Chapter Thirty-Four
Rebecca had never heard gunfire before. At least not up close and personal. She had no idea how loud it was. She couldn’t help but notice the intense ringing that lingered in her ears long after the shot had died away. Even as she climbed off Tom and ran to Justyn’s side, she could still hear the ringing. Along the way, she fully expected a second shot to take her down. She almost hoped it would. If anyone should have been hurt, it should have been her. Not Justyn.
At first, when she dropped down on her knees beside Justyn, she thought maybe Debbie had missed. She didn’t see any blood, and he was still conscious, though he was paler than the palest shade of white. But too soon that fantasy was dashed. The blood hadn’t been visible until after it had soaked through his black t-shirt and began to steadily drip into a puddle on the floor. Justyn watched it drip with the same kind of startled disbelief that Rebecca felt.
“She . . . she shot me,” he muttered.
“You’re going to be okay,” Rebecca told him, and could only hope it was the truth. She also hoped he wasn’t picking up on the hysterical edge in her voice. “You’re going to be just fine.”
“It . . .it . . . hurts.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, Rebecca wasn’t sure that it really did hurt. She even had the brief, crazy notion that he was just playing a trick on her; getting her back for all the times she had doubted him. She would have forgiven him if he were. Anything would have been better than the uncontrollable spasms that started to rack his body. The more she tried to hold him down, the more his body shook and trembled. She struggled to unbind his wrists, but his spasmodic movements were making it impossible for her to get a good grip on him.
Shock, she thought. He must be going into shock.
The fact that she was getting that information from reruns of ER didn’t make her feel overly confident about her diagnosis. But shock was better than dying. Justyn couldn’t be dying. That just wasn’t a possibility that Rebecca was willing to consider.
She wished someone would help her. Anyone. In the background, she could hear Tom breathing heavily as he watched the drama unfold. Helpless to assist her, Rebecca realized, because Debbie was standing beside him with a huge smile on her face and the gun aimed at his chest. She was watching Rebecca’s struggle with the true enjoyment of the deranged.
It was probably only a few seconds, even though it seemed like hours, before Justyn’s body startled to relax. The violent shaking eased into an occasional shudder. He seemed relaxed, almost peaceful.
It scared Rebecca to death.
“Becca,” he whispered.
His voice was so soft, so weak. He reached up his hand to try to touch her cheek, but he didn’t even have the energy for that. Rebecca lifted his hand for him, touching the fingers to her lips. Her tears mingled with his blood. She was crying. Crying because her heart was breaking.
“Don’t you dare say goodbye to me,” she ordered.
“Becca . . . I . . . I . . . love . . . .” His eyes slipped closed before he could even finish the sentence.
“No!” Rebecca cried. “No, no, no, no, no! You can’t do this to me, Justyn! You can’t!”
“Oh, how sad.”
Debbie’s voice was probably the only thing that could have pulled Rebecca out of the deep chasm of grief she was starting to fall into. It was only her anger, her fury, her rage that gave her the strength to give Justyn one final kiss on the cheek before standing to face her former friend. The fact that she saw the slight rise and fall of his chest—knowing that he was still alive—empowered her even more. But she didn’t have much time.
All feelings of guilt were gone. The slight pangs of sympathy she had felt for Debbie was also gone, replaced by the nagging need for revenge. Debbie had hurt Justyn. Debbie had to pay. But first, Rebecca was going to have to somehow gain control over the situation. She was going to have to get the gun.
She could see Tom out of the corner of her eye. Now that Debbie had turned her attention away from him and back to Rebecca, he was trying to send her some kind of secret signal. He was waving one finger, pointing it first at Debbie and then at himself. Rebecca wished they had an interpreter. They didn’t have time for games anymore. Justyn didn’t have time.
“Are you happy now, Debbie?” Rebecca demanded. “Another death on your conscience?”
“Happy? How can I be happy, Becca, when I don’t have the one I love?”
There was a whole string of four-letter words Rebecca had never even thought about using before that suddenly seemed appropriate. It took a lot of self-control not to scream them at the top of her lungs—harder still to keep from flinging herself, claws barred, towards Debbie’s unsuspecting face. But a plan was starting to formulate in her mind—one that wasn’t quite as kamikaze. Tom just needed time, and a distraction. And Rebecca was just the one to give it to him.
“Did you even think of just telling me, Debbie?” Rebecca forced her voice to sound sympathetic. “If I had known . . . .”
“What if you had known, Becca?” Debbie interrupted. “What? You would have loved me back? You would have suddenly changed your sexual orientation?”
“You never gave me the chance. Maybe if you had, I would have felt something more . . . something more than just friendship.”
The crazed look in Debbie’s eyes softened to an almost whimsical twinkle. “And if I gave you the chance now . . . would you . . . oufff!”
Debbie was cut off in mid-sentence when the full bulk of Tom’s weight crashed into her midsection, in pure football tackle style. The two of them crashed to the ground and scuffled around on the floor for less than a minute. But Debbie was quick to recover, and Tom was already hurt. She never lost her grip on the gun. She had the advantage. She swiftly kicked Tom in the groin, and before he could even double over, she hit him hard in the temple with the edge of the gun.
Rebecca wouldn’t let herself cry out or run to his side as he slipped to the ground, unconscious. Tom was out. Justyn might not even be breathing anymore, for all she knew. Rebecca was on her own. She needed to keep her one small advantage. She had to let Debbie think she had a chance. If she lost that edge for even a minute, they were all going to be dead.
“Having four older brothers can have its advantages,” Debbie said smugly as she pulled herself to her feet, completely unscathed. “So tell me, Becca. Were you a part of that little escapade? Did you know that your hero, Tom, was going to attack me like the territorial animal that he is?”
“No,” Rebecca said. She was never very good at lying. She hoped it didn’t show on her face. “No, of course not! I wouldn’t let him hurt you, Deb. Never.”
Rebecca was doing her best to hold it together. To not let the overwhelming desire to break down into hysterics take over. She had to stay calm. She had to stay on track. She was the only hope to save Justyn, who was coming closer and closer to bleeding to death with every second that passed. She needed to keep Debbie talking. She needed to stay in control. And she needed to figure out who was hiding in the shadows behind the curtains before Debbie noticed they were there.
A shadow was all she saw—a dim figure lurking in the darkness. Were they a friend or foe? She had no way to tell. Was it possible that Debbie had an accomplice? She didn’t seem to need one. She was doing pretty well solo. She was strong enough that she could take on a teenage boy in hand-to-hand combat. But if it wasn’t Debbie’s phantom assistant, than who was it? She started to wonder if maybe the whole thing was an illusion brought on by severe stress and the very real desire for someone to come to her rescue. But Rebecca couldn’t get that lucky. No one was coming to help her.
Then she saw a flash of black hair, and she knew. She knew who it was. Her would-be savior was Carmen!
Rebecca felt a little weak in the knees as relief washed over her. Carmen peered at them through the curtain, and put a finger to her lips. Rebecca did her best to keep her face blank, to try not to alert Debbie to the new arrival. For one glorious moment, she thought her prayers had been answered, but then reality set in. It was just Carmen—tiny, little Carmen. She was barely one hundred pounds. No match for Debbie when the boys couldn’t take her, even if she didn’t have a gun.
“Never?” Debbie was asking. “You’d never let Tom hurt me? Even if I killed your boyfriend?”
Rebecca forced herself to tear her eyes away from Carmen. She also had to remind herself that trying to gouge Debbie’s eyes out at the moment would be considerably suicidal. Just the fact that she dared to mention Justyn at all made her furious all over again. But she couldn’t give herself or Carmen away. She couldn’t let Carmen get killed, too. Besides, she had to keep Debbie talking—keep her on track.
“My girlfriends will always come before some guy,” Rebecca told her. She almost choked on the next words. “I . . . I love you, Deb. More than you know.”
“Love me?” Debbie was skeptical. “As a friend, you mean?”
Carmen had vanished into the shadows. Rebecca wasn’t sure what she would do. But she decided that she needed to distract Debbie as much as possible. That was their only chance. And there was only one way she could think of to do it—only one way that she could keep her attention away from whatever Carmen was planning and save all their lives.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought, in fact in was downright revolting. Not because Debbie was a girl, but because she was a cold blooded murderer. But when she stole a glance in Justyn’s direction and saw the puddle of blood beside his chair was spreading, she knew she had to do what she had to do. She had to bring to life to final scene of Phantom one last time.
“Maybe . . . maybe we could be . . . more than friends.” Rebecca offered.
A brief glimmer of hope crossed Debbie’s face before it hardened once again. “Liar. You can’t mean that.”
“No.” Rebecca shook her head. “Let me show you. Let me prove it.”
Debbie was skeptical. “How?”
Rebecca swallowed hard. She thought that under other circumstances, this might have been exciting—a forbidden thrill. But there was no excitement now, just a deep-rooted horror.
“Let me . . . let me kiss you. Let’s see if I feel anything.”
“You want to kiss me?”
What she really wanted to do was run screaming in the other direction, but she forced herself to give a different answer. “If you’d like me to . . . .”
Carmen had moved into the light. She was no longer behind the cover of the stage curtain. She was armed, but Rebecca had to wonder if it would possibly be enough. Debbie would really have to be preoccupied for Carmen to be able to sneak up on her. Which meant Rebecca would have to be really convincing. Her acting abilities would be seriously put to the test.
“I’ll kill you if you try anything. I’ll kill you if I even think you’re trying to trick me.”
Love or no love, Rebecca knew she meant it. “I’m not trying to trick you,” she lied. “Let me show you.”
She inched a little closer, taking slow, tentative steps. Debbie’s hand was dangerously close to the trigger. One wrong move and she was dead. Debbie watched her with obvious longing as she moved forward. Gently, as lovingly as she could manage, she lifted a hand to stroke her former friend’s cheek. The mist of tears that filled her eyes might have seemed like touching emotion, but it was really only blind fear. Yet, she knew she had to be as tender as possible. It was a struggle to keep her voice steady, but she repeated the lines she had sung to Justyn in the finale of the play, hoping it would make her seem all the more sincere.
“Sad creature trapped in the darkness.
A life filled with pain is all you ever knew.
But know this, my dark tortured angel.
A part of me will always love you.”
Even as the last note echoed off the high ceiling of the tiny room, Rebecca leaned over and kissed her. She pressed her lips against Debbie’s with a desperation she hoped would be interpreted as passion. She didn’t allow herself to shy away as her mouth was urged open, and Debbie’s tongue began a tentative exploration. She forced her hands to lift so we could wrap her arms around Debbie’s shoulders, pulling her closer, making her a more open target for Carmen.
Rebecca knew Debbie’s eyes were closed in ecstasy because her eyes were wide open. There was no way that Debbie could have seen Carmen sneaking up behind them with a heavy, black candelabra in hand. She had no idea anything was happening at all until that cast iron candelabra came down hard on the top of her head. Then Rebecca and Debbie’s kiss ended abruptly as, with a groan, Debbie slumped lifelessly to the ground.