“Shut your mouth.” Amber finds the harsh edge of her voice almost as terrifying as the gun she’s pointing at them.
Amber meets Rudy’s eyes and tries to mentally relay that he needs to keep distracting her.
Rudy nods. Message received.
“Alex Grable didn’t kill her mother,” Rudy says.
Amber sneaks a glance at her phone. There. Instagram. Livestream.
She clicks and shoves the phone into her back pocket. It’s on. Someone could hear them; someone could come. Someone needs to come.
“No,” Reena says. “She didn’t, did she?” Amber watches as something in her slips, catches—just barely. Reena takes in a shallow, shaky breath. She’s almost panting now, breath coming light and fast.
Reena swallows. “They called her the shooting star—but it didn’t look like that when she fell. And no one knew but me. That’s why it was so much fun, talking to you three. You knew exactly who I was. Before, I had to choose—stay unknown and safe, or let everyone know what I had done. Online, I could have both. I could have credit for what I did to you. It makes me wish I’d gone online sooner.”
She needs to say her name on camera, Amber realizes. If this has any chance of working . . .
“Maureen. Officer Perry, you don’t have to do this. Please—”
“That’s not my name,” she hisses, her face contorting as she whirls to address Amber. “Perry is a story, a make believe—”
Behind her, Joseph looks from Reena toward Rudy’s free weight, still on the floor where he’d dropped it. Amber sees Joseph start to tense as he prepares to move. She fights to keep her face straight, but she can’t stop the initial flick of her eyes in his direction. He lunges for the weight, and Amber has a crazy moment where she thinks that this is going to work, that he is somehow going to save them . . .
He darts forward. He is impossibly quick.
But Perry’s years on the job have made her faster.
She pivots and fires.
Amber’s ears ring. Cecily is screaming but Amber barely hears it, barely hears anything but the sound of blood rushing in her ears as Joseph staggers, stumbles, falls. Someone will have heard the gunshot, is her first coherent thought. Then she remembers the length of the driveway, the woods surrounding the house. There is no one around to hear.
Joseph is on the ground, and Amber is beside him before she can think better of it. He’s crumpled, clutching at his shoulder, where blood has started to soak through his shirt. It is so thick and dark that it almost looks unreal. Fake. As if this is all just a horrible nightmare.
Reena’s face is completely blank. As if she’d done nothing.
Amber isn’t aware that she’s screaming until she stops, until she’s raking in a breath to scream again. She tears up the hem of her shirt, trying to apply pressure, trying to stem the flow of blood. Joseph gives her hand a squeeze and mouths the words “I’ll be all right.” She doesn’t know whether or not to believe him. Reena’s hit his shoulder, but there’s so much blood. So, so much blood. On the other side of the kitchen, Cecily is keening a strange, inhuman sound that cuts right into Amber’s bones.
“He—he didn’t do anything—” Amber chokes out. Reena’s expression is unchanged. Amber knows that the police officer, Maureen, is gone now. There is only Reena.
Reena doesn’t answer. Instead, she pivots to Rudy, catching him trying to dial 911 as panicked tears stream down his face. She levels the gun at him. “Put the phone down,” Reena says. Her voice is light, lilting, rhyming, like a child playing a game. “Put the phone down before I count to three, or I will do something that you don’t want to see.”
Shaking, Rudy drops it. Amber is all too aware of her phone, still streaming. Please, she thinks. Someone. Anyone. Please come.
“Good boy,” Reena croons. “You know how dangerous those things can be. Social media, and all that. Stranger danger. Bad people on the internet.” She looks down at Joseph, bleeding out on the floor. “I have to admit, I didn’t plan on you,” she says. “But it was quite convenient. And quite tragic. How you were posting all those messages, how you tracked the triplets down. How you forced them to jump from the turret window. And then, how I had to shoot you when you tried to flee the crime scene.”
Joseph pants from the floor. “Please.”
Reena laughs. “I’m not going to kill you,” she says. Her eyes flick to Joseph’s wound, to the blood leaving his body. “I don’t need to. After all, if I kill you, who is going to kill the Cole triplets?”
“You killed Alex,” Rudy says, but he’s not confronting her anymore. He’s . . . panicking. He’s panting, like Cecily, his eyes glassy as they dart from Joseph to Reena. “You killed her—she was taking care of you, and—”
“You were a child,” Amber whispers, trying to reach Reena, trying to find empathy down there somewhere. But as Reena stares up at her with wide, deranged eyes, Amber realizes that there is no person to reach.
“And when I came back, they said it wasn’t my home anymore. They said it was theirs. And then they said it was yours. And then you brought her back here. She is dead, and—” Rena jerks her gun at the triplets. Amber flinches, but then—
“You hurt me,” Cecily whispers. Amber is shocked that her sister has spoken.
“You hurt yourselves,” Reena says. Her voice twists again. “There once was a girl with beautiful lies, so I gave her a new set of beautiful eyes . . . Of course, I meant to close them both. Forever.” She levels the gun at Cecily. “Mom and I used to sit in the turret and pretend that I was a princess. And then I got my evil stepmother and I knew that it was true.” She cocks her head. “But unlike them, I took care of it.
