his fingers around hers. He looked up into her hard eyes.
“I can have a life. I can be a real person, a whole person. I know I can’t be with Marie and Ellen, but I can be clean. Please let me have a life.”
Her eyes wavered, something soft moving behind them.
“Mercy,” Fegan said, the word catching in his throat. He squeezed her hand in his, feeling her slender bones. “Have mercy.”
Something flickered across her face, just for a moment, and then it went slack. She pulled her hand away, formed the shape of a gun once more, and placed her fingers at the center of his forehead. There was no anger or hate in the lines of her face now, only sadness.
Fegan closed his eyes. He reached around to the small of his back and found the Glock’s grip. It fitted snugly in his hand, and the pistol came free with the sound of metal on fabric, leaving a cold place where it had been. It was heavy and it clanked against the side of the bath. He opened his eyes.
“Can we go now?” Ellen asked from the doorway. The gold in her hair blazed in the morning light. Water rippled around her feet as she walked to him.
“Soon,” he said. He let the gun hang inside the bath, away from her pretty eyes.
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
She slipped between his knees and propped herself on his quivering thigh. Her fingers were soft and warm as she touched his tears and felt the stubble on his chin. She leaned in close and whispered.
“Where’s her baby?”
Fegan blinked. “What?”
“The secret lady. Where’d her baby go?”
Fegan swallowed. “To Heaven.”
Ellen smiled and rested her head on his chest. Fegan’s left arm felt so heavy he could barely lift it and wrap it around her.
The woman’s eyes sparked and danced. She lowered herself to her knees as her lip trembled. Her fingertips brushed the loose strands of Ellen’s hair, smoothing them. She looked into Fegan’s eyes and gave him the softest, faintest, saddest of smiles. She stood and walked slowly, gracefully to the doorway.
As she disappeared into the morning light beyond, she turned to look at Fegan once more.
“Mercy,” she said.
