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Alex heard Annette enunciate each word slowly, never taking her eyes off Jacqueline as she stayed balanced in her stance.
“I can’t,” Alex said, feeling the strength returning to her vocal cords. “She injected me with something.”
“Succinylcholine,” Jacqueline said. “Injected into her arm, it paralyzes her muscles. Injected into her heart, it’ll kill her in seconds.”
There was a brief standoff where none of them moved: Alex lay in bed, Annette was frozen in her shooter’s stance, and Jacqueline was like a statue, holding the full syringe in her hand like a dagger.
“Drop the syringe,” Annette said.
Still no one moved.
“Drop it or I’ll shoot you.”
The stalemate ended when Jacqueline brought the syringe up over her shoulder and then down in a stabbing motion toward Alex’s chest. The blast of the discharging gun echoed off the walls of the motel room, and the sulfurous odor transported Alex’s mind back to the night her family was killed. The night her home smelled like Fourth of July fireworks. She was helpless to stop the images from flooding her system, even as she watched Annette plow into the room, dive across the bed, and ram headfirst into Jacqueline.
CHAPTER 68
Wytheville, Virginia Wednesday, May 31, 2023 11:57 p.m.
FOR A MOMENT, HER MIND PLACED HER BEHIND THE GRANDFATHER clock again, peering around the edge and watching Raymond take one step after another toward their parents’ bedroom.
“Stop,” she tried to whisper.
When her brother continued his trek down the hallway, she spoke louder.
“Stop.”
Her brother continued on.
“Raymond! Stop!”
Alex screamed the words, reaching deep into her core to make them as loud as possible. The effort snapped her mind into a different dimension of consciousness. Suddenly, Raymond was no longer wearing his pajamas or walking toward their parents’ bedroom. Instead, he was dressed in his baseball uniform and standing at home plate, holding a bat high over his right shoulder, waiting for the next pitch. Alex was seated in a lawn chair watching the game like she’d done a thousand times during her childhood. She had worked hard over the years to avoid memories like these. Picturing her little brother as a living, vibrant person brought too much pain and guilt for not doing more for him that night. For years Alex had fought back the guilt of allowing Raymond to walk to their parents’ bedroom that night, rather than running from her own bedroom to stop him. One of the tools she used to beat back the guilt was to avoid thinking of Raymond entirely. But now, somehow, she wanted to think of him. Needed to remember the animated thirteen-year-old she knew him as.
The pitch came and Alex watched Raymond swing the bat. She heard the echoing clink ring out into the afternoon as he smashed the ball into left field. The ball shot between the outfielders and bounced all the way to the fence.
Raymond raced around first base and headed to second.
“Go, Raymond!” Alex cheered.
Her brother cut around second and headed to third just as the center fielder picked up the ball and threw it to the cutoff man.
Alex saw Raymond fly around third base and head for home.
“Go, Raymond!” Alex yelled again as she jumped from her lawn chair and ran to the fence to get a better view.
The cutoff man fired the ball to the catcher, who was crouched over home plate. Alex watched as Raymond scrambled down the third-base line and dove headfirst across home plate just as the ball arrived and the catcher swiped a tag. Then there was silence. The raucously cheering crowd, the umpire and players all went quiet. A plume of dust mushroomed around home plate from Raymond’s headfirst slide, and Alex squinted her eyes to see the conclusion of the play. To see if Raymond was safe or out. But when the dust settled, there was no one there. Raymond had vanished. As had the crowd, and the baseball diamond, and the park.
Alex opened her eyes and was back in the motel room. The burst of adrenaline from cheering for Raymond had brought her body into an upright sitting position. To her left, Annette and Jacqueline were against the wall engaged in a fierce battle, both women flailing and struggling for a dominant position. Alex noticed that Annette’s gun had landed near the bathroom door, and it appeared both of them were attempting to stop the other from retrieving it.
Alex heard a piercing scream come from Jacqueline as the woman stumbled toward the bed, bringing Annette with her. Like a Greco-Roman wrestler, Jacqueline lifted Annette off the ground as she fell backward and rolled over the bed, so that when they hit the floor on the other side of the bed Jacqueline was on top. The move was violent, and the crashing of their bodies shook the bed like an earthquake. Both women began struggling again. Alex saw that the battle was now focused on Jacqueline’s right arm and the syringe still gripped tightly in her hand.
Alex watched as Jacqueline secured a dominant position straddling Annette. She wanted to help, but despite the adrenaline flooding her system she was still fighting to move. A strange but clairvoyant thought entered her mind, and for a moment she believed again that she was dreaming since the image of the page from her physics textbook—the one she had studied from the night her family was killed—came clearly into focus. Newton’s first law played in a loop through her thoughts.
An object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
From her sitting position, Alex threw herself backward, causing the mattress to propel her in the process. She twisted her body to the left when the momentum of the box spring sprang her off the bed. She landed on the floor and rolled toward the bathroom door. She made it far enough so that the gun was within reach. Her muscles were working again, if only in a jerky and uncontrolled fashion. She got to her hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to the gun, gripped the handle in her palm, and fell to her side. She scooted to the wall, turned, and used her legs to bring herself into a sitting position. With her back pressed against the wall, Alex had a clear view over the top of the bed. She saw Jacqueline free her wrist from Annette’s grasp and, in a blurry swift motion, bring the needle down.
The mattress blocked her view. Alex didn’t see where the needle penetrated, only heard Annette’s scream and knew it had connected. Then, silence but for Jacqueline’s heavy breathing. Alex lifted the gun and steadied it. It felt like an anvil in her hands. She saw Jacqueline’s hunched back first, then her head as Jacqueline sat up. Alex considered firing, but her arms were swaying too much for her to believe she’d be accurate.
