I’d come here to get back everything I had lost. I didn’t care about Kevin. I didn’t care about Khalid and his men. I had defied all the terror and all the hurt of the past year to face the man who had ruined my life, to look into his eyes and know that his nightmare, the one he deserved, was just about to begin. I’d come here to change the game. Take back control. If he died now, none of that would be possible. I’d never be completely exonerated without his confession. Kevin himself would be gone again, as swiftly as he had come, blessedly free of the judgment, the punishment, the suffering that he deserved. The justice.

This was not justice. I did not want this.

But I wasn’t the man with the gun. Dale Bingley was. He raised it to the face of the young man on the floor and thumbed the hammer down with a sickening click.

“How does it feel?” Dale asked. Kevin didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes.

Dale fired.

He fired a number of times. How many, I didn’t know. The gun was big, flashy. Full of kick. Linda was squeezing my neck too hard in his excitement, so that the sounds of Kevin’s death were mere thumps in my oxygen-starved head. Linda let me go and I fell on my hands and knees, gasping for air. When I looked up, Dale was pointing the barrel of the pistol at me.

Khalid didn’t move. Didn’t say anything. Neither did his men. And I knew then, in their stillness, that it had always been about Kevin for these men. They’d wanted to vanquish a monster. To be responsible for another death. They wanted the credit. To be the ones who had given a vengeful father this brutal kindness, to be the ones that could be counted on to provide that kind of justice. Dark heroes. They didn’t care about Dale, or me. Dale’s eyes were empty, as depthless as the single black pupil of the gun. Linda had moved away from me, leaving me to Dale, if he wanted me. I exhaled my last breaths, watching, waiting for this man full of fury to unleash some more of it on me.

He didn’t. I watched, shaking, as he let the gun lower.

Khalid and his stagehands were moving now, the time having come to close their show. Linda dragged me to my feet. Sharon took the gun carefully from Dale’s fingers, struggling to unlock his white knuckles. Khalid was strolling to the body on the floor, a cigarette packet emerging from the salmon-colored silk lining of his jacket. He tapped a cigarette loose and waved it toward me, hardly taking the time to look my way.

“Get him outta here,” Khalid said.