Elin’s struck by a sharp needle of fear at the wheedling, pleading tone to Ronan’s voice. No, she wants to tell him, don’t try to garner sympathy, because that will make him hate you even more, because you haven’t shown sympathy for him, not the slightest bit. You took from him, everything he had, and now you’re trying to take more.
Tears stream down Caleb’s face. “You dismissed me when I contacted you, tried explaining what the SSSI meant to my father. Like what you’d done—taking my father’s savings, trampling on his fucking dream—meant nothing.” He draws breath. “One bit I never understood was how it doesn’t get to you. How you can’t feel it.” Caleb reaches up a hand to his chest. “Feel it in here. Seth was the same. I thought he might have a shred more moral conscience, but no. People like you, you think that because you’ve got money and power, the rules don’t apply. But I’m making you care now, aren’t I? You deserve every bit of what’s coming to you.”
“But the others didn’t,” Elin says softly. A glimmer of hope; how Caleb’s sharing like this, opening up—it might be enough. The lever she needs. If she can just keep him talking, she might be able to break the spell and help him see the rationale in letting Ronan go free. “Bea and Seth and Jo.”
“Jo?” Caleb’s eyes narrow. “But I didn’t kill her.” He cocks his head, breathing hard. “Is this some part of your strategy, try to confuse me by accusing me of things I haven’t done?”
Another upward jerk of the gun. Ronan shrinks backward.
Elin edges closer. “Caleb, I know what Ronan did was terrible, but by hurting him, you’re also doing something wrong. I know you can see that—”
“Keep away. I mean it.” The gun shifts from Ronan to her and then back again, the barrel shaking because Caleb’s trembling, the muscles in his forearm visibly twitching. “I know I’m doing something wrong. I’m well aware, but you know, it’s right that it ends here, on this rock.” A brittle laugh. “I still can’t believe my poor father believed all that shit, but people believe it for a reason, don’t they?” His words are emerging faster and faster. “It’s a projection; they’re putting the darkest parts of themselves into something else. Strange to call it a safe space, but it is. When you put all the bits of yourself that you hate and fear into a rock like this, it’s no longer a part of you. It’s what my father did.” He shakes his head. “But I know where the darkness really lies. In us. In you. We do bad things. Not some piece of stone.”
Caleb lifts his face to meet hers. For a moment she thinks he’s wavering, his hand loosening around the gun, but then he looks back to Ronan. His gaze hardens, eyes flinty, his expression fixed in a way that’s making her nervous.
He raises his hand a notch, fingers twitching around the gun before he steadies them.
Panic clawing at her chest, Elin reaches out a hand, steps forward, starts to say something, but Caleb’s already compressing the trigger.
A deafening bang.
99
Ronan’s body spasms, an erratic flailing of limbs. Horrified, Elin forces herself to look, expecting Caleb to have aimed for his head or chest, but instead sees blood gushing from a wound in his thigh.
As Caleb steps toward her, she realizes why: he has unfinished business with Ronan. The shot wasn’t fired to kill him, but to immobilize him, so Caleb can come for her.
Panicked, she thinks: Engage him. Make him see you as a person. Not a threat.
But as she opens her mouth to speak, Caleb’s already talking. “I didn’t want to do this.” He swings the gun around to point it at her. “I meant what I said before. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else. This was supposed to be all about Ronan and Seth, but, you know, I haven’t quite finished explaining exactly what he did to my family, and while you’re here, I’m not going to be able to get my words out properly.” He sounds almost apologetic, rueful. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
His finger twitches around the trigger. Another loud bang.
Elin lurches sideways. She doesn’t know where the speed comes from, the strength to move, but it’s not enough.
There’s an almost instantaneous pressure followed by a hot, searing pain, unlike anything she’s ever felt before. A sudden and strange heat overwhelms the left side of her body, as if something fiery is inside her, trying to burn its way through from the inside out.