“Tempe—”
I shake my head. I’m staring at a stranger.
“All for money? Really?” I whisper. “Put the gun down. Let them go. Let us all leave. And then just fucking disappear, because I don’t need a brother anymore. Not if he could do something like that.”
Rafe’s eyes turn hard. “You think you’re so much better than me? You grew up in that swamp the same fucking way I did. We’re the same.”
“We are not the same!”
“No, maybe not. Because I’m not standing in front of a killer trying to pretend he’s better than your brother. Saxon’s only here because Mount gave an order to his favorite executioner. You can live with loving a hit man, but you want to pretend I don’t exist for what I’ve done? I don’t think so.”
He raises his gun higher, over my head, and Kane shoves me aside.
I hit the gravel as the shots explode in the night.
53
Temperance
“I’m so sorry, Temperance.” Magnolia’s hand shakes as she lowers her small pink pistol.
Magnolia shot my brother. She shot my brother. And Kane—
“Kane!” I scream as I bolt to where he’s lying on the ground. “Please, God. I can’t do this again. You can’t be dead. I won’t allow it.”
I refuse to look at my brother yet as I check Kane for injuries. His palm traps mine against his chest.
“I’m not gonna die. Not this time.”
“Oh my God. You scared the hell out of me.”
He glances down at his shoulder. “Flesh wound.”
I find the blood weeping from the small tear in his shirt, and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s not mortal.
Kane looks beyond me, and I don’t want to turn around. I can’t turn around.
Magnolia is over there, and so are two dead bodies.
“I’m so sorry.”
She whispers it over and over, and my heart is breaking. This time, it’s infinitely worse than the airport, because I feel every single rip as my soul shreds into pieces. I turn to face my brother, but he’s not dead.
He lifts his hand, reaching out toward me. “Tempe. Please.”
He’s not dead.
I scramble toward him and drop to my knees as blood pools in the gravel.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t ... I didn’t ... want you to see this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, and I hold up my fingers as Kane kneels beside me and uses his shirt to put pressure on his chest wounds—his very real chest wounds this time.
“Don’t talk.” I look at Magnolia. “Call nine one one. Now!”
She reaches for her phone as I look back down at Rafe.
“Help is coming. You’re going to be fine.”