“Your grateful, devoted patient.”
Grace could see Susan Hollister’s hands tense and knew the professional killer could take her in an instant. She and her husband had given up more than eight months of their lives and all of their savings, pointing to this moment. Throughout their hunt, Grace pictured the confrontation over and over in her mind-pictured it and wondered if she could do it, if she could actually pull the trigger, if she could actually kill. Now it took less than a second to find out. As Hollister swung her foot up in what would have been the equivalent of a decapitating kick, Grace fired into her spinning form-once, then again. Hollister’s lethal pirouette stopped in midair. She stumbled back against a table and fell heavily, blood expanding from two rents in the side of her white T. Her eyes widened as Grace stepped forward, the barrel of the.38 leveled at her forehead.
“Don’t do it,” Hollister gasped. “Don’t-”
The third bullet, fired from less than three feet, entered the center of Susan Hollister’s forehead and exited the back of her skull with enough force to embed itself in the clay floor.
Grace Peng Davis stripped off her robe and dropped it next to the body along with the gun. Then she exited through the back door of the clinic and calmly made her way along the street leading out of the village. A block down the road, Mark Davis pulled over in a rented Kia.
“Is it over?” he asked as his wife climbed in and he pulled away.
Grace bit down on her lower lip and nodded. Her eyes were full.
“Take me home,” she said.
