Don’t mind me. Help the other person.

Except the other person betrayed him. Isn’t worthy of his attention. Yet that other person just saved his life. Threw himself in front of a bullet, and no matter how hard Anders might have protested his loyalty to Dalton, this proves it, and I cannot argue with that.

I check Anders. It’s a through-and-through shot to the chest bypassing his heart. He’s fading into shock, and I pull him back by saying, “What can I do?”

“I’ve got it,” Dalton says as he heaves himself up, face contorting with the pain.

“Sit down,” I say. “You’ll only hurt yourself more and—”

“It’s my shoulder, Casey. Not my spine. I’ve got Will. You call Beth.”

I stop. “Beth …”

He grips my shoulder, hard, peering down at me as if I’m the one going into shock.

I shake him off. “I’m fine. Where’s the—?”

He pulls the radio from Anders’s jacket and slaps it into my hand and then kneels beside the wounded man.

“Will? It’s Eric. I’m going to tell you where you’ve been shot, and you’re going to tell me how to help you. Got it?”

I move away with the radio. I pass Jacob, who’s blinking hard, as if trying to rouse himself from a trance. I keep walking, and Dalton says, “Casey?”

I wave that I’m just stepping away, but he starts to rise, to come after me, and I realize I’m going to need to do this in front of him. I motion for him to return to Anders. Then I radio Beth. As I talk to her, Dalton glances over, his face screwed up as if he’s misheard, and he’s opening his mouth, but before I can silence him, he shuts it. He nods. Then he returns to Anders.

I finish the call, and I kneel beside Jacob.

“Something’s wrong with me,” he’s mumbling. “Something’s wrong.”

“I know,” I say. “But I need to ask you a few questions. Do you think you can answer them?”

He blinks harder and rubs his cheek against his shoulder, as if trying to wake from a deep sleep. Then he nods.

Beth arrives at a run, radio in one hand, lantern in the other as I give her directions until I can see her, and then I shout and jog to meet her.

“You left him?” she says.

“It’s too late. I think he’s gone.”

“Wh-what?” Her eyes bug as she runs to me. “Y-you mean—No, that’s not—”

“Not possible?” I say. “Of course it is. What did you expect?”

She stops so fast she stumbles and grabs a tree for support. “Wh-what?”

“You drugged Jacob. I don’t know what you gave him, but whatever it was, it was intended to cause delusions.”

She stares at me. “What are you—?”

“You gave Jacob drugged food, telling him you were a friend of Eric’s. He’d seen you out here with Eric before—you made sure of that first. It solidified your story. Then, when he started getting sick from the food, you ‘treated’ him. While telling him about Eric’s newest friend. A woman who wasn’t any good for him, would hurt him, was keeping Eric away from his brother. It worked—Jacob did come after me. Only what you didn’t anticipate is that little boy inside him, the one who still blames his big brother for leaving, the one who still wants to lash out at Eric, to hurt him.”

Beth rocks there. Then she looks around wildly. “Take me to Eric. You’re not a doctor.”

“True,” I say. “I could be wrong. But you were right about one thing, Beth. I am bad for Eric. I think he’s a sweet guy, and a really sweet fuck. But that’s it. What matters most to me is justice. So, if you want to treat Eric before he bleeds out, you’re going to have to give me a confession.”

She lunges at me. A well-placed kick in the shin sends her down, snarling, “You crazy bitch. You’d let him die—”

“He’s an officer of the law. He knows the risks.” I point my gun at her. “Now talk.”

“Yes,” she spits. “Jacob already told you what I did, and it was for Eric’s own good, saving him from you—”

“Bullshit. You might be more than a bit delusional yourself, but you weren’t trying to kill me because I was getting close to Eric. You wanted me gone because I’m dead set on solving these crimes. With Jacob, you got a two-in-one deal. An assassin to kill me and a scapegoat you could frame for the murders you committed.”

“Wh-what?”

“It started with Abbygail’s. You suspected that Powys killed her and somehow Irene was involved. Maybe you were working on getting a confession out of her and it went wrong. Then you and Mick went after Powys. That was the piece I was missing: Mick. I might have suspected you of that impromptu surgery on Hastings, as crudely as you did it to disguise your handiwork. I might have even linked you in via Abbygail. But you couldn’t have hauled Hastings into that tree. You had a partner. Mick. The one person even more broken up about Abbygail than you. The one who’d have snapped when you made up a story about what happened to her. You had to convince him that story was true, because Mick was a decent guy and needed to be sure he had the right target. But then you realized you were wrong, and it was actually Hastings who killed Abbygail. You managed to talk Mick into killing him, too, but that’s where you lost him.”

“What?”