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Her blood

Her neck was clean, no wound there That was not the source of the blood Her forehead was

Single-entry gunshot He knew he shouldn’t, but he used his arm to scoop her head off the floor, cradled it next to his heaving chest Her long dark hair splayed out over his arm like frozen spray from a hard breaker The dot on her forehead was blackened and blistered from the heat of the bullet

A contact wound preceded by aonly a second before the projectile ended her life Had she been asleep? Had she awoken? Would she have endured the terror of seeing her killer standing over her? He wondered all this as he held his wife for ould be the last time

He put her back where he had found her Decker stared down at the face that hite and lifeless, the blackened dot in the rammatical period at the very end

Of everything

He rose, his legs feeling nuered out of the room and down the hall to the only other bedroom up here

He did not force this door open He was in no hurry now He knehat he was going to find He just didn’t knohat the killer’s method would have been

First, a knife Second, a gun

She wasn’t in the bedroo bath

The overhead light was on in there, burning brightly The killer had obviously wanted him to see the last one clearly

There she sat, on the toilet Held there with the sash from her robe wrapped around the water tank, for otherwise she would have fallen over He drew close

His feet didn’t slip There was no blood His little girl had no obvious wounds that he could see But then he drew closer and saw the ligature ly and blotchy like someone had burned her there Maybe the robe sash had been used Maybe the guy’s hands Decker didn’t know, didn’t care Death by strangulation was not painless It was excruciating And terrifying And she would have been staring right up at him while he slowly compressed her life away

Molly would have been ten in three days A party had been planned, guests invited, presents bought, and a sheet cake with chocolate inside ordered He had gotten time off to help Cassie, orked full-ti here because his job was not a nine-to-fiver, not even close They had joked about it What did he know about real life? Grocery shopping? Paying the bills? Taking Molly to the doctor?

Nothing, as it turned out Not a da Clueless

He sat down on the floor in front of his dead child, crossing his long legs like his little girl liked to do, so the bottoh of the opposite leg He was flexible for a biglike that He didn’t even knohy he was thinking this He realized he must be in shock

Her eyes ide and open, staring back at hiain

Decker just sat there, rocking back and forth, looking at her but not really seeing her, and his baby girl sure as heaven not seeing her daddy either

This is it Nothing left I’ by myself Can’t do it

He slipped the compact nine-mil from his belt holster andthe slide He cupped it in his hands Nice little piece It was accurate, with enough stopping power He’d never shot anyone with it But he’d wanted to

He stared down at the hts How e? A thousand? Ten thousand? Well, he couldn’t ht

He opened hisit upward so the bullet would hit the brain and uard He looked up at Molly Suddenly eht teain, his index finger slipped to the trigger guard Once past it, to the trigger, then the slow, steady pull until the point of no return He’d never feel anything His brain dead before it could tell the rest of his body that he’d jacked himself