Cormack’s still taunting me as his gun barrel presses between my shoulder blades. “Not only will he fail to help you, he’ll go to jail for his trouble. The amount of shit Milo West has done — collusion, blackmail, extortion — even a testimony won’t get him off scot-free.” I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Still, we can get to him. Mac’s reach extends far. Even to federal security prisons. Your daddy’s days are numbered, whether he walks or does time.”
I clench my hands so tight, my fingernails cut into my palms like knives.
“All for nothing, too. They won’t be able to make any of the charges against Mac stick. Never do.” He chuckles. “Witnesses have a way of… disappearing.”
“You don’t have to kill me,” I say, breathing too hard. “I don’t have anything to do with this. My father will go to jail, you just said that. His life is over. So, you already have your revenge. Please… you don’t need to hurt me, too.”
We reach the door. Cormack steps around me to haul it open with his free hand. He uses his gun to gesture me outside.
I squint against the sudden brightness. It’s around noon, judging by the sun’s position straight overhead, and after my eyes adjust I see nothing but swamp. Dried mud and tall grass form a bog for at least a mile in every direction. My heels sink in with each step.
I know immediately that we’re somewhere far outside the city limits — an old abandoned mill or factory, somewhere long-forgotten by everyone except Mac and his boys. There are no other buildings anywhere in sight. The tan sedan is the only car left parked beside the warehouse.
“Keep walking,” Cormack orders, eyes cold. “Toward the marsh.”
With his accent it sounds like he’s sayingtoad thamash.
I turn to look at him. “Please don’t do this.”
He takes a step closer and his voice gets even harsher. “Walk toward the marsh and get on your fucking knees.”
I swallow. “No.”
He smiles a scary smile. “No?”
“If you want to kill me, you’re going to have to do it looking into my eyes, you bastard.”
He raises the gun toward my head. “Fine by me.”
My eyes press closed when the shot goes off.
Chapter Thirty
If I have a heart attack by age thirty, tell the
coroner it was the Louboutins that did me in.
Nathaniel Knox, predicting his own cause-of-death.
Can you die of a broken heart?
A tear-stained little girl asked that question to a boy on the grass beside her almost twenty years ago.
He didn’t know the answer. Neither of us did.
Not then.
But I know now.
Truth is, any number of things in this life can kill you. Turn on the news any day of the week, and you’ll see the stories.
A soccer mom totals her minivan on the way to pick up her kids from practice. A renowned physicist has a heart attack in the middle of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. A child climbs into a van with a stranger and is never seen again.
War, famine, disease, drought.
Electrocution, car accident, fire, drowning.