“Do you think I was with Marissa?” he asked quietly. “Do you think I was stabbing her forty-seven times and cutting her throat?”

“Stop it!” she said again, staring into his face and not recognizing him. This man was a stranger to her. She didn’t know what he might do.

“Why?” he asked, enjoying her fear. “Am I scaring you? Do you really think I could do that?”

Sara tried to step sideways to get away from him. He grabbed her arm hard and shouted in her face.

“Answer me! Answer me! Do you think I’m a murderer? Do you?”

“STOP IT!! STOP IT!!” Wendy screamed.

Startled, Steve stepped back as Wendy flung herself at him, hitting him with both fists.

“STOP IT! STOP IT! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!”

“Wendy!” Steve grabbed hold of her and she kicked him and struggled and squirmed.

“Let go of me! I hate you!”

“Don’t say that!”

He dropped down on one knee and tried to gather her close. She swung sideways to evade him, hitting him with her elbow in the bridge of his already broken nose.

Steve fell to the side then came up on his knees, his hands to his face, blood pouring out of his nose, between his fingers and dripping onto the carpet.

Sara caught her daughter as Wendy flung herself against her, sobbing.

“Look what you’ve done,” Sara said as the man who used to be her husband looked up at her with tears in his eyes. “Look what you’ve done to us. Get out. Get out before I call the sheriff’s office.”

And that was end of the fairy tale.

Chapter 54

54

The inky black of night paled to charcoal gray. The rain kept coming down.

Even beneath her trash bag garment Gina felt wet and cold to the bone. She had spent the night shaking, drifting in and out of consciousness. Every time she wanted to let go and sink into a deep sleep, Marissa’s voice shouted her awake.

Stay awake, stay alive!

Gina kept one long stick of the discarded lumber in hand to swat at the rats and mice that crept near, smelling her blood, smelling her fear. Though in the dead of night she was no better off than a blind woman with a white cane, feeling around for danger while danger kept just out of reach.

Over and over during the night she had caught herself thinking this couldn’t possibly really be happening. Marissa couldn’t be dead. And she couldn’t have been attacked by someone she had considered a friend. Yes, she had made a threatening remark, but she never would have followed through on it. She had been out of her head with panic. A true friend would have known that. A true friend wouldn’t have shot her and left her for dead because she had said something stupid.