Break Me Every Time

by Solia

Deb reacts to Dexter's news about Argentina and Dexter considers some of the implications. Alternative events unfold from there. Rated M for coarse language typical of the show and some explicit content. Based in the eighth season, with references to events of previous seasons, so please don't read if you're not up to date.

4. Chapter 4

Title: Break Me

Fandom: Dexter

Rating: M for language

Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. The show would be very different if I did.

Author's notes: OMG, one episode left! Finally some old-school cat-and-mouse action that we've so sorely missed on Dexter, and some nice Deb and Dexter moments that made me feel better about the last few painfully dispassionate episodes. In any case, I'm feeling driven to get this fiction out of my mind and onto virtual paper as quickly as possible before the show ends, the fans scatter and these ideas become irrelevant. For that reason, these chapters are very raw and are edited relatively little (very unlike me normally! I used to like to finish something completely before uploading but then this'd never get online) but I think I like them like this. Deb and Dexter's story is rough, raw and tragic. Too much polish can only detract from that. I realise that minor errors might arise from such haste, so ensure that you point out anything big and obvious that I have done wrong – I maintain that published work, even online, should always be representative of a writer's best work.

I am very grateful to the reviewers who take the time to share their thoughts and opinions after reading. Thank you tonight to shadow, red roses are pink, The L. MMonster and to Guest, though I wish you had reviewed as a user so I could respond to your comment! I am so glad that you stumbled across the story unexpectedly and liked it – I think that's the best kind of read, when you aren't looking but find something you love and can fall into. red roses are pink, I loved your review so much. Detailed discussions are the sorts of reviews I like to give and are the very best ones to receive! I hope this continuation meets your expectations

Chapter Four

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/

Deb and I are frozen still in this standoff. She's got all the power, in that pistol against my head. Part of me knows she won't, knows she'll choose me because that's what she always does, but another part of me knows that my Debra has changed and I must never underestimate her. This is not the Deb I dragged off Brian Moser's table. This is not the same sister I used to share a bath with when I was four and she was eighteen months old. This Deb is cracked and different. I love her the same as ever but I must always be careful.

I can see she doesn't believe what I've just told her. Her eyes are deep with conflicting emotions.

"You're lying," she hisses in my face, staying close, blocking view of the gun from my son. I'm grateful for this thoughtfulness but she won't be able to block the noise of gunfire from him if she decides to pull that trigger.

"I'm not lying to you," I answer honestly. "Vogel just told me. She killed him to keep him from changing me. So I would go on killing."

Deb stares at me.

"No," she says slowly, "you told me he killed himself. Because of you. I saw the tapes. DVDs," she corrects quickly. "I saw the last interview. He said he couldn't live with himself."

"I know. I told you what Matthews told me. The Medical Examiner ruled it a suicide but Matthews announced it as a heart attack to save us the pain. But it wasn't either. Harry did overdose, but it was Vogel, not him."

"How?" Deb demands of me. She pushes the muzzle tighter against my skull. "Did she crush the pills up in his drink? It's not like she could force them down his throat. How did she manage it?"

A horrific mental image of Vogel sneaking into my father's medicine cabinet and dissolving his medication into a drink strikes me with a sickening sense of déjà vu. Did Vogel kill Harry in the same way Hannah tried to kill Debra?

"I don't know how," I admit. "She didn't tell me. But she confessed to killing him. She still thinks it was the right thing to do. That's when I tried to kill her."

"Why would she do that?" Deb's anger and shock have run their course; they give way to crumbling disbelief and confusion. "She and Dad built you together. He was in on it all. Why would she kill him?"

"He changed his mind," I explain. "He didn't like the reality of what he turned me into. He backed out and he was going to confront me and retrain me. He wasn't going to let me keep killing."

I wonder briefly whether this would have worked. After my first couple of kills, I was loving it. Would I have stopped when Harry told me I had to? I don't know for sure, but he was able to keep me from killing for ten years before then. And Vogel was worried enough to kill him over it.

"So... she just killed him?" Deb asks, uncertain now. "You really mean it? You're not fucking with me?"

"I wouldn't joke about this."

"But... I thought she cared about us."

"I know. I thought so, too."

"But how could she? She... Shit, she told us..." My sister shakes her head; I imagine I can hear a thousand thoughts racing wildly through it. "She lied to us." Several times her mouth forms words that don't come out as she comes to terms with the truth. "She let me think Dad gave up. I thought he killed himself because of you, and she knew different. She let me think..." Deb's face twists with pain she can barely hold in. Her next words are soft. "I thought, again, I wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough to outweigh the bad he saw in you. I thought he didn't love me enough."

"He didn't leave us, Deb," I say, because this point is important to me, too. "He didn't abandon us. He loved us – you especially. He couldn't bear the thought of me doing what I do to you one day. Vogel, fucking Vogel, took him away."

Deb struggles with this for a very long time. A string of murmured obscenities begins to pour from her; twice she glances at Harrison to ensure he can't hear her. I don't interrupt. With a final, frustrated "Jesus Christ, Dexter!" she drops her hand. The pressure on my temple is removed as the gun swings to her side. She drops her head forward and our foreheads knock together lightly. She stays like this, leaning into me.

"So I shouldn't have called you back at all," she suggests. "Or I shouldn't have met you. I should have let you do it."

"No. Saxon was there. It was bad timing; I was going to get hurt or get caught. You called at exactly the right moment."

"Vogel killed my dad," Deb clarifies. "There can't possibly have been a right moment to stop you from killing her." She closes her eyes. "I told her stuff. I let her into my life, my mind. I stayed in her house. I ate her food and drank her fucking tea. What if she'd decided I was no good for you?"

I hadn't thought of this. Her eyelashes brush my nose as she blinks and I imagine a life in which this can never happen, because she's not in it. I'm immediately overcome with protectiveness and self-loathing. I left my sister in Vogel's care for days on end, knowing the psychiatrist wasn't thrilled with my relationship with her. I recall the doctor telling me I didn't need Deb, and that I needed to be prepared for a life without her. I thought she meant Deb might choose to leave me. What if she'd meant something worse? What if Vogel had planned to kill my sister as well? Right now it wouldn't surprise me. But if that is the case, why didn't she carry it out?

"I don't want to think about it," I say finally. Deb is building back up.

"I helped you save her life!" she remembers, disgustedly. "I helped you track and kill Yates. We should have let him break all her fucking toes. We should have let him kill her." A choked laugh escapes. "We should have offered to help."

This vengeful Deb isn't unfamiliar. She's always been there, hiding in the shadows of moral and just Deb. She just doesn't often get a voice. She slants her eyes up to look into mine.

"Are you still going to do it?"

I haven't actually decided. I want to. I'm hurt and angered by Vogel's betrayal. I've been thinking of her as my creator but really she's a destroyer. She killed an innocent and noble man for trying to protect his children. I think of my kind and conflicted father and what she's done to him; I think of how she weaselled herself into mine and Debra's lives and how she's lied and manipulated us since. My blood boils with hatred and the primal urge to end her life and chop her into little pieces eats at me.

On the other hand, Vogel killed Harry because he wanted me to stop killing. Knowing this, is killing her the right way to avenge him? I don't know but something tells me it would be less than honourable. I don't think Harry's ghost will approve. I just can't think of anything else right now that better suits her crime.

"I don't think Dad would want me to."

"Fuck him," Deb answers, her voice deliberately low to avoid being overheard by Harrison but harsher than I think she intended. "You'll never know what Dad wants, because of that bitch. I want you to."

It's not been often that she's promoted or supported my lifestyle, and this is only the second time she's made such a request. Last time it was Hannah she wanted dead. On both counts I am hesitant to do as she asks, and she sees the indecision in my eyes.

"Seriously?" she asks. "You get around killing motherfuckers for your whole life, and the two times ever that I ask you to do it, to people who deserve it, you don't want to?"

"Vogel doesn't fit the Code," I remind her.

"You don't know that," she argues. "You haven't looked yet. There could be half a dozen other dads, a dozen, even. People who didn't agree with her methods. Your Code isn't the only measure of guilt, Dexter. Evelyn Vogel built a custom-made serial killer out of a police officer's son. She conscripted you to track and kill the creep leaving brain bits on her doorstep. She's lied to authorities on countless occasions. She lied to us. She's hurt people, including her patients. She is harbouring Saxon, a murderer, right now. She deserves your table."

Deb raises good points that I can't really argue with, but in her eyes I see our father. I never knew what he really died for. He died for us. He died because he believed I could be something better than what Vogel had told him I had to be. He died because he didn't want Deb left with what he created.

I understand what he died for but I am not sure yet whether I believe the same. Can I be better than what I am? Can I stop killing, or cut back, simply because my father wanted me to? I don't know that I have that sort of discipline or self-control.

In terms of Deb, I think I can agree that my choices have taken a toll on her that Harry would be upset about. Probably he was more worried that I would slit her throat in her sleep and cut her up with power tools but doubtless he wouldn't like the alternative much more. She's not dead or scattered across the ocean but how many times has she almost died because of my actions? I count her altercations with Brian, Trinity's daughter Christine, Travis Marshall's disciple Beth Dorsey, the brutal rapist and killer of women Speltzer and my own girlfriend Hannah. There are probably others, but these are all either because of me directly or because I was arrogant and failed to take down a killer when I first had a chance.

Behind Deb is the grave of my wife. Unlike my sister, my sweet, beautiful wife didn't survive my mistakes. Dad would have loved Rita and what she did for my life. She showed me I could love, because before I met Rita, I hadn't believed it. I hadn't even known I loved Deb – I just thought my feelings for her were programmed, the way Vogel still believes they are. I used to think my interactions with my sister were automatic, dutiful performances to keep the pretence up that I'm normal and functional. Now I know it's more than that. Now I wonder if I'm more than that. I feel that feather-light brush of Deb's lashes again. The fact that I can feel and enjoy this platonic intimacy tells me my father might have been right. Maybe I am more.

"I need to think about it," I tell her after a lot of thought. "There's-"

"Fuck you, Dex," Deb snaps, shoving away from me and marching back in the direction of the car. "I don't know why we even have these conversations. If it's something I want, I should know you're not going to do it. It's only ever about you and what you want. If you won't do it, I'm going to."

Harrison looks up from his colouring book and watches his aunt storm off. Unconcerned, he goes back to his task. My son is so unaffected by conflict. Is this normal, or have we done this to him? I don't have time to wonder. I chase my sister.

"Deb, don't," I call after her as I gain ground. She casts a nasty look back at me. "You can't be serious."

I catch up and manage to get in front of her. She stops when she can't get past.

"Why not?" she demands. "Why are you the only person allowed to feel betrayed by this bitch?"

"I'm not," I assure her, eyeing Harrison over her shoulder. "You have every right to be angry. But this isn't the way. This isn't you."

"What isn't? What is me? I don't even know anymore." She glares at me. "See, I thought I was a good person-"

"You are."

"- yet I seem to have two murderers hiding in my house planning a getaway out of the country, and I seem to keeping a massive world-crushing secret for my serial killer brother and I seem to be working in the same precinct that used to be captained by a woman I shot."

"Now you seem to be waving a gun around in broad daylight in a public cemetery," I add, reaching for her weapon. She keeps it out of my grasp.

"And I also seem to be on my way to kill the bitch that killed my dad," she continues bitingly, "so who knows who the fuck I am these days? And fuck off, Dexter," she adds, shoving my hand away when I keep trying for the gun. "You're not getting it."

I sigh, frustrated with her.

"You can't kill Vogel," I say with finality. She smirks and gets in my face.

"Watch me. I don't need your permission."

"You won't survive it. It'll ruin you. Murder isn't you. It took you half this year to recover from killing Maria. You aren't a killer."

"Maria La Guerta was innocent," Deb insists. "I've felt no guilt whatsoever over the other people I've shot: El Sapo, or that fucker in the restaurant. Trust me; I'm not going to feel any guilt over Vogel." She presses her lips together, angry and upset. "She killed Dad. I tried to kill you over this, Dex. I can't begin to tell you how sick that makes me feel. She has a lot to answer for."

I don't know what to say. I can't let her do it. I allow myself a moment of distraction in the form of my infuriatingly itchy, throbbing hand.

"I know you're angry but you don't want to do this," I say as I scratch at the skin underneath the bandage. Twice I knock the edge of the wound itself and pain shoots through my hand. Deb snorts with amusement at my words.

"Yeah, I really do."

"You've killed in the line of duty but killing for personal reasons is totally different," I remind her. "You know what I'm talking about. Stop thinking like this. You have no plan. You're going to get caught. Besides, killing Vogel would make three."

Deb takes my meaning and folds her arms.

"I would be a serial killer," she acknowledges. She pauses, as though sizing up this disadvantage. "We really would be family, then."

"Fuck, Deb! Listen to yourself. You sound insane. And it's not 'killing people' that defines me, so it can't be 'killing people' that makes us family. It's because we're family that I can't let you do it."

"Would it matter who it was?" Deb asks, suddenly curious. "If I said I wanted to kill Saxon, or Hannah, or someone else deserving, would you react the same way? Is it just because I'm so mad that I might screw up, or is it the magic number? You didn't mind my help in killing Yates but I wasn't the one that staked him."

I begin to unravel the bandage partially so I can tighten it. I'm not enjoying this line of conversation. This twenty-four period is taking its toll on my relationship with my sister. Who the fuck aligned the stars like this to make today such a disaster? We've weathered a lot together but today and yesterday, we've found ourselves in increasingly dark places. Before yesterday, Deb has hit me a couple of times, but never lost control on me like that. She's drawn a gun on me once before, but never held it to my head with my son metres away. Before yesterday, I'd told her lots of things she didn't like, but never had my words ripped her apart like that. Now we're discussing murder, and in contrast to our discussion of this very same murder only an hour ago on the phone, I'm trying to talk her out of it.

"I don't want to see you get hurt," I say.

"So then you do it."

"Deb, I don't know if I want to. I need to think about it. And I definitely don't want you to. Regardless of what number it brings you to."

Deb shakes her head.

"No. You don't want me to kill a third time. You don't want a serial killer for a sister." Her eyes narrow with certainty. "Then you might have to kill me."

I stop what I'm doing and look up at her in shock. This has never occurred to me. Whatever she's done, however angry I've been with her, however close she's been to wreaking havoc on my existence, it has never seriously crossed my mind to end her life. I recall Vogel asking me why I didn't kill her at the church. I didn't have an answer for her. It wasn't an option. Deb is one of only four people on the planet who are completely untouchable. Like my son and Rita's children, I can never hurt Deb. None of my family are exactly immune to my darkness – all four have been damaged and painfully affected by their exposure to me, and Deb worst of all – but I will never take their lives.

Deb looks momentarily unsettled by the expression on my face. She can tell how confronted I am by this prospect. My reaction affects her. Her voice hitches.

"I'd deserve it. The table; the knife. Maybe this a neat way to tie off all your loose ends in Miami?"

I hear what she's suggesting and I feel sick. She's suggesting I kill her. Kill her and run. Nobody left behind to use to track me down, no miserable Deb rotting in prison, nothing pulling me back to town for risky visits.

"You'd be gentle, wouldn't you?" she prompts quietly. I stare at her, loose bandage hanging limply from my hand, my future sinking into an abysmal, frightening blackness. "You wouldn't let me suffer for long."

"Deb, please, stop." My breathing has become laboured, as it did when I was at Vogel's. It's panic. I don't experience it often but I know what it is. "I never would, I never could."

She doesn't let me off. "What, don't like the mental image of plastic-wrapping me naked to a table and taking a blood slide from-"

"Fuck it, alright, you win," I interrupt, upset by the visualisation. I've seen it all before, when my brother Brian kidnapped her and prepped her to be our first kill together. I take deep, deliberate breaths. "I'll do it."

"You will?" She is surprised.

"I'll kill Vogel, if you'll drop this. And if you keep out of it. I can't let you do it – and not because then I'd have to kill you – but because it wouldn't be right to let you. You'll regret it. I might regret it, too, but I can live with that." I sigh and go back to unravelling my bandage. My panic has subsided and given way to the irritation that hides my worry. "God, Deb, imagine telling me I should kill you? What a stupid thing to say. Give me that." I reach over and snatch her gun away. This time she doesn't resist. "Who draws a gun on a known psychopath and tells him you would deserve to die?"

She shrugs. "Someone fucked-up, I guess."

"Next time you bring that shit up again, I'm going to tranquilise you," I threaten. "It makes me sick. I told you, I'm never going to let anything happen to you. I'd sooner let you kill me than elect to hurt you."

She watches me work on my hand. After a few layers are away, evidence of the bleed becomes apparent as a dull stain in the fabric of the bandage. She frowns and takes the end of the bandage from me, giving it a yank to unravel it completely. The messy, jagged, moist wound is revealed. It looks terrible. She recoils. "Jesus, Dex. Take that shit to a frigging hospital, will you?"

"Not until I know what's happening at Vogel's," I reply. I reach over and go through her handbag without asking permission. She's not girly but she is a girl. There is sure to be a packet of tissues in here somewhere. I drop her gun back inside. "Vogel was pretty shaken by my reaction, and she set Saxon on me. She could have called the police, for all I know. I don't want to be sitting at a hospital with a cut the same shape as the teacup and a pile of stitches in my hand when they come looking for me."

"You'd rather be sitting in a cemetery with a cut the same shape as the teacup and no stitches?" Deb points out. She pushes me away from my useless search of her bag and pulls a packet of tissues from the inner pocket. She takes over the redressing of my wound. She wipes away the new blood and uses another tissue as a compress, which she rewraps expertly. "Who would have thought I'd be your nurse two days running?" She tucks the end of the bandage tightly. "I guess the hospital is a bad idea."

She eyes my various injuries critically, without pity or regret. I imagine a hospital visit and mentally agree that it would be awkward, considering my swollen face, sliced-up hand and the probable burn on my leg where I spilt Vogel's tea. I haven't checked it yet but it hasn't stopped stinging. I don't have a very good explanation for any of the injuries.

"You know, I really don't think Vogel would have called the police," Deb mentions. "What would be the benefit in that for her? She'd have to explain why you lost it with her, and so much shit could come up that she doesn't want getting out. Dad, the Code, Yates, Saxon... There's no way she's that stupid."

"She can't really take me on with the law without bringing herself down, too," I concur. "She has a lot to lose as well."

We look back at Harrison. He is still drawing, funny oversized hat keeping the sun off his face. Deb gathers her thoughts and looks around the cemetery.

"So you're really going to do it?"

"I'm not doing it right now, if that's what you mean," I answer, starting back in the direction of Rita's gravesite. Harrison has hardly noticed our absence. He appears unfazed by our heated exchange and makes no indication that he saw his aunt threaten his father with a pistol. He has finished his colouring and, when he sees us returning, carefully tears the page away from the binding.

"I went outside the lines at this bit," he tells Deb worriedly when she kneels down beside him. He shows her the problematic area. "Only a little. Do you think Mommy will still like it?"

The vengeful, hateful, hopeless Debs I've been dealing with since picking her up from the florist are not present in the loving aunt who takes the fedora and brushes her hand across Harrison's sandy blonde hair.

"She will love it so much," she promises her nephew, and together they choose a place on the grave where Rita will be able to see it from Heaven, and they weigh it down in the corners with stones. Harrison, giggling, positions the stolen hat on Deb's head. I stand back and give them this time together. I use the moment to think loving thoughts about my wife and to miss her. While at times she complicated my life, she also provided me with so much, not least of all a stable and compassionate role model and companion for my child.

Unbidden, unexpected, a vision of Hannah comes to my mind. I realise I have hardly thought of her all day. I don't feel as guilty as I expect I will when I'm faced with her anger and jealousy this evening. Hannah is beautiful and I love her, and she loves Harrison and he liked her those times he met her. Implicit to our crazy, impulsive plan to run away together to Argentina is the idea that she would become Harrison's stepmother. She will raise him. He will leave Miami, probably forever, or at least for his entire youth.

I am saddened now by this prospect. In Argentina, Harrison can never visit his mother's grave and leave pictures and flowers here with his aunt. He'll never put stupid hats on Deb's head. He cannot continue to grow more like her if she is not around. Besides Jamie, Deb is the most normal person in his world. His relationship with Deb is special, like my bond with her. I consider Deb to be mine but in that I am slightly incorrect; she is also my son's. And we're hers.

As my son and sister step away from the grave, ready to leave, I gather Harrison into my arms and pull Deb in close for a warm embrace. She puts her arms around Harrison and me. All the bitterness, violence and disagreement that have surrounded us on and off for long don't matter when we're like this. I can't possibly leave this behind. I have it all. There are things to fix, obviously, like Saxon and Vogel, and things to work around, like Hannah's needs and expectations, but I can make this work.

"I love you," I whisper to them both, and, with a glance upwards, to my late wife, too. Harrison hugs my neck and snuggles his head against mine and Deb's. His colouring book flutters against my shoulder.

In the car, we are silent for a while. It's less tense than the ride over. We agree to go straight home, to leave my car overnight to avoid giving Saxon something to follow. Harrison nods off in his seat, conveniently.

"I'll call Vogel tomorrow," I say. "I'll act like I'm sorry and see where we stand."

"Act like you're sorry. Sounds different."

I ignore the dig. "She thinks I belong to her; she'll take me back. Then I can get close to her again and take her out. I'll just have to be careful of Saxon. He'll be watching out for me." I look over at my sister as she slows for a red light. "You need to be careful, too. I don't know how deeply offended Saxon is by today's events, but considering he followed me out to the suburbs I'm willing to surmise that he's reasonably pissed. In Saxon's mind, Evelyn is his property, and I've damaged it. He could come after you. In fact," I correct apologetically, "he probably will, if Vogel doesn't call him off."

"Why me?" Deb asks, annoyed. "Why not skank-face?"

"He probably doesn't know about Hannah, plus he wouldn't know where to look. You're heavily featured in Vogel's notes on me, which he's read." I watch the pedestrians cross up ahead at the lights. "You're the obvious next target if he can't get to me. So we'll just play safe. We stick together. Drive to work together, don't even leave the house alone. Stay with me twenty-four-seven until I've gotten rid of Saxon."

"This is going to be such a delight," Deb mutters. "Stuck at home with you and your happy family. Just get the fuckers quick, will you?"

I sit back in my seat and breathe deeply. I do enjoy the hunt that I'm about to embark on, and I even feel better about Vogel and her treachery now that I've decided to take her out. My dad wouldn't like it but, I decide, he'd probably have lived with it if he'd seen what the alternative was doing to his daughter. Vogel needs to die. Her continued existence is too repulsive to my sister, and, honestly, it's pretty repulsive to me, too.
*

"Thank you, for saying you'll do it," Deb adds, very quietly. "It means a lot to me, you know. That you agreed. And didn't, you know, agree with the other shit I was saying."

The traffic gets moving again.

"You do talk a lot of shit," I comment finally, and she reaches over and punches my arm. It's nothing like yesterday's efforts; playful, friendly. "Deb, I could never do what you were suggesting. It wouldn't matter if you killed a thousand people – I'd still let you carve my heart out of my chest before I raised a hand to you."

The tentative smile she offers me is like sunshine.

We get back to Deb's side of town and turn onto her street. I reach to my feet, where she dumped her bag earlier. I hoist it onto my lap, so I can hand it to her when he park, and look up out the front window.

Two male figures stand outside Deb's door. One is Jacob Elway, Deb's former employer and a slimeball. He's peering through the window. The other, I realise with a sinking feeling, is Deputy Marshal Clayton, and he is holding an envelope in one hand that looks way too much like a warrant. When he sees us pulling up, I notice his other hand shift to his hip and the gun he has there.

"Fuck, what does he want?" Deb wonders aloud. She sounds more irritated than worried, so I gather she hasn't yet met Clayton and she's referring only to Elway. "Wish he'd just fuck right off."

I watch as Clayton points our arrival out to Elway and they both start in the direction of Deb's car. I don't panic but I do feel the pressure of worry. Why would they be here, at Deb's? She has no link to Hannah McKay except that she arrested her, which is something to be discussed at work, not a personal house call type of conversation. I think of Hannah, just inside those walls. They know she's here, I realise suddenly. If that's a warrant, we're so fucked. She won't be able to hide, and she won't be able to sneak out unseen. They'll catch her, arrest us for holding a fugitive. I love Hannah and have trusted her once before with my secrets while in custody, but first and foremost I know that Hannah will take care of Hannah before she looks out for anyone else's interests. Sal Price is the victim they want to charge her over, and that guy died in my living room. He was also seeing Deb.

If Hannah talks or misdirects, how easily can my sister and I be pulled into the one murder neither of us actually have anything to do with? Quite easily, I realise, doing the math. My name is already attached to a number of loosely closed homicides. It won't take a lot of digging to bury me in my own cover-ups. Look at how much Deb, Doakes and La Guerta worked out when they respectively became obsessed with my pastime. My acts have been covered but not erased. Same with Deb's. The patterns and facts are still there to be found by someone looking. Phone records and GPS data will put Deb and me at La Guerta's murder; that CCTV footage from the gas station puts Deb at the church we burned down.

And from there, a whole miasma of mess awaits us. A mess that makes my relationship with my sister look like something from a fucking fairytale.

"Dexter, get your sister out of here," my father's voice urges from the backseat near Harrison. "This is it. This is what you've spent your whole life avoiding. They know, and they're here for you. You've failed rule number one. You're going down; no reason she should go down with you."

"How did they find me?" I ask of my father. Deb, the only person actually listening, shrugs without really understanding the question.

"Who is that with him?" Deb asks with mild interest, taking her bag from me. I'm struck with a number of half-formed plans. I hold onto the handle.

"Fucking Vogel put them onto me," I say with certainty. "This is it."

"This is what?" Deb asks.

"Dexter!" Harry's tone is urgent. He and I both know we're running out of time.

"Deb, this is bad," I say. "They're here for Hannah. Give me the gun."

"What, are you crazy?" she demands, yanking on her bag. "You can't kill a couple of dudes on my front fucking porch."

"Deb," I plead, possibilities crashing through my mind. I see no easy way out. "This is really bad. I can take care of this. You just go; drive. No one needs to ever know you were involved."

I clench my fists, furious. I'm furious with Vogel for complicating my life in multiple ways; I'm furious with my father's ghost for not being more helpful and positive, though of course he's part of me, so he can only represent emotions I am actually feeling; I'm furious with Elway for being such a slimy creep and with Clayton for being so persistent. I'm furious with Hannah for being so easily traced, having killed like six people and not even competently covering her tracks. I'm furious with Deb for giving in to me yesterday and letting me win her back, and for answering my prayers today at Vogel's, because now that the law is here to collect, they're going to take her, too. I wish now that she'd fought that little bit longer, run away, left me, let me drown in my own destructiveness. She'd be better off.

She's staring at me with those eyes that are just like mine. I realise I am not furious with her at all. Vogel was right about at least one thing – Deb is a mirror. I see in her a version of myself, and when I am mad with her, I am actually just mad with myself. Like right now. I am not furious with her; I'm furious with myself for slipping up and letting us end up in this position.

I won't let her go down for my mistakes. She and my son are innocent and I want them to stay that way in the eyes of the law. The walls are closing in but I can fix this. I rifle through the bag and grab the gun.

"Debra," I say, "run."