How can I distract him? What can I hit him with? The fire extinguisher! It’s right over there!
Seeing me looking around in panic, Michael suddenly screams, “You’re with the CIA, too!”
“She’s just scared,” says Aidan. “You’re pointing a gun at her. Anyone would be scared.”
Panting, Michael hisses, “You’re not scared.”
“That’s because of my CIA training. Kayla, get the fuck off this boat.”
Goddammit, Aidan, no! No! Stop this!
Tears stream down my face. My vision is blurred by them. My breathing is labored. I take a halting step backward, then another, hysteria gripping me in a cold, crushing hand.
I can call 9-1-1. If I can make it to the house and Aidan can keep Michael talking, I can call the police and get them here before anything awful happens.
I stop short when Michael says in the barest of whispers, “No. She’s in the CIA, too. I see it on your face.” He looks at me. His voice rises. “You both have to die!”
When I sob and clap my hands over my mouth, Aidan says in a commanding voice, “Nobody has to die. Just put the gun down and we can talk about it.”
Rocking back and forth from foot to foot, his hand shaking and all the whites of his eyes showing, Michael screams, “One of you has to die you have to choose right now who dies who dies who dies if you don’t choose I have to kill you both!”
He points the gun at me again. He points it right at my face. The only reason I don’t topple over is because terror has turned my muscles to stone.
Aidan says, “If we choose, you’ll only shoot one of us?”
My heart stops beating then. It stops dead in my chest, stalled by horror. “No, Aidan, stop it, don’t say another word—”
“Michael?”
“Aidan, no! Stop it!”
Michael screams, “Yes!” and cocks the hammer of the pistol with his thumb.
Aidan looks at me. His heart shines in his eyes. He says softly, “I love you, bunny. I’ll love you until the end of time.”
Then he looks back at Michael and says words I’ll never be able to unhear. They’ll echo in my head for all eternity.
“Shoot me, then.”
Time changes. Everything takes on the surreal quality of a dream. I see what happens next unfold in front of me like a movie played in slow motion with the sound warped and the colors blurred, dragging by at half speed.
Michael swings his arm toward Aidan.
Aidan lunges.
A fireball explodes from the end of Michael’s gun.
Aidan’s head snaps back.
The forward motion of his body stops abruptly, as if he’s been slammed against a wall.
A small red hole appears in the center of his forehead.
Blood and chunks of brain matter splatter the window behind him.
He falls back, his eyes open and his mouth slack.
Collapsing onto the sofa, he lies still and silent, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling as a dark stain creeps across the beige cushion under his head.
In the night sky above us, fireworks burst into sprays of color with a crackle and boom.
My scream is a living thing. A creature of horror, disbelief, and heartbreak, clawing its way up my throat. I fly across the space between us with that scream surrounding me everywhere, vibrating in my ears and in my head, inside all the hidden sacred places in my soul that only he has ever touched.
I fall on top of Aidan’s lifeless body, screaming and screaming the same thing over and over, the thing every cell in my body screams along with me.
No. No. No. No. No.
He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t respond to any of my desperate pleas or the kisses I rain over his cheeks and lips.
He can’t.
He’s gone.
Sobbing hysterically, I cling to him until something hard and heavy bashes me in the back of the head.
Pain shoots through my skull. I see stars. For a moment, my vision goes black.
When light fills my eyes again, I’m on my back and Michael is dragging me by my wrists across the wood deck toward the swim step at the back of the boat.
My words come out slurred. “Michael. What are you doing?”
I can’t make out what he mumbles to himself. It’s incoherent, babbling nonsensical words spoken between labored breaths as he drags me away from Aidan’s body. I try to pull my wrists from his grip, but don’t have the strength.
Hot liquid trickles down my neck. Blood. He must’ve hit me with something heavy.
The gun. He pistol whipped me with the gun.
More fireworks explode overhead. I see them above us, starbursts of color painting the midnight sky like the domed roof of a cathedral. Smoke drifts over the water. Somewhere far away, a dog barks.