The darts struck Larkin in the chest and 50,000 volts of electricity immediately locked and paralyzed his muscles. His jaw clenched, he made some kind of pained sound in his throat, and the SIG fell from his hand as he stumbled backward into the wall covered with one man’s sick obsession. Larkin knew, logically, that the current of electricity would only last five seconds, but it’d already felt like it’d been five fucking years, and he couldn’t react, couldn’t move, could only grit his teeth through the hurt.

Doyle was shouting, “Drop the weapon!”

The girl was sobbing louder.

“Drop the goddamn taser!”

Gary warbled something, protested something, screamed something.

Then Larkin was hit with a second round of darts, and he immediately collapsed to the floor.

—a cannonball off the dock, the lake swallowing him whole, the water growing colder, darker, more and more pressure squeezing his ribs, his lungs, sinking down, down, down—

“Move out of the way!”

—Noah standing on the bottom, sand and silt washing through his blond hair, watching with disapproval as Larkin slammed down on the lakebed like a cut anchor, oxygen knocked from his lungs, water filling him, choking him—

A deafening gunshot in close quarters.

—thunder crashing overhead, mud sloppy underfoot, Larkin’s skull fracturing, a crack so loud that he was deafened by it, and Patrick lay with his own head caved in, green eyes watching Larkin as Noah piled sediment atop his body like a gravedigger at work—

“Larkin? Evie? Evie, can you hear me?”

—underwater currents twisted Larkin’s body, dragged him away from Patrick, from Noah, and he was screaming, but it was only water in his lungs, and then a wave grabbed him up like God’s fist, hurled him toward the sun, its reflection like shattered glass seen from the underside, and Doyle was on the dock, calling Larkin’s name over and over and over—

“Rush the bus!” Doyle was shouting, but it sounded distant, muffled, like his voice was inverting on itself.

Then everything went quiet.

And finally… Larkin could rest.

CHAPTER TEN

—“Do you think we’ll be together forever, Everett?” Patrick asked.

But when Larkin looked at their joined hands resting on the planks of the dock, his silver wedding band glinted in the sunshine. Larkin raised his gaze and Patrick glitched, twitched, his handsome, forever-boyish face suddenly Noah’s face. Noah had on the suit he’d worn the day they’d gotten married.

“’Til death do us part,” Noah said.—

No, that wasn’t how the memory played out.

—Patrick leaned in and Noah kissed Larkin—

No.

—thunder crashed, lightning cast ghostly flickers in the closed up bathroom, and Doyle reached into the water, pulling Larkin—

No, no, no, there hadn’t been water.

—Doyle hoisted Larkin’s limp body from the tub and laid him on his side just as Larkin began to profusely vomit—

Larkin opened his eyes.