Chapter 4 - The Strike
My shoulder drove into Meredith’s sternum with the full weight of my two-hundred-pound frame.
The breath exploded from her lungs in a wet, ragged gasp as we crashed into the acoustic foam on the south wall. The back of her head slammed against the concrete behind the padding with a dull, hollow thwack.
Bang.
The gunshot inside the enclosed, concrete space was catastrophic.
Even with the acoustic tiles, the percussion hit like a sledgehammer against my eardrums. A white-hot shockwave tore through the room, followed instantly by a high-pitched, metallic ringing that erased all sound. The smell of burnt cordite and vaporized lead filled the air, thick and sulfurous, choking my throat.
The bullet didn't hit me. It struck the industrial steel staircase behind us, ricocheting with a violent, singing whine that ended in the far drywall.
Meredith’s hands clawed at my face, her manicured nails digging into my cheek, tearing skin near my right eye. She fought with the terrifying, unhinged strength of someone whose entire reality was collapsing. Her teeth bared, saliva spraying from her lips as she shrieked words I couldn't hear through the deafening whistle in my ears.
I didn't hesitate. I couldn't afford chivalry, and I couldn't afford sibling mercy.
I grabbed her right wrist with both hands, driving it downward against the sharp edge of the metal desk.
Crack.
The small bone in her wrist gave way with a sickening snap.
She screamed—a sound I felt through her chest rather than heard through my ruined ears—and her fingers splayed open. The black semi-automatic clattered onto the linoleum.
With my left foot, I kicked the weapon. It skidded across the smooth floor, sliding under the twin bed where Noah stood frozen, clutching his ears, his mouth wide in a silent scream of terror.
I pinned Meredith to the floor. My left knee drove into her chest, pinning her sternum, while my right hand clamped around her throat, cutting off her airway. Her left arm flailed weakly against my forearm, her eyes bulging, blood pooling at the back of her mouth where she had bitten her tongue during the collision.
"It's over," I snarled down at her, my vision red, the pulse hammering behind my eyes like a diesel engine. "It's over, Meredith."
Under my hand, her throat worked frantically. She wasn't fighting to kill me anymore; she was fighting for oxygen. The feral rage in her eyes was replaced by the primitive, wide-eyed panic of suffocation.
For three terrifying seconds, the darkness in my own mind urged me to squeeze.
Squeeze until the cartilage crushes. Squeeze until she pays for every tear Caroline shed into Noah’s pillow. Squeeze until she pays for the four hundred days my son spent staring at gray foam.
"Daddy! Stop! Daddy, please!"
Noah’s voice broke through the ringing in my ears.
I looked up. My boy was on his knees on the edge of the mattress, his thin hands reaching out toward me, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks, his face twisted in horror—not at his aunt, but at me. At the monster his father had become in the span of thirty seconds.
The red haze cleared.
I loosened my grip on her neck. Meredith rolled onto her side, coughing violently, vomiting bile and blood onto the linoleum, clutching her broken wrist to her chest as she curled into a fetal position against the wall.
"Noah," I panted, wiping the blood from my cheek where her nails had raked my flesh. "Get off the bed. Come to me."
He scrambled off the mattress, his bare feet slapping the cold floor. He didn't look at Meredith. He threw his arms around my waist, burying his face into my ribs.
I scooped him up into my arms. He weighed almost nothing. An eight-year-old boy should have had solid muscle, heavy bones, the dense weight of a child who ran through mud and climbed jungle gyms. Carrying him felt like lifting a bundle of dried willow branches wrapped in cloth.
I turned toward the steel stairs.
"David..."
The voice from the floor was weak, bubbly with fluid.
I stopped on the bottom step, looking back over my shoulder. Meredith was looking up at us through a curtain of sweaty, disheveled hair. Her face was gray, bruised, broken. But in her eyes, beneath the pain, there was still that terrifying, possessive hunger.
"You can't... take him," she wheezed, her chest hitching with every breath. "He belongs... in the quiet. You'll lose him out there. The world... will eat him alive."
"The world didn't touch him, Meredith," I said, my voice ice-cold. "You did."
I climbed the stairs.
Each step was an agony of physical exertion, my knees shaking under the adrenaline crash, but I didn't stop. We rose out of the ozone, out of the disinfectant, out of the damp, subterranean tomb.
We crested the top of the stairs and stepped into the pantry.
The motion-sensor lights flared on, blinding us with their clean, white glare. Noah buried his face into the crook of my neck, whimpering as the light struck his dilated pupils.
"Close your eyes, buddy," I whispered, pressing my hand over the back of his head. "Just keep your eyes closed. Daddy’s got you."
I kicked the pantry door open, stepping out into the kitchen.
The air of the house hit us—fresh, warm, carrying the scent of cut grass and cedar from the open front door.
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And standing in the middle of the great room, her eyes wide with shock, holding her service weapon drawn in a two-handed tactical grip, was Deputy Sheriff Miller of the Albemarle County Police Department.
Beside her, clutching the deputy’s tactical vest with one hand and pointing toward the kitchen with the other, was Lily.
