But he didn’t. Instead, he glanced at Alistair’s face and that was what made up his mind.

He shifted the weapon around.

Isaac was ready—and he’d expected nothing less.

Both of them pulled their triggers at the same time.

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 49

Grier screamed against the tape that covered her mouth as the gunshots exploded in the kitchen, their echoing blasts making her ears ring and her eyes sting.

She heard two bodies hit the floor, but from her vantage point, she didn’t know who had been hurt.

Someone was moaning.

With her heart thundering, she lifted her head and craned her neck. Matthias was no longer in sight—so he must have been hit. . . . She prayed he’d been hit.

Isaac . . .? Her father . . . ?

Caterpillaring along the floorboards, she inched around the island. The first thing she saw was her father upright in the chair. And he was the one moaning as he fought furiously against the tape around his hands and feet.

Where was Isaac?

Ice-cold dread replaced every ounce of blood in her veins, and she knew the answer to the question even before she saw him lying flat on his back just inside the room.

He wasn’t moving, his gun lying in his lax, open palm, his eyes staring sightlessly up to the ceiling.

Grier screamed again, her body contracting, her cheek squeaking on the varnished floor, her whole soul and everything in her mind denying what was inescapable. Flailing around, she inched toward him, hoping to help, struggling to cross the distance—

Suddenly her hands were free.

With all her thrashing, she’d ripped them out of their bindings. Exploding into unexpected coordination, she tore the tape from her mouth and dragged herself with her arms to Isaac.

The bullet had gone right into his heart.

It was such a small hole through the sweatshirt, nothing but a relative pinprick with a sooty stain around the edges. Except it was more than enough to kill him.

“Isaac,” she said, touching his cold face. “Oh, God . . . don’t go. . . .”

His mouth was slightly open, his pupils fixed and dilated, his breathing shallow to the point of nearly stopping.

He had done it all to save her, the change in plans, the turning himself in. After all, that crazed, evil man had had no reason to lie.

“Isaac . . . I love you. . . . I’m sorry . . .”

His head slowly turned toward her, his eyes struggling to focus. As he appeared to lock on her face, tears licked over that frosty stare, one escaping out of the corner and rolling down his temple to fall onto the floor.

“I . . .”

“I’ll call nine-one-one,” she said in a rush.

Except as she went to jump up for the phone, he caught her arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “No . . .”

“You’re dying—”