Christa gritted her teeth. “It’s all about him, isn’t it? What you did to me was about him.”
Rolf chuckled. “She sure is feisty, isn’t she? After everything. Well, maybe she didn’t get enough of my cock the first time. Maybe this time you’ll watch her suck it, Drake. Maybe then she’ll get nice and docile. What do you think?”
Christa snarled. She lunged at Rolf.
“Stop!” I yelled. I reached out and grabbed the barrel of the shotgun, turning it away from her.
The gun went off. The metal vibrated in my hands, hot.
The bullet punched into my upper arm, busting a gaping hole in my bicep. I gasped at the pain, letting go of the gun. Stumbling backwards.
There was a echoing painful gasp from Rolf.
He dropped the gun.
And then I saw that one of Christa’s pointed sticks was stuck in his throat.
His eyes bulged and his hands fluttered around the wound.
It was spurting blood—pulsing it out.
The red liquid bathed his hands.
He gurgled.
He looked at his hands.
He looked at Christa. At me.
And he fell.
Christa brandished another of the sticks, standing over him.
He twitched, blood still spurting from his neck.
And then he was still.
I stepped forward, clutching my arm. “You must have hit an artery.”
She looked at me, her expression fierce. “What does that mean?”
I knelt down next to him and picked up his wrist. He didn’t have a pulse.
His eyes stared wide and frightened up at the night sky.
“He’s dead,” I said. “You killed him.”
She slowly lowered her sharpened stick. “Dead?”
I nodded.
“B-but… it was so quick.”
I stood up. “Tends to work like that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Are we okay?” I said into the phone. “Well, we’re alive, Sloane. But we haven’t been eating right, and we’ve been in the woods. Rolf chased us. He shot at us. We’re, you know, kind of shaken up and exhausted.”
Christa and I were in the kitchen of the cabin. I was using Rolf’s satellite phone. We were too far out in the boonies for regular cell coverage or for landline phones.
“Tell me where you are,” said Sloane. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “There are, um, cars here. They’ve got GPS, and I looked into it. It’ll probably take us three hours or so to get back to Morgantown. But if you wanted to meet us halfway or something, I can tell you what route we’ll be taking.”
“Are you sure you should be driving, Silas?” said my sister. “You just said you hadn’t been eating right.”
“Well, we’re in the process of raiding Rolf’s refrigerator,” I said. “We’re eating now. We’ll probably take showers and steal some of his clothes.” The cabin had electricity by virtue of several generators. A hot shower sounded amazingly civilized. “But we don’t want to hang out here any longer than we have to. So, we’ll get on the road soon.”
“And he’s dead?”
“He’s dead, Sloane. He’s very fucking dead.”
“Oh my god, Silas. You have no idea how worried I was.”
“I’m fine,” I said. Christa, on the other hand, well… I was pretty sure she was the opposite of fine.
“You don’t sound fine,” she said. “You sound… different.”
“It’s, you know, a lot of crazy shit,” I said. “I’ll fill you in when we get back.”
“We will meet you,” she said. “I’ll call Griffin and Leigh, and we’ll get in the car, and we’ll meet you as soon as we can.”
“How’d the wedding go?”
“Are you kidding? There was no wedding,” she said. “Griffin’s been going nuts trying to find Christa. No one was in a celebrating mood.”
“Shit,” I said. “I’m sorry I screwed that up for them.”
“You didn’t screw it up,” she said. “Rolf did.”
* * *
We drove through the darkness, our bellies full, our bodies scrubbed and cleansed.
It seemed as if I should have been relieved, but I wasn’t. It was true that I didn’t feel the clawing, gnawing panic that I’d felt for the past several days, when we’d been running in the woods, afraid someone would shoot us at any second. But I didn’t feel like things were better either. I felt sort of numb and hollow. Empty.
It was very late at night, around three in the morning. I should have been tired, but I felt edgy and awake instead. It was important that we get away from that place. I couldn’t have slept there.
Christa sat in the passenger seat, looking out the window into the night. “Why’d he do it?”
“Rolf?”
“Uh huh.”
“He wanted revenge against me. I’d slept with his wife. He wanted to show me what that felt like.”
“But he killed her. Sylvia, I mean. He killed her, right?”
“Yeah.” Talking about Sylvia usually made me feel a kind of tight anger in my gut. Right then, it didn’t make me feel anything at all. I wasn’t sure if I was capable of feeling anything. Maybe I was too exhausted for emotions.
“So, he didn’t care about her. Not really. If he could kill her, why did he care that you slept with her?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “He didn’t love her or anything. He thought of her like a possession. One of his many toys. He didn’t want to share her. He was angry with me because I ruined her for him.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“He was rich and entitled and insane. He did whatever he wanted. He was sick.”
“I guess.” She let out a slow breath. “And that’s why he hunted people?”
“I figure he did that because he could. He wanted a challenge. He didn’t think anyone would care if he killed men that were already going to die.”
She was quiet for a minute.
So was I.
It was starting to rain. At first it had only been tiny raindrops falling out of the sky, but now they were getting bigger. There were more of them, plopping and spreading on the windshield. I turned on the wipers, thinking that it hadn’t rained the entire time we were out in the woods. That was kind of lucky, I guessed.
No, fuck that. Nothing about being chased around with a mad man with a gun was lucky.
“So, none of it meant anything,” she said. “He hurt me to get at you. And he wanted to get at you because he was angry at you. But deep down, he was just crazy. There’s no real reason that he did what he did. It was all pointless.”
“Pretty much.”
“That sucks.”
“You’d think it would be easier if there was a reason?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or if it had been harder to kill him. It was so easy. All the shit he put us through, and he was dead in seconds. He didn’t suffer nearly enough.”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”
She sniffled.
I shot a look at her. She was crying. My hand snaked across the car to rest on her knee. “Hey,” I whispered.
She shook me off. “I’m fine. You don’t need to do that.”
“I wish you would stop saying that,” I said. “You’re not fine.”
“Shut up,” she said. “Yes, I am. I only wish I’d been able to hurt him as much as he hurt me. Maybe if it had taken longer for him to die, maybe then I’d feel…”
I gripped the steering wheel. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“His suffering wouldn’t have changed your suffering. It would be the same no matter what. You’d have killed him, and he’d be dead, and you’d still feel exactly like this.” I sighed. “Revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Hadn’t Griffin said that to me before all this got started? I wasn’t sure if I’d understood until rig
ht at this moment.
“Are you pissed you didn’t get to kill him?”
“No.” It was funny. I thought that I would be. I thought that it would have made some kind of difference. But now that he was gone, I realized that it wouldn’t have mattered how he died.
I was glad he was dead. Really fucking glad. He didn’t deserve to be alive. And killing him meant that a lot of other people wouldn’t suffer. But it didn’t really change how I felt.
“What’s going to happen to his body?” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess at some point, someone will find him.” I’d done a thorough cleaning job on the house before we left, getting rid of any evidence that Christa and I had ever been there. Op Wraith had trained me well on how not to leave a trace.
“Not gonna call the police?”
“What would be the point in that?”
“Yeah,” she said quietly, “I guess you’re right.”
The rain was picking up. I switched the wipers to the next highest setting. The blades whisked back and forth, flicking away the raindrops.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Know about what?” I said.
“About… what happened.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “I already told Sloane that he’d been chasing us through the woods trying to kill us.”
“No, I mean what Rolf did to me,” she said. “That he… raped me.”
I clenched my jaw. “Christa, I’m not sure—”
“No,” she said. “Silas, can you just promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think you should talk to someone about it.”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone about it. I want to forget it happened.”
I let out a harsh little laugh. “Well, you and me both, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“You can’t?” She sounded surprised. “But you didn’t even see it.”
“I know that,” I said. “But I think about… I wonder about things. I picture things.”
“Like what?”
“Seriously?”
“What do you wonder about?” Her voice was brittle. “Maybe I can clear it up for you.”
“Just forget it.” The rain was coming so heavy that it was tough to see. I needed to concentrate on the road anyway.
“No,” she said. “I want to know.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What do you wonder about?”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “I said to forget it.”
“Tell me,” she insisted.
I sucked in breath. Fine. “Your shoes.”
“My shoes?”
“Did he take off your shoes?” I said. “They were off when I woke up. I can’t remember if they were on when I went dark. If he did, why did he bother?”
She laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I shook my head. “I wish I was.”
“I can give you a blow-by-blow if you want, Silas.”
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“He unbuttoned my pants first, and he pushed them down around my ankles,” she said. “But he couldn’t get my legs apart, so he took off my shoes to get my pants off.”
“Stop it.”
“You wanted to know.”
I felt sick again. I clenched my jaw.
“That help you out?” she said.
“Not really,” I said.
The only sound was the slap of the windshield wipers.
“God damn it, Christa, I am so sorry. I let you down.”
“Like I said, I’d like to forget it ever happened. Don’t tell anyone about it. Please.”
Not talking about it seemed like a good idea to me right then. I thought if she said anything else that I was going to have to pull over and throw up everything I’d eaten that night. So I nodded, staring straight ahead. “Fine.”
She reached over and turned on the radio.
She turned it up. Loud. Too loud for conversation.
* * *
Sloane was hugging me so tight that I thought she was going to bust my ribcage.
I squeezed her back, planting a kiss on the top of her head.
She said something into my chest, but it was muffled.
“What?” I said.
She repeated it louder, but she still had her head buried against me, and I couldn’t hear it. I laughed. A real, happy laugh. Something I felt like I hadn’t done in a long time.
I extracted myself from my sister, still laughing. “I cannot understand you if you’re talking into my clothes like that.”
She brushed tears away from her face. “I was afraid you were dead.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “We’re invincible, remember?”
“But you were gone, and we didn’t know anything,” she said. She gestured behind her at Griffin, who was hugging Christa. Leigh had her arms wrapped around the both of them. She was crying too. The five of us were in the parking lot of a gas station somewhere outside of Morgantown. The sky was the color of bone. On the horizon, the first streaks of dawn were overtaking the sky. “Griffin and I were trying to figure out where Rolf was. We figured it had to be Rolf. But he owns so much land, Silas. It’s huge. There was no way we were going to be able to search all of it. We were considering going to the police or something.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Griffin wanted to go to the police?”
Leigh released her fiancé and his sister and turned to me. “He called Knox first. He was trying to get together as many ex-Op Wraith assassins as he could to try go looking for you guys.”
“Wow,” I said. “I didn’t think you and Knox were really on speaking terms.” Apparently, Griffin had tortured him for days or something. For some reason, Knox wasn’t real friendly with him afterward.
“We’re not,” said Griffin. He let go of Christa, but he kept his arm around her shoulders.
Leigh hugged me. “It’s good to see you.”
I hugged her back. “You guys have no fucking idea how good it is to see you.”
“Shit,” said Sloane, more tears pouring down her face. “You’re not okay, are you? What the hell did he do to you?”
I shook my head. “It’s not important. He’s fucking dead. It’s over.”
“Yeah,” said Christa. “It’s over. We don’t have to talk about it ever again.”
Griffin touched Christa’s forehead. “What happened?”
She ducked out of his arm, covering the wound above her eyebrow self-consciously. “I don’t even know. I fell or something.”
I looked down at the pavement. This was shit. We couldn’t hide this from Griffin. He was her brother. He should know.
“Did she fall a lot?” Griffin was glaring at me.
I flicked my gaze up to meet his for a second, and then I studied my hands. “I’m sorry she got mixed up in all of this. I’m really…” Suddenly, I got choked up. I turned around, running my hands through my hair. I couldn’t face him.
“It’s fine,” Christa was saying. “I’m fine, Griffin.”
“Some guy was hunting you like you were a deer or something,” said Griffin. “How could you possibly be fine?”
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“Neither of you seem fine,” said Sloane, and there was an edge in her voice. I turned to see that she was giving Griffin a back-off look. She was looking out for me. She didn’t need to do that. I’d fucked up bad, and Griffin had every right to be annoyed with me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “This is all because of me. But Christa—”
“What are we going to tell Mom?” said Christa.
Griffin turned to her. “Mom?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, she doesn’t know that you were an assassin or whatever, right?”
He grimaced. “You know about that, huh?”
“I sort of had to explain stuff when I kept coming back from the dead,” I said.
He nodded. He rubbed the top of his head. “Let me worry about Mom, okay? You don’t need to worry about anything except dealing with whatever you need to deal with.”
“I don’t need to deal with things,” she said.
Griffin raised his eyebrows.
Leigh reached out for Christa’s hand. “Hey, you’re probably in shock, you know?”
“No, I’m not,” said Christa. “Look, Silas took all the bullets. He totally protected me. It was about as bad as a camping trip that you’re not really prepared for.”
“Christa, don’t,” I said. “You know I didn’t—”
“I even learned how to spear fish.” She smiled brightly.
Griffin dragged a hand over his face. He came over to me and hugged me. “Thanks for looking out for her, man.”
I let him hug me, but I didn’t hug back. “If I’d been looking out for her, she never would have been there.”
He released me. “You brought her back to me, didn’t you?”
I looked away.
“She’s alive.”
“I’m fine,” said Sloane. “Jesus, Griffin, you always treat me like I’m five years old.”
Griffin rolled his eyes. He grinned. “She’s fine. She’s yelling at me, so she’s fine.”
I looked at her over his shoulder. Why was she doing this?
She wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“Look,” said Griffin, “Sloane and I can, um, get rid of Rolf’s car. Why don’t you let Leigh drive you back into town? Maybe you guys want to go somewhere for breakfast?”
“Sonic,” I said. “Right, Christa?”
She gave me a small smile. “Yeah. That would be nice.”
* * *
The Sonic carhop leaned in the window. She was on roller skates. Christa said that they always wore roller skates. The carhop’s blonde hair was pulled into a sloppy ponytail, and she was wearing too much lipstick. “Are you three gonna be able to eat all of this?” she asked as she handed Leigh three bulging paper bags.
“Oh,” said Christa, leaning across from the passenger seat to help take the bags, “you don’t understand. This is all for me.”
The carhop laughed. “You gotta tell me how you stay so skinny eating this much food.”
“I’m totally bulimic,” said Christa.
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