Page 195 of The Final Cut

Delia stands frozen two feet away, Isabel’s blood on one sleeve and her own gun still trapped in a grip she doesn’t seem to feel.

Marisol makes a broken sound and reaches for Reva.

Then stops, her hands fluttering.

God, that stop kills me.

She’s spent fifteen years learning not to grab her daughter. Learning that love too fast can become another kind of trap.

Ever looks at her over Reva’s shoulder, face hard. “Now.”

Permission…order…all of it.

Marisol moves.

She takes Reva’s face in her hands first, then lets her palms slide to Reva’s shoulders when her eyes fail to focus. Delia comes next, stumbling one step before she gets there. She drops her gun into Nash’s hand without looking at him and grips Reva’s arm with both hands.

Reva blinks. Once. Twice. Her gaze goes to the floor.

Isabel lies on her side near the pew, eyes open, mouth slack, blood spreading beneath her ribs. One of the Volkov men steps close enough to check her pulse, then looks toward Konstantin, who has reappeared near the side aisle with the stillness of a man who watched history happen and decided not to interrupt.

His man gives the smallest tip of his chin.

Dead.

Isabel del Rosario is dead on church stone beneath saints who look neither surprised nor impressed.

Reva makes a sound.

I get to her then.

Ever doesn’t let go, which is wise because I’m not sure she’s standing on purpose. I come in front of her, blocking her view of the body with mine. Delia is on one side. Marisol on the other. Ever behind. Nash near Delia, gun secured, eyes scanning the room. Deacon has already moved to Isabel, not out of concern. He checks the body, then the guard, then every face still present.

No one steps in. No one cries for Isabel. That says more than any words could.

“Yank.”

Reva’s eyes move to me, slow and distant.

“I shot her.”

“You sure did.”

“She reached for Delia’s gun. She said she was…Cal⁠—”

“I heard her. We all heard her.”

Her lower lip trembles once, and then her face twists with something too large for one expression. Horror. Relief. Grief. Rage with nowhere to go now that the woman who held it is bleeding on the floor.

“I shot her,” she says again.

Delia’s grip tightens on her arm. “Good.”

Marisol flinches. Reva looks at her sister.

Delia’s eyes are wet and vicious. “Good,” she repeats, voice shaking now. “She reached for my gun. She threatened Cal. She threatened you. Good.”

The word breaks at the end. Reva’s breath stutters. Then Delia is holding her.