DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 13, SECTION 8

Struggling beneath Jason's nauseating weight, I remembered Ian. Lying face down in the water. Unconscious. Drowning.

I gathered all of the courage and strength I had. 

I brought my knee up fiercely into Jason's vacant groin. He leapt up and cried out another smoldery scream, losing his balance and catching himself with the stump of his hand on the edge of the canoe.

I hit him as I hard as could with my open palm, right in the teeth.

He teetered, tried to catch his balance, again, but this time he fell over the edge of the canoe and toppled heavily into the water.

Immediately he tried to climb back into the canoe.

But I slammed the oar down on his wrists, hard enough to knock off some of his charred skin and exposing the pink flesh below.

Then I hooked the oar's paddle between his collar bone and neck. I pushed down with all of my strength.

Jason's head dipped below the water.

He struggled in a fit of rage to reach the surface, flailing his arms and charred legs.

But I kept his head under the water.

All I could think about was Ian, drifting face-down at the shore, and how little time I had.

I didn't let up on the oar. Thirty seconds, passed. A minute. This was all Jason's burned-out lungs could take. Stage-threes didn't require much oxygen, but now that his lungs were completely filled with water, even his TGV couldn't save him from expiration now.

His flailing ceased.

His eyes, still staring up at me through the moonlit water, grew blank. Then, at last, his burnt body stiffened and went still. Very slowly, he floated toward the bottom of the river.

Jason, at last, was really gone.

And, I had killed him.

I knew that he was only a hollowed-out version of the horrible person he'd once been. But he was still a conscious being. I'd caused him to suffer terribly, and, now, I'd ended his existence. Seeing his vacant eyes beneath the water left a hollow space in my gut that I knew would never go away. I'd taken another human life, and I'd never be the same. Not ever.

Still, it was either Jason or Ian. And I would have chosen Ian over anyone else in the world.

I dove out of the canoe and swam frantically toward the shore. 

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