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“No!” Leigh rushed forward, her feet heavy with a thousand tons of water trying to hold her back. She reached out and tackled the investigator. Ice infused her front and stole the air from her lungs.
Just as a gunshot exploded.
A low ringing filled Leigh’s ears. Then came the pain. The water around her seemed to still. She dropped to all fours as blood gushed from her shoulder, but she didn’t have the mind to apply pressure.
Boucher wrenched out of Chandler Reed’s hold and pulled the trigger a second time.
Just as Leigh was swallowed by the river.
THIRTY-ONE
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Tuesday, March 16
11:00 p.m.
Pressure built in her ears.
Leigh fought against the whirlpool dragging her into the corner of the room already submerged beneath the river. The hole in her shoulder burned with every reach of her hand to grab something to hold on to, but it was no use.
The building was coming apart at the seams. Literally crumbling in her grip. Air escaped her mouth and nose every second she fought to surface. Thousands of tons of pressure twisted her in every direction until she wasn’t sure which way was up.
A rod of metal scraped along her side. Her scream was lost to the freezing darkness, but she grabbed on to it. Numbness expanded out from the bullet wound and took everything she had left. Her body was starting to shut down against the temperature, trying to save her organs as long as it could, but she wouldn’t let go.
Water rushed past her, fighting to loosen her hold.
She could do this. She had to do this. Because it wouldn’t end. The killings wouldn’t stop as long as Boucher believed he was protecting himself and his family. He’d put an end to one monster but had created one in himself along the way. This… This was up to her.
Her chest suctioned in on itself, her lungs using the last of her reserves. She was out of air and had no better idea of which way to the surface than when she’d fallen in.
Until a sliver of brightness cut through the water.
The unboarded window. She followed the length of what felt like rebar in her hand to its source. A section of the floor had been lost, exposing the inner workings of the old mill. Leigh clawed at a grid of metal, crumbling cement, and old pipes. Every cell in her body begged for her to give up, to provide some kind of relief, but she had to fight the part of her brain that told her this was the end.
It wasn’t.
She’d come too far. From leaving Lebanon at seventeen, to pushing herself through the police academy, her father’s imprisonment, living with the news of her mother’s suicide, the loneliness of losing her only sibling. She’d spent a lifetime learning everything she could about men like Chris Ellingson—like Boucher—to make a difference. To earn the trust and respect of a town that wouldn’t ever see her as anything more than a petulant child in denial. To prove she was worth something.
But her past had no room in this investigation anymore. Or in her life. All she could do was stop the pain of it happening to someone else. To Carter Boucher. To Michael Agutter. To Chandler Reed.
Leigh wound her hand around a grouping of wires and hauled herself up the incline of the failing floor. The electrical cables jerked free, but she caught on to a crossbar. Pain came alive with each pull while seconds seemed to distort into full minutes. But she only had attention for that small sliver of silvery light. Her knee connected with the floor and gave her the leverage she needed to climb.
Webs of black tendrilled across her vision. She was close. She could feel it. The water was shallower here, the crushing weight lighter.
She shoved to her feet and broke through the surface with a harrowing gasp for oxygen. The burning sensation in her chest intensified as though her lungs had forgotten the feeling of fullness.
Leigh shoved wet hair from her face. Her shoulder refused to budge despite the bullet tearing completely through, and she clamped a hand over the wound to chase back the numbness. Agony ripped through muscle and down into bone. But at least she was still alive to feel it.
“You just don’t give up, do you?” Boucher discarded Chandler Reed’s body to the floor. Advancing, he kicked up water in his wake. “Even when the fight is already over.”
“Come on, Boucher. You know you would’ve missed me.” Her defenses kicked in. Leigh backed up as far as the room allowed while staying on her feet. She reached behind for a weapon along what used to be a work bench. A broken glass bottle head sliced the end of her finger as she swung for the lieutenant’s neck.
He leaned back to dodge the strike, letting her overcorrect. Her momentum gave him exactly what he’d been waiting for. Boucher ripped the makeshift weapon free from her grip and locked one hand around her throat. He pressed her low back into the work bench and arched her spine until the wood cut into the nerves there. “I’d find a way to live with myself.”
She latched on to his wrist to dislodge his hold. White streaks lightninged across her vision. He was too strong. Too powerful. Blood pooled in the arteries lining her neck, sucking consciousness from her brain. A delirious laugh reverberated through her. “You spent… your life fighting… him. Now you are him.”
Surprise relaxed his features but not his strangling grip. The explosive scream escaping his chest shocked her nervous system. Boucher rocketed his fist into her face. Once. Twice.
