Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

And Victoria had remembered.

Far off in the distance, Cait heard an explosion and felt the house shake. She wondered if it had been hit by lightning, or whether perhaps an airplane bound for nearby Logan International Airport had fallen out of the sky and crash-landed on it. She waited for her life to be snuffed out like some insignificant bug’s from the airplane explosion but when nothing happened, she snaked her left hand underneath the couch, feeling around on the floor with the back of her hand for the gun, for the little Smith & Wesson revolver waiting patiently to be found.

And against all odds she found it. Her knuckles brushed the cold steel plating of the gun and pushed it a little farther away on the varnished floor and Cait, incredibly, chuckled. It would be the very definition of irony, she thought, to find the gun, the object of her salvation, only to push it out of reach before being able to use it.

But it wasn’t out of reach. She strained and stretched, doing her best to ignore the horrible fiery pain in her right arm, the arm Milo had skinned from wrist to elbow, and when her hand brushed that cold steel plating again she wrapped her long, delicate fingers around it like a drowning swimmer grasping a life vest.

She secured the gun in her hand and then, with the advancing form of her attacker approaching rapidly in her peripheral vision, pulled it out from under the couch and curled her hand under her breast and closed her eyes just as he skidded to a stop in front of her. She hoped the pistol was hidden from his view by the angle of her body but could not be sure.

There was noise and what sounded like an approaching army and Cait realized the crash that had jarred her awake moments ago was not an airplane falling from the sky onto Victoria’s house, it was the police breaching the door and coming, finally coming, to rescue her and Victoria and Kevin.

But they were too late, despite the fact that they were in the house, or at least about to be in the house. She risked opening an eye and when she did, she saw Milo, the man who had begun torturing her and was going to continue torturing her until she was dead—it was all true, everything her mother had told her this morning about Flickers and her bloody family history of twin murdering twin was all true—standing right above her, not two feet away.

In his hand he held the knife he had used to peel her skin from her bones, only this time he was not going to use it merely to torture her and cause intense pain. This time he was going to use it to slit her throat. He leaned down, thinking she was unconscious, and swiveled his wrist and brought the knife blade forward and—

—and Cait swiveled her own hand, her left hand, the hand holding her mother’s snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver. She pulled the weapon out from under her body and she pointed it at Milo’s face and suddenly everything ground to a halt. The sounds of the police forcing their way into the house faded away to nothing and somehow Cait’s fear did the same. She was no longer a helpless victim, no longer cowering in fear against an attacker with intentions she could not comprehend.

Milo froze, the lethal knife poised inches away from the delicate, tender skin of Cait’s throat. And for seconds that seemed to stretch into hours, nothing happened and nobody moved. This nightmare day had come down to a deadly standoff.

Cait spoke, her voice somehow strong and steady despite the pain hammering her right arm and the adrenaline coursing through her body. “It doesn’t have to end like this. It doesn’t have to end at all,” she said, and for an instant she saw regret and longing share space with the madness in her twin’s eyes.

But only for an instant. Then it was gone, replaced by a cold hard calculating shrewdness, and Cait knew it was over.

He opened his mouth as if to speak but no words came out. And then he half-smiled and lunged with the knife and Cait felt the tip of the blade gash the side of her neck just under her ear, and she expected more white-hot pain, but there was no pain, there was nothing at all, just an emptiness she knew she would never be able to fill.

And she pulled the trigger.

The Smith & Wesson roared in her hand and she watched with a kind of numb, horrified fascination as a gaping wound opened on the side of her brother’s head. A red mist appeared like a halo around his skull and she wanted to close her eyes but could not.

Mr. Midnight wavered over her, swaying like a skyscraper in a hurricane, his hand still grasping the knife he had used to carve and slice her flesh. His eyes were absurdly large and he furrowed his brow as if he could not quite comprehend what had just happened.

He lifted the knife again in his now-trembling hand and began to lunge forward and she pulled the trigger a second time. More blood spurted from her brother’s head and this time he fell. The knife clattered to the floor and her brother’s eyes glazed over and then he dropped straight down and lay still. Cait dropped the gun like it had given her an electric shock and it thudded to the floor next to her injured arm.

And of course at that moment the police rescue team flew around the corner, four men dressed in fatigues and body armor, guns drawn, entering the room prepared to do battle. The men skidded to a stop directly in front of the murdered police officer’s prone body. Their weapons swept side to side as they covered the room, alert for any threat.

Cait’s eyes began to blur, either from pain or shock or the tears welling up in her eyes as a result of the horrible knowledge she had just killed a man. And not just any man, a blood relative. And not just any blood relative, her own brother. Her own twin.

Her vision wavered and she fought to stay awake.

Her arm burned and she fought to stay awake.

The law-enforcement team stood motionless in the doorway, taking in the scene, seemingly shocked into inaction by the devastation in the room. One of the officers spied Cait’s mangled arm, a strip of skin stretching outward from her elbow across the floor, and retched. He clapped a hand to his mouth and looked away.

Cait tried to tell them to get help for Kevin, that he was gravely injured and needed medical attention immediately, and all that came out was a pathetic little croak. She swallowed. Tried unsuccessfully to force some saliva into her throat. Opened her mouth to try again.

At that moment the men in the fatigues and body armor sprang into action, one of them moving quickly to secure the Smith & Wesson, another stepping over the dead cop to assess the condition of Kevin and Victoria, and a third to check Milo’s unmoving body for a pulse. Cait wondered why he would do that; she couldn’t imagine anyone being alive with two bullets fired from almost point-blank range into his head.

The officer who had picked up the gun bent over her. It was the same man who had nearly thrown up at the sight of her arm, and he trained his eyes on hers, steadfastly avoiding looking at the oozing red mess that used to be her forearm.

Cait opened her mouth to say something to him and without warning he disappeared. Everything disappeared. She fell away into a warm, dark hole where it was safe and comfortable and no one tried to peel the skin from her bones with a knife.

The water of Tampa Bay shimmered in the distance, a deep teal blue as sunlight glinted off the tops of the waves. Salsa music drifted across the beach from a radio playing somewhere to Cait’s right, lively and enthusiastic but soft as an afterthought. Cait’s eyes were closed and she felt warm and drowsy, but still she caught bits and pieces of conversations, some in English and some in Spanish, as groups of people passed her beach chair, all chattering and laughing and enjoying the tropical Florida heat.