by Malinda Lo
A car’s headlights nearly blinded her. The vehicle screeched to a halt a few feet away, and the door opened. Reese raised her hands, squinting into the glare, and pointed the gun at the man in black.
CHAPTER 38
“Put the gun down!” the agent ordered.
She didn’t budge, though her hands trembled. Beside her Amber was breathing rapidly. Reese couldn’t see David. David? Where are you? She began to edge over to the right, trying to get out of the headlight beams.
“Stop moving and put the gun down,” the agent yelled. He was a black shadow pointing at her. She knew he was holding a gun too.
“No,” she said. “We’re leaving.” Her hands were slippery with sweat and she thought about dropping Carter’s phone, but she wanted it. Evidence. She pressed the device against the weapon and let her finger hover over the trigger.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” the agent said.
She took another step to the right. The headlights were no longer directly in front of her, and she saw the gleam of his weapon lit up on one side. “How do you know that?” she demanded, fear and anger bursting out of her. “I shot that guy.” She thought again: David? Where are you?
I’m here.
His presence in her mind made everything around her snap into focus. It was like being at the eye doctor’s office and having the proper lens slide into place, and what had previously been a blur was now crystal clear. Reese was near the edge of the road, the van doors gaping open behind her. Amber was to her left, still trapped in the beams of the agent’s headlights. David had somehow snuck behind the sedan and was creeping up behind the man in black. He had a rock in his hands. She knew what he was going to do.
“Put the weapon down and we can make sure you aren’t prosecuted for that,” the agent said.
David smashed the rock into the back of the agent’s head. The man lurched, letting out a surprised grunt. David struck him again, and the agent collapsed against the side of the car, sliding down to the ground. David threw the rock away and pulled the agent’s gun from his limp hands. “Come on, we have to get out of here.”
“Should we take the car?” Reese asked, gesturing at the sedan.
“It’s probably got a tracking device in it,” Amber said. They all froze as a sound came from the front of the van. Wilson. Reese didn’t know what kind of deal Torres had struck with Wilson to persuade him to give them ten minutes, but the time would be up soon if it wasn’t already. She didn’t want to stick around to deal with Wilson if he decided he had to get out of the van.
A crescent moon was rising in the east, sending a dim light over a field of knee-high grass that stretched away from the road. “Across the field,” Reese said. “Let’s go.”
The grass crunched as they sprinted through it, the sound of their footsteps thumping dully on the earth. Reese was wearing flats, and as she ran her shoes slid across the uneven ground, nearly tripping her several times. She soon realized she had it easy, because Amber had been forced to pull off her other shoe and was now running barefoot. She began to slow down, wincing as she ran. Reese glanced behind them, but she couldn’t see anyone following, and she hadn’t heard the van’s engine start up again.
The ground began to slope down, and in the distance Reese saw the glint of water. She still gripped the gun and the phone in her bound hands as she tried to avoid tumbling down the hill in her slippery shoes. David slowed as he approached the edge of the creek and turned back to wait for Reese and Amber. He put the gun he had been holding on the ground and pulled something out of his pocket: one of Carter’s knives. “Come here,” he said, flicking open the blade.
Reese held out her hands and he sliced through the plastic restraint. She put Carter’s gun down and pocketed the phone before taking the knife to cut David free.
“What is that?” David asked, nodding at the phone.
“I took Carter’s phone for evidence.”
“Turn it off,” Amber said as she scrambled down the slope. “Turn it off now. They could be using it to track us.”
Reese felt as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped on her. She pulled out the phone and scrutinized it in the dim moonlight. “I can’t find the power button.”
David sliced off Amber’s wrist restraints as she said, “Give it to me.” Reese handed it over. Amber inspected it up close, and then she pressed her fingertip into the back of the phone and removed the thick exterior case. The device beeped.
“What are you doing?” David asked.
“Taking out the battery.” Amber pulled it out and gave it to Reese. The screen of the phone flashed once and then died.
“I’m sorry,” Reese said. “I just wanted some evidence—I didn’t think—” She squeezed the battery.
“It’s okay,” Amber said, sounding tired. “It was smart to take it for later.”
“We don’t know if they could track us with it,” David said, rubbing a hand over his forehead.
“Well, now they can’t,” Amber said. “Hopefully. We ready to go?”
“Yeah,” David said, picking up the agent’s gun.
“Wait,” Reese said. She pocketed the disassembled phone and took off her jacket. “Give me the knife.” When David gave it to her, she poked the tip of the blade through the seams, detaching the sleeves and handing them to Amber. “Wrap these around your feet.”
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Amber said dubiously, but she took the two sleeves anyway and wound them around her feet, flinching as she did so.
Reese handed the knife back to David and glanced up the hill behind them, then across the creek. “It’s not that deep, is it?”
“You want to cross it?” David asked.
“Where else are we going to go?” Reese slid her arms through the now-sleeveless jacket and picked up Carter’s gun from the ground.
“Let’s just do it,” Amber said. “The farther we can get the better. We’ll just keep running east toward the moon so we don’t go in circles.” She finished wrapping her feet. “Sorry about ruining your jacket.”
“It’s okay. Sorry you ruined your shoes.”
Amber let out a choked laugh. “I’m not.”
The creek was only a few feet deep in the middle. Mud squished beneath their feet as they waded across. They clambered out onto the opposite bank and started up the hill. When they reached the crest, they stopped to look across another field of grass.
Reese saw a single light in the distance. “Do you think that’s a house?”
“Maybe,” Amber said.
They began to walk toward it. Reese kept listening for any sounds of pursuit, but the night was quiet, with only the faint whisper of the cool wind blowing through the grasses. By the time they reached the edge of the field, the moon was straight overhead, and Reese guessed they had been walking for at least an hour or two. The light she had seen from the riverbank did come from a house; they could see the outline of its roof against the night sky. As they drew closer she saw it was an exterior light attached to a carport, where a dirty white truck was parked. They halted about a hundred feet from the edge of the field and the house.
“Do you think we should just go knock on the door?” Reese whispered.
“It’s the middle of the night, I don’t know,” Amber said.
The sound of a car engine could be heard in the distance, and a moment later headlights came toward the carport. “Get down,” David said, crouching onto the ground. Reese and Amber dropped onto the dirt.
“Maybe it’s just some guy coming home late,” Reese said.
The vehicle pulled up to the carport. It was a black-and-white police car.
“Or maybe not,” Amber said.
The engine shut off and the driver’s-side door opened. The police officer climbed out. Reese peeked through strands of grass, her chin digging into the ground, and watched the man walk up to the farmhouse. He pressed his fingers against what Reese guessed was a doorbell. When there was no response, he knocked.
The sound was small under the vast night sky, like a pin tapping against glass. He stood there for several minutes, pressing the doorbell and knocking, before the door finally opened. A man in boxer shorts and a white T-shirt came out onto the concrete front step.
They couldn’t hear the conversation clearly, but they saw the police officer show his identification. The man scratched his head and eventually let the cop into the house. The lights went on room by room.
“Are they searching the place?” David whispered.
“Looks like it,” Reese said.
“Do you think they’re looking for us?” Amber asked.
Reese watched the house with growing anxiety. Eventually the lights began to go off, and the front door opened. The officer handed the man a business card before returning to his car. As he drove away, the man closed the front door.
“I think we should keep moving,” David said. “If they’re looking for us, we can’t stay here.”
“But if that cop was looking for us, then he’s already checked this place,” Reese said. “So isn’t it safe for us to stay?”
“What are we going to do?” David asked. “Wait in the field? It’s dark now, but when the sun rises we’ll be totally obvious.”
“Do you guys know what day it is? Or what night?” Amber asked.
“I think it’s Wednesday night,” Reese said. “When Torres took me to the bathroom she told me it was Tuesday. I don’t think it’s been more than a day since then.”
“So the guy in the house is going to have to go to work in the morning,” Amber said. “We should wait till he leaves and then go into his house and call for help on his phone.”
“What if he has a wife or kids or something?” David asked.
“I don’t think he does,” Amber said. “There are no toys in the yard, so probably no kids. And there’s only one car. When the lights went on in the house we didn’t see anybody else getting up. I think it’s just him.”
Reese stared across the field, trying to figure out what the bulky shapes were in the dark. One of them looked like a pile of hay bales. “Let’s go over there,” she said, pointing at the rectangular shapes. “Maybe we can hide behind those and keep an eye on the house.”
“All right. I guess we can try it,” David said.
They got to their feet and crossed the rest of the field as quietly as they could. It was indeed a pile of hay bales, and Reese realized they must have been running through hay fields earlier. The bales were stacked five feet thick and ten feet high, although the back row was lower. They moved a few of the bales from the rear to create a second low wall to hide behind, hoping that the homeowner wouldn’t notice a difference from the front. If they peeked over the low wall of hay they could glimpse the light from the carport. Reese tucked Carter’s gun between two hay bales and saw David do the same with the agent’s weapon.
As they huddled on the ground in the corner behind the hay, cold seeped through the thin fabric of Reese’s pants and she shivered, struck by a wave of exhaustion. Amber was shivering too, her bare arms wrapped around her knees. “Are your feet okay?” Reese whispered.
“They hurt, but I’ll be fine.”
David pulled off his jacket and held it out to Amber. “Here. You’re cold.”
She didn’t take it at first, and Reese didn’t need to be touching Amber to know that she was surprised by the offer. “Thanks,” she said after a moment, and took the jacket.
They sat in silence for a while with Reese between David and Amber. Reese heard David lean back against the hay bales. A chilly breeze whistled through the air, ruffling her hair. She realized they were all keeping a careful amount of distance between one another, and it made her heart sink. She drew her knees up, trying to quell the shaking in her body as the aftereffects of what they had done flooded through her. She had shot a man. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead. They had fled across a field in the middle of the night and now they were hiding out in order to break into someone’s house in the morning. She shuddered again.
David reached out and touched her arm. Come here.
He pulled her over to him, putting his arm around her, and after her initial surprise, she let herself lean into him. He was warmer than her, and she felt the steady thump of his heartbeat beneath her cheek while his hand stroked her shoulder. His body buzzed with relief and exhaustion, and she sensed the ache of a bruise on his back from where he had been thrown against the van door.
It’s okay, he told her, and his hand sought out the lump on the back of her head, touching it delicately.
She winced and he lowered his hand to her shoulder again, drawing her closer. She wanted to stay there, but it wasn’t fair to Amber, and she began to pull away.
Don’t, he thought, and then he made a suggestion.
She was taken aback. I can’t.
You can.
She sensed him withdrawing from her mentally, closing off his consciousness until she was unable to sense anything more than his physical self. It felt almost alien to be like this with him: her body curled into his, her face against his chest, with no connection to his thoughts. She knew why he had withdrawn from her, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to follow through on what he suggested. She stayed there, motionless, feeling the rapid flutter of her own heartbeat as she told herself she could do it.
She took a deep breath and closed herself off too. She focused on the pain in her head from where she had hit the back of the van. She focused on the chill on her skin from the cool wind. She focused, and then she reached for Amber.
Amber was shivering beneath David’s jacket, and Reese shifted so that she could put an arm around her. Amber pulled her legs up and tucked herself against Reese, her hair tickling Reese’s chin. She drew in a long, quivering breath, as if she were about to cry, and then she exhaled. Slowly, Reese relaxed. She was a lot warmer now. Although she had fully disconnected mentally from both David and Amber, she somehow felt closer to them than she ever had before. As they waited for the sun to rise, she closed her eyes. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she felt the night air blow gently over her damp face.
CHAPTER 39
When Reese’s eyes opened, Amber was gone and the sky was lightening. Reese was still curled in the crook of David’s arm, and she felt his lungs rising and falling beneath her cheek. She sat up carefully, trying not to wake him, and looked for Amber.
She was crouched behind one of the hay bales nearby, peering at the house. In the early morning light, Reese saw the blood and dirt caked over Amber’s feet, which were still poorly wrapped in the sleeves from her jacket.
“Oh my God, does that hurt?” Reese whispered, crawling over to her.
Amber glanced at her feet and shrugged. “A little.”
“We have to get that cleaned up.”
Amber smiled slightly. “Later.” She nodded toward the house. “I think he’s up. I saw a light go on a while ago.”
As Reese watched, another window lit up on the ground floor. Through the mini-blinds, she saw the edge of a refrigerator. “Have you seen anyone else?”
“No. It’s still just the one guy.”
Reese backed away and leaned against the hay. David stirred, blinking his eyes. The dried blood on his face and neck was cracking. She grimaced. “Are you all right? That doesn’t look so good.”
David sat up, raising his right hand to his face. His hand was covered with dried blood too, and he froze as he saw it.
“Did you hurt your hand?” Reese asked. She reached for it, studying his palm for wounds, and felt him twitch at her touch.
“No,” he said.
She lifted her gaze to his eyes and realized the blood was from the agent’s head. David pulled his hand away, looking a little sick.
The sound of a door slamming startled them all. They crawled over to the lower hay bale and peeked over the edge. The kitchen light had gone off, and they saw the homeowner, now dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and carrying a lunch box and a hard hat, heading
to his truck. The engine rumbled and a moment later he pulled out of the carport, heading down the dirt driveway. They waited until the sound of the truck had completely faded away, and then they waited a bit longer, worried that he might have forgotten something and would come back. Finally Reese whispered, “I think we should go in.” She pulled the gun from its hiding place nearby, and Amber recoiled from her.
“Be careful with that,” Amber said.
“I am.” Reese ejected the clip and counted five bullets before pushing it back into place.
“Do you know how to use that?” Amber asked warily.
“You pull the trigger,” Reese said.
Amber raised an eyebrow. “Oh really.”
David picked up the agent’s gun and got to his feet. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Shit, I forgot you had one too,” Amber said.
“I don’t think we should leave them behind,” David said.
Amber eyed his bloody fingers and said, “You two scare me.” She carefully stood up, barely flinching as she walked around the stacked hay bales and headed for the house.
The front door was locked, and the front window—through which Reese could see a sparsely furnished living room—was locked too. They went to the rear of the house, looking for an easier way in, and found a back door with a square window in it. Reese looked from Amber to David. “Are we really going to break into this house?”
He shrugged. “Or we could keep walking and hope someone takes us in?”
She shook her head at him. “Funny.”
Amber had already begun to look for something to use to break the glass. She returned a minute later with a fist-sized rock. “Get out of the way,” she said. When they were all a decent distance from the door, she hurled the rock at the glass. It shattered, and the rock dropped through into the house. “Give me your jacket,” Amber said to Reese.
Reese took it off and handed it over. Amber walked to the door, edging carefully around the fragments of glass that had fallen outside, and wrapped the remains of the jacket over her hand to knock a few more shards out of the window. Then she gingerly reached inside and unlocked the door, pushing it open. “Voilà,” she said.
