He had the gun and his eyes on me. He was wrong. All wrong. And all that wrong came from his eyes.

As Brock would say, he was whacked. It shone out of his eyes. Clear as day. It shone straight from his eyes.

How could Bree not see that?

Or maybe he hid it from her.

But he wasn’t hiding it from me.

And it scared me nearly senseless.

Not senseless enough not to pay attention. Not senseless enough not to note exactly where we were, in Englewood, in an old cracker box house on a big lot that was mostly muddy earth from the snow melt, dead weeds, lots of big trees. I thought it was a weird place to take me. It was a neighborhood, populated, and as the afternoon wore on, it would be more populated.

People could hear me scream.

But I didn’t scream.

He did.

He was whacked.

He’d killed Damian, shot him right in the face. He’d shot two other men, one I knew was dead, the other might be. He hated Brock.

So he’d shoot me.

But he wanted to play with me first. I knew this. I knew he wanted Brock to live with that for the rest of his life. He might leave me breathing after or he might not.

But he wasn’t going to play with me for long. I knew this too. He was an old guy, for one. He couldn’t have that in him anymore. And also, he didn’t care if he was caught. He’d shot three men in the parking lot of Park Meadows Mall. People had to see, to hear. He was going to do what he was going to do to make Brock pay and he wasn’t going to waste any time.

When I didn’t answer, his voice calmed and he ordered, “Take off your clothes.”

I went still.

No, he wasn’t going to waste any time.

This couldn’t happen to me again. It couldn’t. It couldn’t happen to me again. I wasn’t sure I could survive it. Not even with Brock at my back when it was done, if I was left breathing. I wasn’t even sure we could survive it, not from what I knew of Brock, his capacity for loyalty and love, knowing he’d brought this down on me. It would undo him. So even if I survived, he might not.

“Take off… your fuckin’… clothes,” he semirepeated and I stared at him.

He moved the gun an inch to the side and squeezed the trigger.

I screamed and jumped as the gunshot sounded loud in the room, the bullet embedding in the wall behind me.

God, please God, someone hear that.

“Take off your clothes,” he again repeated.

I shook my head.

“No,” I whispered and he blinked.

“What?” he asked.