Laura had started counting the number of bullets.
“What?” Gordon mumbled. “What’s he doing?”
Snap.
On the screen, Helsinger was unsnapping the sheath hanging from his gunbelt.
“That’s a knife,” Gordon said. “I thought he used a gun.”
The gun was holstered. The knife was gripped in Helsinger’s fist, blade angled down for maximum carnage.
Andy wanted to close her eyes, but just as badly, she wanted to see it again, to watch her mother’s face, because right now, at this moment on the video when Helsinger was holding the menacing-looking hunting knife, Laura’s expression was almost placid, like a switch inside of her had been turned off.
The knife arced up.
Gordon sucked in air between his teeth.
The knife arced down.
Laura lifted her left hand. The blade sliced straight through the center of her palm. Her fingers wrapped around the handle. She wrenched it from his grasp, then, the knife still embedded in her hand, backhanded the blade into the side of his neck.
Thunk.
Helsinger’s eyes went wide.
Laura’s left hand was pinned to the left side of his neck like a message tacked to a bulletin board.
There was a slight pause, no more than a few milliseconds.
Laura’s mouth moved. One or two words, her lips barely parting.
Then she crossed her right arm underneath her trapped left.
She braced the heel of her right hand near Helsinger’s right shoulder.
Her right hand pushed his shoulder.
Her left hand jerked the knife blade straight out of the front of his throat.
Blood.
Everywhere.
Gordon’s mouth gaped open.
Andy’s tongue turned into cotton.
Right hand pushing, left hand pulling.
From the video, it looked like Laura had willfully pulled the knife out of Helsinger’s throat.
Not just killing him.
Murderinghim.
“She just—” Gordon saw it, too. “She—”
His hand went to his mouth.