by Adam Cesare
Once he had the loop of it above the railing, the slack of it coiled in a messy pile at their feet, Mr. Murray slipped the noose down around Cole’s neck.
“Wait,” Sheriff Dunne yelled, climbing the final set of stairs with obvious effort.
The catwalk groaned as the big man joined them. The entire structure shuddered against the extra weight. Scorched, corroded metal squeaked against itself. Dunne held both hands out for balance, slowed his walk to baby steps.
Cole held out a half second of hope that the structure would collapse and kill these two fuckers along with him. But the groaning calmed, and Dunne made it the rest of the way.
“Can’t forget this,” Dunne said, stuffing an envelope—Cole’s suicide note, his father no doubt had copied his handwriting—into the waistband of Cole’s jeans. “I added the extra bit from the car, too—thanks for that.”
Besides the Frendo mask, Dunne was the only person smiling.
Moving slowly, almost tenderly, Dunne brought Cole forward and touched his forehead to his.
“Was it worth it?” Dunne asked in a whisper, getting a grip on the back of Cole’s neck. Cole could feel his intention, the way Dunne’s stubby fingers twitched.
No matter Cole’s answer, Dunne was getting ready to hoist him over the handrail. It would be a much shorter fall than the one Victoria had taken. And a quicker death, since Victoria had still been alive in the ambulance, squeezing Cole’s hand.
God. Maybe Cole wanted this.
He didn’t answer Dunne’s question, instead gently pulled against his hold to get a look down below them, one last glimpse of his dad.
“Stop!” a voice screamed, somewhere below, the word echoing up to them.
Dunne pulled his forehead away. Under his mask, Mr. Murray gave an impatient growl.
The three of them looked down to see Arthur Hill, stepping into the fluorescent lights under the walkway.
The shadows were harsh and sharp from up here.
One shoe. Then the other. Then hands.
Arthur Hill had his hands raised above his head, a preacher imploring his congregation. Maybe he’d finally seen reason.
No.
His hands were up in surrender.
With a rifle pointed at Arthur Hill’s spine, Quinn Maybrook prodded Cole’s father forward into the circle of light.
“Take that rope off his neck or I’ll kill him,” Quinn said.
Sheriff Dunne chuckled, hand still firm on the back of Cole’s neck.
“This new girl,” Dunne said, admiration in his voice. Then he turned to Cole. “I’m impressed.”
Then, so fast it was hard to register the movement, Sheriff Dunne dipped his hand down to his service pistol, drew, and fired down at her.
Twenty-Nine
She had slipped in through a broken window and wound slowly, carefully, to get to where they were holding Cole. A few amber safety lights lit her way through the maze of suspended gangways and metal scaffolds that supported the industrial mixing drums and pressurized vats of the refinery.
From the noose, it was clear what they were planning to do—she would need to act fast.
If she had to kill again to stop them . . . what was a few more clowns?
She didn’t take much stock of her hostage, simply put the rifle to the older man in the white shirt and slacks and walked him into the corona of light.
“Take that rope off his neck or I’ll kill him,” Quinn yelled up, her voice carrying.
“This new girl,” Dunne chuckled before muttering something to Cole that she couldn’t quite make out.
Dunne pulled his gun and fired down at her, no regard for the man in the white shirt between them.
“Dad!” Cole yelled.
The first shot took Quinn’s hostage in the shoulder, spinning him toward her, knocking the barrel of her rifle down and away.
Dad?
They both fell back, the man—Cole’s dad?!—knocking her down, falling on top of her, his white shirt instantly blooming red.
Dunne’s second gunshot slammed into the concrete beside Quinn’s head. Dust stung her eyes as she tried to roll out from under Cole’s dad.
Quinn sat forward and brought the rifle up, eyes watering, struggling to find her aim.
Dunne was the biggest target, aiming down with one arm extended, the other holding on to Cole. But . . .
She couldn’t take the shot. Dunne had pulled Cole over to him and was using him as a human shield. But Cole clearly wasn’t going to go down without a fight. He roared, his voice cracking as he kicked up with both feet against the railing in front of him. The move jostled Dunne as he fired at Quinn, his shot flying wild and ricocheting off the steel crossbeams above them.
Dunne steadied himself as Quinn worked herself out from under Cole’s father.
Cole swung around in the sheriff’s grip, wriggled himself to an about-face, and buried his head into the wound on Sheriff Dunne’s shoulder.
Whatever Cole was doing—possibly biting the sheriff in his shotgun wounds—Dunne screeched in pain. The other clown—Janet’s stepdad?—tried to pry the boy off Dunne, but was no help.
Dunne rushed forward toward the edge of the walkway, pulling Cole by his noose, and with a large overhanded swipe flung Cole over the railing and off the side of the platform.
Quinn watched Cole enter free fall.
No.
But Cole’s neck didn’t snap.
He wasn’t descending fast enough for that because Janet’s stepdad had caught his ankle in the slack of the rope. The bald clown had been pulled from his feet and was holding the edge of the platform for dear life. He held tight for a panicked moment before losing his grip and falling.
The heavy man in the clown costume did a complete flip in the air before stopping abruptly, both legs breaking backward as he slammed onto the factory floor.
As that Frendo howled in pain, Cole dangled by his neck, feet bicycling in the air, hands cuffed behind his back, his face turning blue as he choked.
“Look what you did!” Sheriff Dunne screamed down at Quinn, finding his aim again with the handgun but not before Quinn had squeezed the trigger on her own rifle.
Dunne put a hand to his stomach, pulled back a fistful of blood, and smiled down at Quinn. At her feet, Cole’s father moaned, regaining consciousness.
Above her, Cole gave a few final bucks in the air, before going limp. His toes were pointed down, maybe two feet from the floor.
Then there was a crash somewhere behind her, a flash of light as metal tore through metal with deafening squeals.
Quinn. That was Quinn’s voice!
Glenn Maybrook could hardly believe it.
He looked down at the scalpel in his hand. He was trembling. Two decades in an ER setting and nervous shakes had never been a problem.
He forced his hand still.
This was it. He could do something. He could help her. He could save her. He had to save her! Sure, he’d gone a little insane down there with two corpses. Insane enough that one of the two corpses was now mostly undressed, cold on her slab, but this was it, now that he was stumbling through industrial wreckage, toward the sound of voices. He could help.
Then there was the pop of a gunshot, and Glenn thought, God, no.
He burst from his hiding space behind the mixing drums.
He ran up the short gangplank in front of him, only to need to go back down. His legs felt weak, his vision wavering. Maybe it was the mask doing things to his peripheral vision, messing with his balance.
Your daughter needs you. Move, you shithead.
There were bellows from grown men, none of the voices Quinn’s.
“Look at what you did!”
Glenn hit the ground when he heard the third shot ricochet around, nearly causing him to put the scalpel in his own chest, but he found his feet, pulled himself along in the darkness.
He turned toward the light, disoriented, catching a glimpse of Quinn, prone under a spotlight.
His gir
l. Strong. Alive.
Aiming a rifle.
And then there was a crash, headlights—and Glenn Maybrook needed to dive out of the way to keep from being crushed under the wheels of a speeding pickup truck.
Quinn turned to see the final pieces of shrapnel clatter from the large hole where the front end of the truck had torn down one of the factory’s loading bay doors.
The red-and-cream pickup streaked onto the factory floor. At the last possible moment, the driver gave the wheel a yank to avoid crashing into the back of Dunne’s parked cruiser.
The truck slowed, wending its way around where Quinn lay, then sped forward toward Cole.
Quinn couldn’t watch. Cole was about to be smashed like a piñata against the truck’s front fender.
But then the truck slowed and instead of hitting the dangling boy, the truck simply nudged against his hip. The truck crawled forward, lifting the weight of Cole’s body, easing his weight off the rope around his neck.
Cole seemed to rouse, his knees streaking the bloody hood of the truck as he struggled to stand: coughing, alive, the hood of the truck becoming a platform, saving him.
Alive.
And Cole wasn’t the only one.
Ruston Vance kicked open the truck’s driver’s side door, only to duck back in as Dunne leaned over the railing and fired down at him, a bullet sparking off the metal of the doorframe.
Quinn’s neighbor crooked the barrel of the shotgun into the corner of the truck window and fired up, sending Dunne running to the end of the catwalk, toward the stairs down to the factory floor.
Rust stepped out of the truck and into the light. His face was puffy and burned. His white undershirt had gone black from the dirt and blood, but he was alive.
He was alive!
And he had his duffel bag slung over his back, which meant he had ammunition.
She couldn’t take her eyes off Sheriff Dunne. He was still on his feet. Gutshot but alive, his boots clanging on metal as he worked his way down the first set of stairs.
Quinn stood, legs feeling bloodless and rolled flat. Cole’s father was facedown by her feet, still groaning.
Quinn looked to under the lights. On the hood of the truck, Cole was gasping, unable to get his hands up, the rope still around his neck, constricting his airway. He might not have been saved, if his larynx was collapsed.
They needed to help him. Fast.
His Frendo mask still on, Janet’s stepdad had stopped crying about his shattered legs and had begun crawling toward the bumper of the truck, dragging himself forward with his elbows.
Rust aimed his shotgun up at the stairs and fired at Dunne. Sparks flew from the handrails and metal steps. Sheriff Dunne winced but seemed unharmed, continued clattering down onto the landing, one more set of stairs before he was on the warehouse floor with them.
“Quinn,” Rust yelled, pointing up toward Dunne. “Keep on him.”
Dunne steadied himself and fired back down at Rust, missing.
Rust was finished issuing orders. He was walking around the door, ready to help Cole off the hood of the truck. The Tillersons’ truck, Quinn finally recognized. She was unsurprised that Ruston Vance could drive stick.
Quinn advanced the bolt on the rifle, hoping for at least one more bullet, knowing there probably wasn’t one.
On the hood, Cole wriggled against Rust’s grip, dazed enough he didn’t realize he was in the process of being helped.
Suddenly, Cole disappeared around the side of the truck, pulled off the hood by his legs, neck stretched out as he began dangling from the rope again.
Frendo was holding on to Cole’s heels, trying to finish the job by putting all his weight into it. There was a slug trail of black blood behind him from where he’d dragged himself from his landing site.
Rust put the end of the shotgun to the man’s chest and blew Janet’s stepdad apart. He did this casually, how someone might swat a fly. He continued hoisting Cole up, using both hands now, dropping the shotgun and his bag at his feet.
There was too much to watch. But Quinn had to stay focused.
There was one more thing to do.
Quinn arrived at the base of the metal stairs and looked up. Dunne stumbled, missing a step. He had his gun out in front of him, but his hand wavered. He looked barely able to focus on her, the barrel shaking. The wound in his belly had flowed over his belt and was now streaking his pant legs.
The skin of his face was the same color as his mustache: gray, pale, dead.
No matter what else happened in the next minute or so, Quinn had done that. There was no living through a wound like that, this far from a hospital. She’d killed him for sure.
“Well,” Dunne started to say as he took one step down toward Quinn, finally finding her with the end of his weapon. “You did g—”
Quinn fired up at him.
The sheriff’s hat blew back off his head. He slumped to his knees, stairs rattling, then to his stomach, then rode down the remaining steps on his face, ending in a bloody mass at her feet.
Dead. Sheriff Dunne was dead.
In the gunsmoke and truck exhaust of the factory floor, someone coughed.
Quinn let the rifle hang limp in her fingers, but not drop, and made her way over to where Rust had successfully cut Cole down, was laying his body in front of the truck and administering CPR.
An inhale caught in Quinn’s throat, turned into a lump of dread. Had Cole stopped breathing? It was all too much. That they’d gone this far, done so much, for Cole to die anyway.
Quinn felt her vision blurring, but she was too dehydrated for the tears to fall.
Rust pulled his head up from the ground and Cole’s face followed.
Oh, wait . . .
That wasn’t CPR. That wasn’t CPR at all.
Cole Hill, red-faced, a tracer of white around his neck, returned Ruston Vance’s kiss. Passionately.
“Um. Maybe let him breathe,” Quinn said, collapsing beside the two of them.
It felt good to sit.
The two boys stopped kissing, at least temporarily, and looked over to her.
The pair looked natural together. For the first time all day, something made sense. They worked together—and not just because both looked like they needed about a month in the intensive care unit.
“How did you? You know . . . ,” Quinn asked, too tired to articulate the whole question, her hand down on Rust’s black duffel bag.
“I lit the fuse on the dynamite and ran like hell out the front,” Rust said. “Didn’t know how long I’d been out. Woke up, found my bag, then went to the Tillerson house. Seems like I kept missing everyone. They aren’t going to like what we did to their truck . . .”
Out behind the circle of the lights, someone moved.
She’d been wrong about Dunne being the last threat.
This final clown had almost caught them unaware.
Almost.
Quinn wondered who it could be under that mask. Whether it was anyone from Kettle Springs she’d met. Most likely it wasn’t. Most of the people she’d met were dead.
The clown was stumbling, judging from the blood on its jumpsuit, was probably already mortally wounded.
Wounded but not harmless. He was carrying a small knife; she could see the glint of its blade even in the darkness and haze.
Without standing, Quinn raised the rifle, getting the man—or curveless woman—in her sights. The motion feeling like muscle memory by now.
Somewhere her mother screamed at her.
But like a lot of Samantha Maybrook’s motherly advice, this piece was coming too late. Quinn had already taken lives. Too many.
“No,” Cole screamed, hoarse. He scurried forward, fumbling on his knees, hands still cuffed behind his back, trying to tip the rifle up with his shoulder and failing.
Quinn squeezed the trigger.
Click.
The bag—there would be more ammunition in the bag. She looked down, hand on the zipper.
“Quinn,�
� a familiar voice said, out in the darkness.
“Dad?”
One of Glenn Maybrook’s white Reeboks—not so white anymore—stumble-hopped forward and he fell.
Quinn threw the gun away, the expanse of it feeling clammy in her palm. The rifle hadn’t betrayed her, though—it hadn’t seduced her. It had just let her do what she wanted to do. Survive. Kill.
Cole had his head in her lap, and he nodded and whispered to himself in a rasp: “Cool shoes . . .”
Quinn stood, running to her father. She removed his Frendo mask.
The two of them were quiet, holding each other for a moment.
“Sorry I made us move here” was the first thing her dad said. “Please get me a doctor that’s not me.”
The most able-bodied among them, Quinn gathered the injured up, leaning them against each other.
They walked to the door. The first glimpses of morning light were cutting through the darkness like a second chance at life.
Thirty
TWO MONTHS LATER
“Hey guys, we’re LIVE here at the Main Street Eatery and—” Cole looked up. “Oh c’mon. I’m just kidding.”
Their waitress was aghast, didn’t seem to think Cole was funny. This woman had worked with Trudy. Maybe even liked her.
Rust put his hand over Cole’s, lowering the phone to the table.
Cole had done this bit, or something like it, a few times now. Whenever they went out to eat, basically. It was a joke and it wasn’t. It was Cole Hill, owning his infamy, trying to disarm people in town who might still harbor certain preconceptions about the boy millionaire.
“Sorry about him,” Quinn said, and the waitress shrugged, regaining a little color as she took their order.
A lot had changed over the last two months.
They were wearing light winter jackets, for one thing. The draft coming from the windows next to the booth was too strong for the heat inside the old diner to contend with.
For another thing: around 20 percent of the population of Kettle Springs, Missouri, was either dead, headed to prison, or had moved away.
“How’s your dad?” Cole asked Quinn. He snuggled up against Rust, the fairer boy looking uncomfortable only for a moment before easing back into his seat. Quinn got the impression that for Rust, it wasn’t so much being comfortable with who he was, but who he was with. Cole still had that star quality, and Rust preferred not to be quite so visible.
