Page 144 of The Chain

“Yes!” Olly says with exasperation.

“Might as well do it now,” Ginger says. “It feels like we’ve been here half the night playing reindeer games in the snow. Better close your eyes, folks. For you the war is over.”

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As early Christmas presents go, the Ultimate Houdini Magic Kit couldn’t be more geeky, and Kylie is at the age where her friends will tease her about such things.Magic? I mean, seriously, who does magic?

So she didn’t tell any of them. Except Stuart, of course. She told Stuart.

And she learned a few tricks. As she promised herself in that basement when she’d been chained to the oven, she did, in fact, learn how to escape from handcuffs. She watched those YouTube videos and she practiced. A lot. She got good at it. As good as one can get in a few weeks. She can escape from a standard handcuff in under thirty seconds. Now, zip ties are a different story, but all metal handcuffs can be opened with a universal key if you know what you are doing. As a good-luck totem, she always carries a handcuff escape key with her on her key chain.

Always.

Unseen by anyone, she unpicks the lock that is cuffing her hands in front of her.

Now what? Snow is pouring in through the holes in the roof. Her mother is holding her, Stuart is crying, and there on the floor right in front of her is the pistol that her mom dropped.

She reaches down and picks up the gun. It feels heavy. Impossibly heavy. The twins are talking. “Might as well do it now,” Ginger says. “It feels like we’ve been here half the night playing reindeer games in the snow. Better close your eyes, folks. For you the war is over.”

Kylie lifts the nine-millimeter, aims, and pulls the trigger.

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Olly’s face caves inward, rushes out the back of his skull, and sprays over the cinder-block wall behind him. Kylie has never seen anything like it. It’s beyond horrific. But she has only a fraction of a second to be horrified. Ginger swings her gun around and points it at her.

“You little bitch!” Ginger screams and shoots blindly at Kylie.

Kylie fires again, but this time she’s miles high and the bullet clangs into the ceiling.

A rusted piece of the roof thuds to the floor between Ginger and the body of her brother. Startled, she turns to see what it is. Kylie hustles her mom and Stuart behind the concrete blood-collecting trough.

Ginger recovers herself and fires four times in quick succession.

Four shots slam hard into the trough.

Ginger moves, closes one eye, and aims carefully at Kylie’s shoulder peeking out from behind a crack in the concrete, but there isn’t going to be another shot. The revolver is empty.

“Shit!” Ginger says.

She’s out of ammo,Rachel thinks, and she takes the nine-millimeter from Kylie, stands, aims, and deliberately pulls the trigger. The trigger doesn’t do anything. The nine-millimeter is empty or, more likely, jammed and she has no idea how to fix a jam.

The two women glare at each other.

Another look of recognition.

Mirror Rachel, Mirror Ginger, you could be me, I could be you.

Rachel shakes her head. She’s not buying into that we’re-not-so-different-you-and-I bullshit.We all have choices.

Ginger smiles and drops her gun.

“I’m coming for you,” Rachel snarls and runs at her.

Ginger quickly assumes a self-defense stance, but Rachel’s momentum knocks them both to the ground.

Ginger springs to her feet and Rachel finds something metal on the floor and tosses it at her; it misses and thuds into the cinder-block wall.

Rachel gets up and throws a fist at Ginger but she’s far too slow and Ginger easily dodges it with a neat sidestep. Ginger’s blue eyes glint with pleasure as she head-butts a stunned Rachel in the face.

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