The Follower by Kate Doughty (ebook reader with built in dictionary TXT) 📕

She turns, points the gun at Rudy, and fires.

Cecily lets out an inhuman shriek; Rudy collapses to the floor, clutching his thigh. He’s bleeding, crying as he desperately presses on his wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood. Cecily jerks toward him, but Reena waves the gun at Amber and that stops her cold.

It’s okay, she tells herself. It’s just his leg. He’s still alive, he’s still alive.

“I told you to do it now.”

Cecily’s hands go to her face. She’ll do anything to keep this woman from shooting her brother again. Slowly, she unravels the bandages. She is crying as she peels the last one off.

She knows what she looks like under the bandages. Twisted, hideous scars. Her eyelid sags; warped pockets reveal the places where layer after layer of skin has been burned through to the flesh and bone beneath.

“Get all her good angles,” Reena whispers. Cecily catches a glimpse of Rudy as she turns her face to the camera. Her brother is slack and white with pain and, Cecily thinks, shock. She forces her gaze back on Reena, terrified that her attention could make him a target again, terrified that Reena would shoot to kill this time. Slowly, she turns her burned face to the camera as she tucks her hair behind her ear to reveal her ruin. Her eye is still shut. She feels a sob break from her chest as she looks with one eye into the lens of Amber’s iPhone.

Reena’s face relaxes into a sadistic smile. She turns back to Amber. “And now, for the main event. I’m afraid that your little livestream has cost you the game, Amber. You’ve lost.”

Cecily gasps. Everything is a blur of light and tear streaks across her vision as Amber looks out the window.

The sky is cold and blue—perfect, Cecily thinks, for a picture. She watches Amber walk to the other side of the room as if she were in a dream.

Cecily feels herself backing up. She can’t do this, can’t watch this.

“Your precious phone,” Reena says. “Prop it up, so everyone can see.” Amber moves like a robot, following the motions of Reena’s gun, standing her phone up on an old wooden chair. The livestream now has a view of the far side of the turret room, the window. “Wonderful,” Reena says. “Now they can all watch you die.”

Cecily realizes in a strange, detached way, that she is out of frame.

Amber’s face hardens, and she is shaking. Her face is white, and in one acute moment Cecily realizes that Amber is going to do it. Amber is going to die, right here, right in front of her.

Out of frame. Cecily is out of frame. And, now that she’s turned to focus solely on Amber, Reena has pivoted, ever so slightly, away from Cecily. Ever so slightly, but enough.

Cecily takes a step back. Then another, shaking her head, against the impossibility that this is working, that if she could manage to escape then maybe she could get help, maybe she could do something. She takes another step back and then she’s standing against her makeup chest.

Her hand brushes across something on the desk.

Amber steps onto the windowsill. She stands, silhouetted against the light. The summer air is languid, thick.

Cecily grits her teeth and swallows. The shadow of an idea forms in her mind. No. She can’t do this. She can’t do this. She can’t do this . . .

She can’t do this with only one eye.

Slowly, she forces her burned eye to open.

“Want to say goodbye?” Reena asks Amber. “Your followers are watching. Tell them goodbye. It’s rude to leave without saying goodbye, don’t you think? Just like it’s rude to make messes all over someone’s home.”

Cecily’s world is a haze of bright, bright light and a small zing of pain in the back of her skull. But she can see.

On the windowsill, Amber hesitates, shaking, crying. Rudy looks broken and numb, hazy with pain, completely and utterly helpless as he watches his sister prepare to die.

Cecily’s world is a mess of streaky light, and her hand—her hand scrabbles across her makeup desk, over the palettes, over her brushes and combs and nail kits . . .

Amber looks at the camera. Her face is a mess; her lips mouth the words but no sound comes out. Finally, she chokes it out. “G—goodbye.” Her voice is barely audible. Cecily is shaking her head no even as Amber looks at her, and then at Rudy. She locks eyes with them. Her siblings will be the last things she sees.

Cecily’s hands find what she has been searching for. She blinks hard and focuses, willing the white-light streaks of the world to snap into place.

Cecily dives.

Reena barely sees her coming before Cecily collides with her, silver shears catching the light in a bright flash. They find the officer’s neck and pierce—pierce with a sickening sound and an even more sickening scream of anguish as Reena loses her balance and the two topple to the floor.

The gun goes off as they crash to the ground. Somewhere, she hears Amber scream, but Cecily can’t see her siblings. She can only feel Reena’s weight on top of her as Reena rises, with shears sticking out of her throat. Reena, smiling, teeth clotted with her own blood. She pins Cecily beneath her, and she slams her fist into Cecily’s face, bringing it down again and again, breaking Cecily’s nose, causing bright white lights to pop across Cecily’s vision—

And then the blows stop. Cecily opens her swollen eyes and watches as Reena wrenches the shears from her own neck.

How is she not dead? Cecily wonders. All that blood pouring from her neck.

The shears are above her.

Reena points them down at Cecily, and Cecily feels her pupils dilate from the strain of following the point as Reena orients them at her one remaining eye. Her body is tense, vibrating with adrenaline, but Reena is an immovable weight on top her. The shears inch closer. Closer and closer to her