Page 136 of Forever Dark
If she went through the doorway, she might get a clean shot.She might also take a round through the throat before her eyes found him.But it was worth it if it saved Connor.That thought surprised her, but it felt good; a noble impulse in a world full of horror.
The bed gave Nolan too much cover.He only had to hold that one side of the room.She had to expose half her body to challenge it.
From the floor Connor’s voice came out thick and rough.“Selena.”
“Don’t move.”
“That was the plan.”
The fact he could joke at all steadied something in her.
Pruitt barked a laugh from behind the bed, uglier than before.“Still joking.Still walking around like your lives matter more than everyone else’s.Still acting like there’ll be no judgment!When judgment is coming!For all the whores!All the corrupt lawmen!All of you!”
Selena kept her eyes fixed on the doorway.“Three women are dead because of you.”
“No.”
His answer cracked through the room like another shot.
“They were already dead.You can’t live like that and still be alive in God’s eyes.Brenda.Lauren.Tara.They gave themselves away piece by piece and called it living.Gave away their wombs to sordid one-night stands.Gave away their right to sire life!”
He was ranting now, no rhythm to it, no careful language, only conviction stripped down to its ugliest bones.
“I purified them,” he shouted.“That was mercy.That was the only mercy left for them.It’s all forHisglory!”
Connor pushed up another inch and winced hard.
Selena heard it.
Pruitt did, too.
The gun shifted again.
Then she said the one thing she had not planned to say like this, shouted into a cheap motel room with broken plaster under her feet and Connor bleeding on the carpet.
“I know about Donna, Nolan.”
Everything stopped.A sudden void where Pruitt’s fury had been.
Selena went on before he could recover.
“I know about the baby.Thefirstdeath you marked.”
The effect was immediate and total.
“My child…”
“Yeah, a tragedy,” Selena said.Then she decided to use it as a weapon against him.To goad him into acting.“Maybe if you’d been a better support for Donna, she would have gotten clean sooner and the baby would have survived.You ever thinkyouhad a hand in all of this?”
Pruitt rose too fast from behind the bed, face contorted, eyes bright with something beyond rage.“You… Shut your mouth!Another whore who can’t shut her filthy mouth!”
There he was.
Open.
Selena fired.
The bullet hit him high in the upper arm and spun him half sideways.Connor’s revolver flew from his hand and clattered across the room under the small table by the window.
