CHAPTER 14 — THE LAST THREAT
People scattered across the courthouse steps.
Detective Hale drew his weapon.
Richard fired again.
The bullet struck a stone column beside my head.
I pulled Vanessa behind a parked news van.
She was bleeding from the shoulder.
“Stay with me,” I said.
Richard’s voice rang across the plaza.
“Emily!”
He sounded almost joyful.
“Come out, and I let the others live.”
Police officers moved into position.
Richard had strapped something beneath his coat.
Hale saw it too.
An explosive vest.
Richard had no intention of leaving alive.
Margaret appeared at the courthouse doors.
Richard turned toward her.
“You ruined everything,” he shouted.
Margaret did not hide.
“No, Richard. You ruined it the moment you believed loving someone meant owning them.”
His face twisted.
“You chose her over me.”
“I chose both my daughters.”
For the first time, Vanessa heard Margaret call us that together.
Her fingers tightened around mine.
Richard raised the rifle toward Margaret.
I stepped from behind the van.
“Richard.”
He looked at me.
“You wanted me here. I’m here.”
Hale whispered for me to get down.
I kept walking.
Richard’s attention stayed fixed on me.
“You are my daughter,” he said.
“Biology did not make you my father.”
“I watched you your entire life.”
“You hunted me.”
“I protected you.”
“You threatened to kill me.”
“I wanted you to come home.”
I stopped twenty feet away.
“This was never my home.”
His hand moved toward the detonator.
Vanessa suddenly stepped into the open behind me.
Even wounded, she stood upright.
“You told me Emily abandoned us,” she said.
Richard glanced at her.
“You told Emily Mom hated her. You told Mom Laura had left. You told Laura her baby was dead.”
Her voice strengthened.
“You built your entire life by making women believe they had no one but you.”
Richard raised the rifle.
Vanessa continued.
“But now we have each other.”
Margaret moved beside her.
Laura joined them.
The four of us stood facing him.
Not divided.
Not frightened into silence.
A family he could no longer control.
Richard’s thumb pressed against the detonator.
Detective Hale fired.
The bullet struck Richard’s wrist.
The detonator fell.
Officers rushed him before he could reach it.
The bomb squad disabled the vest.
Richard screamed my name while they dragged him toward an armored vehicle.
Not Vanessa’s.
Not Margaret’s.
Mine.
Because I was the one thing he had never managed to possess.
As paramedics lifted Vanessa into an ambulance, she caught my hand.
“There’s something else,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Mom’s will.”
“It’s already been read.”
“Not all of it.”
May you like
She pulled a folded note from inside her coat.
“There’s a final condition. And it decides whether either of us keeps the company.”
