Page 60 of Paranoid

This piece was pretty straightforward, just the facts as they had been reported and, to Mercedes Pope’s credit, she didn’t embellish the facts, or report rumors, or write anything that was too inflammatory.

But what was next? How could Mercedes sustain a series about the homicide and keep readers interested by merely repeating what everyone already knew?

By changing her reporting and inflating the petty drama?

And embellishing the story of Violet Sperry, a girl who’d been at the scene of the homicide, whose testimony had been crucial in the trial of Rachel Gaston, and who was now dead, the victim of another homicide, twenty years to the date of the first one.

Surely that new mystery wouldn’t hurt circulation.

Not that Cade believed Mercedes Pope was behind either of the murders.

He was just damned sure she’d exploit them in order to sell a few more copies of the Edgewater Edition.

Click-click.

Shivering in the darkness, the air rushing through the building cold as death, Rachel squeezes the trigger.

Click-click-click-click.

She shoots again and real bullets whizz through the old cannery, though the muzzle of her gun remains dark as she squeezes off the rounds.

Bullets keep flying. Not pellets, as Luke had promised.

Her insides freeze.

This wasn’t right.

Click-click.

Luke had said it was safe.

Luke had lied to her, but why? This was a game. It wasn’t supposed to be real.

“No,” she whispers, but she can’t stop shooting; she just keeps squeezing and the damned gun goes off, round after round.

Click-click.

“No!” Rachel cries. She turns, trying to run, trying to throw the gun away. Down the chute to the river, that’s it. Her heart thundering, her teeth gritted, she hurls the damned gun, throws it into the chute that opens to the Columbia. Hears it clatter against the rusting metal sides.

But when she looks at her hands again, the gun is still clutched in her fingers.

The same pistol?

Or another?

Real?

Or fake?

Panic strangles her.

She hears a sound behind her, the scrape of a shoe.

Spinning, she fires again, and again, and again.

Click. Click. Click!

Luke appears before her, staggering back.