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He might have heard, but he sure as hell wasn’t making it easy. Twice Nico tried to return to Frank’s care and twice he shook him off.
“Don’t make me knock you out,” he warned on the third.
Frank grabbed him by the shirtfront, jerked him close. “She’s g-getting away. She’ll come after you again. After her.” Quiet but intense, Frank’s words penetrated Nico’s conviction like a, well, like the bullet currently lodged in his own flesh. “Go!” he whispered.
Nico hated the idea. He battled with himself—and with Frank —for a good minute or two more, before finally succumbing to the pressure. “You promise to be here when I get back?”
Frank gave a slight chuckle. “S-sure thing, kid.”
“Stubborn asshole.”
“Go,” he said again, so Nico did.
Cursing, he retrieved his flashlight from the ground and walked away, knowing full well it might be the last time he ever saw his new partner alive again.
Anger boiled inside him as he flew through brush and undergrowth, rage and hatred for Esme Riley. She had hurt too many people, caused too much suffering, and for what? So that the world might get a taste of the pain she felt every day? It wasn’t good enough. It was nowhere near good enough. There was a time when Nico ached to take that pain away for her, to see the years reversed and her daughter alive again. But the world wasn’t fair, and the time for gentle understanding for what she’d experienced was over. Not one, but two people that Nico had come to think of as family had now been infected with her poison, not to mention the women she’d murdered without remorse. Frank and Lexie would never be the same as long as they lived. If they lived, he corrected himself, thinking of Frank lying back there, bleeding out alone. He powered on, sniffing and blinking back the unbidden tears that burned behind his lids. Now was not the time.
Before long, Nico reached a clearing. Adrenaline took the edge off his aching thigh as he cautiously waded through the light blanket of fog that coated the earth beneath his feet. Grass and wildflowers grew freely, their color and vibrancy beautiful even under the harsh fluorescent glow of his flashlight. Not that any of it grabbed his attention for more than a nanosecond, because right in the middle of all of it, sat a granite headstone. Nico faltered, reading the name. The words, Beloved daughter, were engraved in cursive underneath the larger block font, with a winged angel hovering above. This was where they buried Sara. Esme leaned against it; her legs curled beneath her. Nico adjusted the grip on his gun and approached. Despite his intention to unleash hell, the sight of her like this tore every wound open again, deflated every ounce of hot air within him. Looking at her like this, all he felt was tired. Esme looked at him through hooded eyes, squinting into the beam of light, exhaustion and defeat carved into her aging features. Her dark hair was a muss of dry, graying strands. One bloodied hand gripped Lexie’s gun. Her skin shone with sweat and the bleached complexion of a dying person even as she hissed viciously.
“Come to finish my family off?” she asked.
Nico didn’t flinch. He felt the urge, but his emotional well had run dry. There was nothing left. “It’s over, Esme.”
She huffed, closed her eyes. “You should never have come here—”
“Stop.” Nico shook his head. “Don’t try to lay blame on me for the things that you’ve done. Don’t you dare.”
Esme glared. In truth, he did regret his presence having been the thing that pushed her over the edge, but that’s as far as it went. He did not regret coming, nor would he allow himself to add any more guilt to the heavy load already on his shoulders. He just wouldn’t.
“The gun,” Nico said in the calmest, most collected tone he could muster. Though weak and wounded, she’d already proven herself capable and more than willing to use it. And it was still in her hand. “Now.”
She hesitated. Nico tensed.
“You don’t deserve to be happy. She doesn’t deserve it.”
“Shut your mouth,” Nico snapped. “Don’t talk about her like you know her.”
Esme’s sudden sob caught Nico off guard, her face crinkling into the ugly cry of utter heartbreak. She wailed and moaned, the sound raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Nico locked onto her movements, tracked her every motion. She had nothing to lose now. He acknowledged how dangerous that made her as he demanded again that she give up the gun.
Esme’s head fell forward, and she gazed at the revolver in her hand—the same one that had left a gaping hole in Frank’s body, and possibly, in Nico’s life if he died.
“I told you,” she whispered, then pierced him with cold, hard eyes. “I will mourn forever.”
With a speed Nico wouldn’t have thought her capable of, Esme lifted the gun.
But Nico was faster.
He felt the bullet whiz past his ear at the same time he fired two shots into her chest. Esme went limp. The thud of the dropped weapon landing on the grassy floor between them hung heavy in the air, and shouts from reinforcements reverberated through the clearing. Nico took a relieved step back.
I will mourn forever.
Esme’s last words drifted through Nico’s mind one last time as she died on her daughter’s grave. He watched the life leave her eyes and hoped she found peace, for this adversary was not some villain driven by greed or cruelty or a misplaced sense of self-righteousness. She was a mother, angry at herself for the choices she’d made and the nightmare they had led to. Through loss, she had become a monster, and now the monster was slain. Nico let the knowledge that no more death would come in the name of Sara Riley wash over his aching heart and quell the rage that had lived there ever since she’d died. Perhaps, if he was lucky, one day it would also heal his guilt for lives lost and mistakes made.
Chapter thirty-one
“How is she today?”
From some faraway place, Lexie registered Annie’s voice wafting through the murky haze.
