“I had to. Adam discovered the cure ten years from now, but it was still brand-new and untested and not available to the public yet. I wasn’t sure how many years it would take for it to be safe to use and widely available, so I secretly set the accelerator back to its previous setting. I figured in thirty years it should be easy for Adam—or his future self—to get the cure.”

“But why kill us?” I ask, inching closer to her. “You got your cure!”

She sighs, and I hear the first hint of emotion in her voice. “I never planned for any of this to happen, truly. Trent stole my doses of the cure, and when I went to talk to him, he said he didn’t have them. But then he attacked me and I shot him. It was an accident, I swear. After that…well, I had to deal with the others too.”

“You killed them,” I spit out. “They trusted you, and you killed them!”

“I just wanted the cure back! My daughter…she only has weeks left to live. Maybe days. Do you know what it’s like, watching your four-year-old child wither away in a hospital bed, and there’s nothing you can do? The cure was the only way to save her life!”

“But you have the cure now. I won’t tell anyone about this,” I lie as the wind twists my hair behind me. “You don’t need to do this!”

“I’m sorry, Elena. I like you. I really do. But once you came to me with the evidence, I had to stop you from going public with it. I don’t want to kill you, but this is the only way to tie up all the loose ends.”

My life is just a loose end to her. I want to shout at her that I’m a person, just like the others she killed, with goals and dreams and a future of my own. But something catches her gaze along the beach, and for a second the gun dips down. This is my chance.

I rush her, slamming against her with my weight. A sharp cry escapes me as the pain in my side spikes from the impact. We go down and struggle in the sand, wrestling for the gun. But then she hits me in the ribs and I scream, pain crashing through me like a tidal wave. She whips the gun against my face, and I’m knocked on my back, momentarily stunned.

She kneels over me, pressing the gun to my temple. I dig my fingers in the sand, but my head spins and everything hurts, and I know this is the end, this is how she’ll make it look like I killed myself.

“Lynne—” I start, but then I see someone behind her, a dark figure against the dark sky.

“Lynne!” Adam says. “What—”