Chapter 47

Mel

Mel takes Jack's company truck.

Thank goodness the site manager dropped it at their house while he's away visiting family for the holidays.

A plan is forming. She's inebriated, but it doesn't stop it from unspooling like cotton candy in her mind. Mel has always been good at thinking under pressure, at planning, at organizing. She's cool in a crisis, and this certainly counts as a crisis.

She finds a couple of orange construction barriers and a R OAD C LOSED sign in the back of the truck. She uses them to block off the main road, hoping to force Pete and Laura into Killer's Grove, where she'll be waiting to confront them. Maybe if she can get to Pete, then Laura will come to her senses. She can't understand why he's convinced his own wife to go to the police. Doesn't he realize she'll go to prison? With actual criminals? He's always been annoyingly moralistic, but this is where she draws the line.

Mel just wants to talk sense into them. And if they won't listen, well, that's what the gun is for. They have no idea how far she'll go to protect the life she's built.

Mel pulls the truck off the road in Killer's Grove. The tires skid a little on a patch of ice, but she wrestles it into place and throws the truck into park.

Mel unlocks the hardtop canopy and climbs into the back, rooting around until she finds a high-power strobe warning light.

And then she settles in to wait.

It doesn't take long. She sees a pair of headlights coming toward her from the snow-blurred road and jumps out of the truck. She's perhaps still too drunk to be doing this, but needs must and all that.

The snow whirls around Mel, disorienting her. Her drunk fingers fumble with the strobe light, struggling to find the on switch. The minivan is getting closer. It's coming too fast, or maybe she's moving too slow.

It's nearly upon her when she finally manages to flick the switch. The strobe light is brighter than she expected. Blazing yellow light bursts into the black night, strobing too fast, a rapid succession of dazzling flashes.

Mel is temporarily blinded. She blinks furiously, working desperately to adjust to the light. She can't see, but she hears it, the sound of brakes squealing over icy pavement, then metal crunching and glass shattering. The car has clipped a tree and catapulted into the air.

"Noooo!" Mel screams, dropping to her knees and covering her head as the car flips into the air.

Metal scrapes against pavement, a horrible, bone-splintering squeal, and then the car finally comes to a rest on one side.

"No, no, no, no, no." She says the word over and over, hoping that this is a dream, a nightmare, that none of it is real.

Mel drops the light, her fingers numb with adrenaline. It settles in the snow, giving off a pale, anemic yellow light. Enough for her to see the crumpled vehicle.

She walks slowly toward the car. Glass glitters in the snow, reflecting yellow in the murky light. The passenger's-side front and rear wheels are still moving, rotating like the car thinks it's still going somewhere.

Mel brushes snow from her eyes and notices something, a small bundle, on the road's narrow shoulder, maybe fifteen feet from the car. She steps tentatively toward it, stomach churning. She drops to her knees next to the bundle, bile burning in her throat.

It's Ella. She must've been thrown from the car. Her head and face are a mess of blood and gravel. Her neck is tilted at an unnatural angle. Mel presses two fingers to her throat. Dead.

Mel buckles over, sobbing. Acid eats away at her insides. She thinks she will vomit, but nothing comes out. Her heart is jackrabbiting in her chest, too fast. Erratic. Faster and faster it goes, racing like a greyhound. Spots dance in front of her eyes. She feels like she's going to pass out, that she'll have a heart attack.

Mel snaps back, wipes her eyes as a thought presses in, cold and slimy, a hard slap that shakes her back to reality.

Where are Pete and Laura? And Alice?

Mel thought the girls were staying at her house, but if Ella was in the car, maybe Alice is somewhere nearby, too.

Mel stands on shaky legs, scanning the swirling snow for Alice. She's just standing on tiptoe to peer into the back seat of the upended car when her pacemaker goes off.

Beep. Beep. Beep. There are sixteen of them before it goes quiet again.

"Fuck," she hisses under her breath.

People mistakenly think that a beeping pacemaker means a failing heart, but that isn't true. Pacemakers beep for all sorts of reasons. A failing battery, a broken lead, a strong magnet. Once she got too close to the magnetic field of a store's antitheft system and it went off. She makes a mental note to call her electrocardiology office tomorrow.

Mel needs to get her heartbeat under control. She takes a steadying breath, like she's learned in yoga. Mel loves yoga; it is the one stabilizing factor in a life that often feels on the brink of falling apart. Then, because sometimes it takes more than just yoga, she pulls a cigarette out of a crumpled pack in her back pocket and lights it.

Beside her, the car's windshield wipers are still going, swish, swish, swish . Mel wipes her eyes. She should turn them off, but she doesn't. She just stands there, the wind whipping strands of her hair against her cheeks as she sucks at her cigarette, smoke curling into the snow-blurred air. After a few minutes, her heart calms, a cool detachedness draping itself over her. She inhales a deep, centering breath.

That's when she spots a splash of red hair splayed across the snow behind the car. She freezes, knowing instantly it's Laura, knows also that she's dead, just like Ella.

A sound. Rustling. Then glass crunching.

It's coming from the opposite side of the car.

Mel drops her cigarette in the snow and slips the gun from the waistband of her pants as she peers around the front of the car. It's Pete. He's climbed out of the broken windshield. Blood streaks down his face from a deep gash in his head.

He's bent over Ella's body, a wild, grief-stricken keening coming from his mouth. The sound is so horrifying Mel feels goose bumps prickle up and down her arms. His coat is wrapped around his hand, Pete using it to try to stem the blood coming from Ella's head.

Mel is frozen in the shadows of the car, but she must make a noise, because Pete's head swivels, his eyes landing like bullets on her.

"You." He looks at Mel, tears glistening in the yellow headlights. "You did this. Why?"

" Me? No, this is all your fault, Pete." Rage fills her, eats away at her insides. "None of this would have happened if you hadn't told Laura to turn herself in!"

She takes a step closer, hand tense on the gun. Her father's voice echoes in her mind. Rule number one, Melanie, self-preservation always comes first.

Rule number one taught her common sense, caution, safety. It taught her to survive. She would always be grateful to her father for that.

Because now she knows exactly what she must do.

"Where's Alice?" she asks, training the gun on Pete.

Her voice is controlled now. Her hands are steady, her breathing calm. She sees understanding on Pete's face. He knows what she has to do. He accepts it. He would do the same in her place.

A noise comes from the tree line, twigs crackling under shoes. It's Alice, her gaze bouncing between her dead sister and her father with wide, horrified eyes.

Pete glances at Mel, his face a mask of hatred and fury and rage, and then he turns to Alice and screams a warning.

"Run! We're next!" He tries to get to his feet, sways, lifting one hand, like he's trying to push her away. "Alice, run!"

"I'm sorry, Pete," she whispers.

She takes three swift steps from behind the car so she's directly behind Pete.

From this distance, there's no chance she'll miss.