Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,3
feel myself. My skin. My sweat. Every doubt and fear I had about this plan were fluttering down around me.
What the hell am I doing? A bomb, Joan? Really?
“Can I help you, sister?”
And just like that, I thundered right back into myself.
Sister. Fuck you, asshole.
Chapter 2
I turned and pulled the gun out of the back of my pants. Held it dead center on Lagan. Dad had taught me to hold a gun. And Dad hadn’t messed around when it came to guns.
“Yeah, you can help me,” I said, taking off my hat with my other hand. My lank brown hair fell down around my shoulders, into my eyes. “You can tell me where my sister is.”
Lagan didn’t even flinch. He didn’t blink those wide eyes, black like holes. Like snake eyes.
I’d been blonde when he knew me with short hair, all blind and soft with gratitude. A completely different person with a different name than this woman I was now, with the gun and the bombs and the rage.
“Sister?”
“Jennifer Matthews.”
His eyebrow rose just a little in that pale, white face of his. “Olivia.” My real name; I hadn’t heard it out of anyone’s mouth in months. And it wasn’t a question. Of course he knew me. He’d all but owned me for six months. “You look different. Not at all well.”
“Fuck you very much. Where’s my sister?”
“In our home.” His voice made me shake, that soft sing-song he used. And the memories rattled the lock on the door I kept them behind. He was baiting me and I knew it, had expected it, but I was so keyed up with anger and adrenaline—I couldn’t resist.
“Where did you move the compound?”
“You know the rules, Olivia. If you leave, you never get to come back. You don’t get to know where we move to. She chose to stay when you left, so you don’t get to see her. Ever again.”
“She’s a kid and you brainwashed her.” Stop. Stop, Joan. Focus. Don’t waste time fighting him. I’d done that before and lost. Badly. “And if you don’t tell me where you moved the camp I will kill you, asshole.”
There you go, back on the speech.
His smile was so patronizing it made me want to shoot him just for having a face.
“The camp is housed within the power and protection of the Lord,” Lagan said, lifting his hands like some kind of backwoods man of God.
“Stop the bullshit. I’m not one of your wives.” I pulled the cellphone out of my pocket. It had been repurposed as a detonator for the car outside.
“I have two bombs, Lagan. One outside. One in this room.”
“You’re lying, Olivia. You’ve always been a terrible liar. Your heart and your mind are—”
I held up the cellphone and with my thumb, pressed the code. Jennifer’s birthday.
A millisecond later a shattering boom split the night. The car in the back parking lot exploded.
I sent up a quick prayer that no one was there. Not even Rabbit.
To my great satisfaction, Lagan’s face flinched. His hand reached forward to grab the edge of a chair.
“Tell me,” I said, “where she is or the two of us are next.”
“Joan.”
Jesus. It was Max, standing back in the shadows in the corner of the room. He stepped forward into the circle made by the bright overhead light.
“What are you doing in here?” I cried. I saw you leave. You LEFT.
“Zo called me back,” he said. “What are you doing?”
For a second, just a second—not even—for half a heartbeat, I wavered.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed to Max. His blue eyes. That electric stillness of him. That gorgeous calm.
Lagan lurched toward me and I snapped back into focus. I held the gun toward Max and the cellphone detonator toward Lagan.
“Where is my sister?”
“If you blow us up, you’ll never know.”
“If I blow you up, you can’t hurt her anymore. You can’t hurt anyone.”
“You’re the only wife I hurt,” Lagan said, giving me some version of a pitying expression. It was bullshit, of course; he hurt everyone he touched. “I give people what they need. Purpose. Work. Family. You…you cheap piece of trash, you wanted to be hurt. Needed it—”
“Tell me, asshole!” I screamed, losing the edges of myself, feeling myself start to explode like one of those time-lapse videos of a bullet through a water balloon or some shit. I was coming apart.
“Never, Olivia,” he said, and he folded his arms over his chest. His dead eyes looked right into me.