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Throbbing soreness gave way to crunching bone. Blood filled her mouth and gushed down the back of her throat. The third strike came. Leigh dropped to her knees, doing everything in her power to stay alert. But it hurt too much.
“You’re wrong.” Heaving inhales nearly drowned the rush of rising water. Boucher stood over her, made of punishment and revenge and duty. He unholstered the gun at his side. She wasn’t going to win against him. Not head-on. And he knew it. “I’m nothing like him. Nothing.”
Her fingertips brushed an array of debris beneath the surface, and she took one in her hand. It wasn’t much, but it’d have to be enough. “Whatever you have to tell yourself to get to sleep.”
She stabbed the broken chunk of cement into the side of his thigh.
Boucher wrenched away. His bellow threatened to puncture her eardrums, but the distraction gave her time to go for the gun.
Leigh twisted it from his hand. Only she wasn’t fast enough. His knee intercepted and knocked it free from her hold. The sidearm disappeared into the water, and she lunged. Stinging pain aggravated her scalp as Boucher fisted her hair.
“You can’t win, Brody. Because you’re not willing to do what needs to be done.” He forced her to stare up at him from her knees. “That’s why you couldn’t stop Chris Ellingson. That’s why you couldn’t help your brother. That’s why you’ve spent your entire life on the sidelines instead of in the field. You think you can save people from predators by picking out patterns and shit? You can’t even save yourself, but me? I’m the only one who went to the source to get my son back. I do what needs doing. What do you think I’ll do to you?”
The water grew angry then. The exterior wall fell to pieces in a matter of seconds and vanished into the river. A tidal wave slammed into them, and suddenly she was back under water. The water’s temperature wasn’t such a shock the second time, but she was helpless against the river’s pull. Boucher’s hand released from her hair, and she slammed against the abandoned work bench. Latching on to one of the cabinet doors, Leigh got her feet back under her.
Boucher struggled to haul himself up a large piece of machinery. He was right. She hadn’t been able to bring down Chris Ellingson. And she’d failed Troy. She should’ve come back to Lebanon sooner. She should’ve faced her fears instead of letting them lead her deeper into obsession. But investigating this case, surviving Donavon Pierce’s threats, battling the hollow ache that’d taken over every time she’d stepped foot in her childhood home, realizing her father had given up hope—it’d all built up to this. To this moment. To the only person standing between Gabriel Boucher and his next victim.
And she would have to be enough.
The lieutenant got to his feet. Blood trailed down one side of his face from a laceration at his temple.
Leigh dragged a piece of rebar from beneath the water’s surface and waded toward him. Exhaustion doubled the weight of her legs and intensified the pain in her face. Broken nose. Maybe a cheekbone. But she couldn’t let it stop her. “I might not have been strong enough then, but you have no idea what I’m capable of now. Gabriel Boucher, you are under arrest for the murder of Gresham Schmidt, Michelle Cross, Roxanne Jennings, Chris Ellingson, and the attempted murder of two federal agents. You have the right?—”
Boucher laughed. The full sound that pooled dread at the base of her spine. “We’re way past that, Brody.” He launched his fist into her stomach. “Come on now. Show me what you got.”
Air vacated at the contact and doubled her forward. The rebar slid through her fingers. She stumbled back to put distance between them as her lungs tried to remember how to function.
Then swung the steel as hard as she could.
He caught her wrist a split second before contact. She released her grip, letting the rebar drop. And caught it with her opposite hand. A single step forward. That was all it took for the tip to penetrate the flesh of his gut. The metal tore through muscle and skin and came out the other side, pinning him into the spokes of the machinery at his back.
Boucher’s exhale brushed the underside of her jaw.
His blood ran over her hands and dripped into the surge of water coming between them. She didn’t have the capacity to process what’d just happened and let go, nearly tripping over debris behind her. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “We had the proof, Boucher. We had him. He was going to pay for what he did. He was going to pay for everything, but you…” She motioned toward him. “You had to become this.”
His ragged breathing silenced the destruction raging around them. “It wasn’t good enough. Nothing would’ve been good enough.”
Maybe not. Maybe Chris Ellingson hadn’t suffered enough for what he’d done to his victims over and over. Maybe Boucher was exactly the punishment her brother’s murderer deserved. But it didn’t make it right. It didn’t fix all the loss and grief and anger plaguing this town.
But it was over.
The next corner of the building took that moment to collapse. Another wave was coming. One that might finally kill them both. Leigh waded through floating stretches of wood and plaster toward the body face down a few feet away. Chandler. She flipped him onto his back. No signs of life. She tipped his chin back. “Come on, Chandler. Breathe.”
“Don’t you do it, Brody. Don’t you dare tell them it was me.” Boucher struggled against the rebar skewering him. He gripped the end and pulled. “Don’t let them take it out on my son!”
She dipped beneath the surface of the water to set Chandler over her shoulder. But the bullet wound wasn’t having it. The wave rolled across the room, bringing at least another six inches of water with it.
Boucher saw it coming. He shoved himself forward, pushing the rebar through his back in a vain attempt to get free. “Brody!”
Leigh fisted the investigator’s jacket and dragged him toward the door that was no longer there. Weeds and mud seeped through the opening. The building was still hanging on for dear life. She just needed it to stand a little while longer. They were almost there.
A strong hand wrenched her backward and shoved her beneath the water.
She kicked as Boucher’s hands found her throat, but it was no use. He was too strong. Chandler’s weight pinned one side of her body down. She gave up trying to dislodge Boucher’s strangling hold and went for his face. Her fingernails gouged into his skin, but it made no difference. Murky water filled her mouth and drove down the back of her throat, but there was nowhere for it to go.
His grip tightened.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
