The Bone House - Brian Freeman [135]
'What did I do?' Mark asked.
'You killed Glory.'
'No.'
'You killed Peter Hoffman.'
'No.'
'You think I believe you?' Troy demanded loudly. 'You're a liar trying to save his skin.'
'Troy, listen to me. I didn't do those things.'
'Bullshit. Everybody knows you did.'
Mark spread his arms wide. If Troy wanted to be a man, then Mark would treat him like one. 'OK, you better shoot me. If I really killed them, I'm a monster, and I have to be stopped.'
Troy hesitated. 'You don't think I can do it, do you?' he asked, his voice puffed up with nervous bravado.
'I know you can,' Mark told him. 'If you really believe that I could do those things - that I could strangle your girlfriend on a beach in Florida, that I could take a shotgun and blow off an old man's head - then you need to shoot me now.'
Mark could barely see the boy's face in the darkness. He couldn't see if he was reaching him. He watched the gun, which was still aimed at his chest at point-blank range. One pulse, one twitch of Troy's finger, and the bullet would sear through Mark's body.
'I - I don't know,' Troy murmured.
'This is what men do, Troy. We do what's right. We take responsibility. You need to look into my eyes and tell me you know that I'm guilty. After that, it's easy. After that, you won't have any doubts.'
'Mrs Fischer, she said—'
'I don't want to know what Delia thinks,' Mark told him firmly. 'This is between you and me. What do you think?'
'It had to be you. It had to be.'
'If that's true, then pull the trigger.'
Troy's arm fluttered as if he couldn't hold it steady in the wind. He took a step toward Mark. 'I'm going to do this.'
'I know.'
Mark couldn't take his eyes off the barrel of the gun. He wondered if he would see the flame or if he would hear the explosion, or if it would all happen in silence and darkness before his brain could process the shot. He would simply be standing here in one instant and lying on his back in the next instant, unable to draw a breath, feeling the warmth of blood on his chest.
Troy was crying. Mark could see the boy's chest heave.
'I have to do this,' Troy said.
'I'm not going to stop you.'
There were no easy choices. If Mark moved, he died. If he stayed where he was, he died. Troy tightened his grip on the slippery butt of the gun. As he hesitated, poised to fire, a bright beam of light speared through the night and caught the two of them in its glare like deer on the highway. Mark instinctively shielded his eyes with his palm. Troy spun in shock, taking the gun with him.
'Troy, put that gun down right now,' a man barked.
Like a child, Troy complied. His arm sagged; the gun pointed at the ground.
Mark recognized the voice and saw the man's squared shoulders and squat legs in the light that bounced off the dirt.
Sheriff Reich marched toward them from the edge of the forest.
Tresa huddled in the trees above Schoolhouse Beach. She shivered, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her red hair was plastered to her face. She could barely feel her fingers and toes. She felt paralyzed by what was happening. By the gunshot. By everything that Mark had told her. By her fears of what was about to happen.
By the past.
She'd kept the secret for too many years. She'd willed it out of her mind as if it had never happened. She'd told herself that she was wrong, but now Glory was dead, and Mark and Hilary were both in danger, and it was all because she'd pretended she didn't know anything at all. She'd allowed everyone around her to believe a lie.
She should have known what had really happened in Florida. She should have suspected the truth.
Tresa stared at the water, which was a black sheet merging into white rocks. Part of her wanted to walk down into the lake's cold embrace and keep walking until the waves closed over her head and she was numb. Her guilt overwhelmed her, and she wanted to drown in it. Her eyes got lost in the dimpled surface of the bay. The raindrops hypnotized her. Only the silhouette of the man hiking on the beach awakened her from her trance. He came from the east near Mark's