Chapter 45 - the click of the hammer
Richard didn't drop the gun. Desperation is a dangerous, unpredictable beast; when a man realizes his kingdom of cards is collapsing into the dirt, he doesn't surrender—he tries to drag the rest of the world down with him.
With a ragged, feral scream, Richard swung the muzzle of his pistol away from Ethan's chin and aimed directly at my chest.
A single shot cracked through the foyer.
It didn't come from my rifle. It didn't come from Harrison's carbine.
It came from the floor.
Ethan’s right hand had moved with the speed of a striking viper. From the inside seam of his soaked leather jacket, he had drawn a small, snub-nosed revolver—the back-up piece he had carried since we were boys hunting deer in the Adirondacks. The bullet punched through Richard’s right wrist with a sickening crunch of bone.
The silenced pistol dropped from Richard’s shattered hand, bouncing down the marble stairs. Richard stumbled back against the grandfather clock, howling in agony, clutching his bleeding wrist against his chest as blood sprayed across the antique glass face of the pendulum cabinet.
Harrison surged forward like a tidal wave. In one fluid, crushing motion, he slammed Richard face-first against the marble floor, driving his knee into the small of his back and wrenching his uninjured arm behind him with a sharp, sickening twist. The metallic zip of heavy-duty flex-cuffs echoed through the wet air.
"Suspect secure," Harrison growled, leaning his full weight down until Richard could only let out muffled gasps against the wet rug.
Ethan stayed on his knees, his chest heaving, his head bowed. The revolver slipped from his bloody fingers and clattered onto the stone. The rain poured down over him, washing the soot and crimson from his burned skin, exposing the deep, white scars of a fire that had stolen his life four years ago.
I lowered my rifle. The adrenaline that had kept my veins humming with pure ice suddenly evaporated, leaving behind a cold, hollow exhaustion that made my knees shake.
I walked slowly down the remaining steps, each movement heavy, surreal, as if I were wading through deep water. I stopped two feet in front of the man on the floor.
"Look at me," I said.
Ethan didn't move for several seconds. Then, slowly, painfully, he lifted his head. The burns pulled the skin tight around his left cheek, but the hazel eyes were clear, bright, and swimming with unshed tears.
"Marcus," he breathed.
May you like
"You let me bury an empty box," I whispered, the words scraping out of my throat like shards of glass. "I sat in that cemetery for three days in the mud, Ethan. I drank myself into a coma. I spent two years believing I was the one who failed you."
"I know," Ethan choked out, a sob finally breaking through his cracked lips. "I know, Marcus. And every single night, I stood at the edge of the tree line by the east gate and watched your study window until the lamp went out."
