“I ruined it, didn’t I?” I asked. “The other kids won’t trust me.”
Cole shook his head. “All they saw was someone upset over losing someone they love. No harm, no foul, as the saying goes. Will you cut yourself some slack before you literally run yourself into the ground? Take care of yourself so you can help me take care of them, all right? That’s the deal, and it starts tonight, right now—with you staying here and sleeping for at least seven hours.”
“But Clancy—”
“I can deliver the Little Prince’s meal for one night,” he said. “Do you honestly think you could handle him right now if he tried to take you on?”
“Take someone with you,” I said. “Have them watch from behind the door to make sure he doesn’t try anything.”
“I’ll ask Vida.”
“Chubs would be better.”
“You got it.”
I spread my legs out on the bed in front of me as he stood up, too tired to argue, too tired to do much beside watch him go. Just as he turned out the lights, I said, “Tomorrow. I’m going to find Lillian Gray tomorrow. I’m going to take care of it.” Of everyone. And when this was over, I’d be the one to go find Cate. I’d save her the same way she saved me.
“Atta girl. I have no doubt.” He stopped in the doorway, turning back. “There’s someone waiting for you. Do you want me to let her in?”
I nodded.
It was Zu. Cole shut the door behind him, and I could just make out the edges of her dark shape, outlined by the faint glow bleeding into the room from under the door. She pulled the thin top sheet up over me, finishing with a kiss to my forehead.
And that—not the video, not imagining what they would do to Cate as a prisoner—that tender kiss was what brought the tears to the surface.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. She took care of me…and I never treated her as well as I should have, and now she’s gone, and doesn’t know that I’m sorry. They could kill her.…”
I felt her hand around mine, squeezing in reassurance. I know, I know. She used her other hand to smooth the hair away from my face.
“You lost someone,” I said, my voice sounding rough to my own ears. “The guy who helped you get to California. Will you tell me about him? Not what happened to him, not if you don’t want to talk about it, but what he was like as a person. Would that be okay?”
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to see her nod, even if I couldn’t read her expression.
“What was his name?”
Zu picked up the same small notebook she’d been toting around for weeks. I closed my eyes, listening to the faint scratch of her pencil against the paper, only opening them when she tapped my shoulder with it. She reached over and switched on the light on the dresser so I could read it: GABE.
In the single second before she turned the light off, I saw tears caught in her lashes. The expression on her face knifed clean through my heart. I would have done anything, anything, to take the weight of that pain off her shoulders before it crushed her into dust. But I knew better; there was no real relief from it. You just had to be willing to let the people around you serve as supports, and take their share of it when it seemed too much, too heavy, to hold on your own.
I shifted back on the narrow mattress, giving her room to crawl in next to me. Zu was all elbows and knees. Growing, stretching up in height, the way everyone seemed to right before they crossed that strange, ambiguous line into being a teenager. An almost-adult.
But the way she cried, the way she wrapped her arms around me and buried her warm, wet face against my neck—that was a kid. That was a kid who’d already lived a hard life and was being asked to take on more.
“I know,” I said quietly. “I know.”
The darkness rose and fell over me like a cold wave. I shut my eyes, relishing the simple fact that my mind was like a blank sheet, drained of all thoughts. But hours later, no matter how still I forced myself to be, I couldn’t shake the rush of sensation in my legs—the feeling that they were still running.
I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING LOOKING FOR A FIGHT. Muscles ached that I didn’t know I had, and my feet screamed bloody murder when I slid my tennis shoes back on. All the sleep had done was process my stifling sadness into pure, unflinching anger. I had energy to burn. I opened the door and shut it behind me as quietly as I could, so as not to wake up Zu.
The manual clock in the hallway said 4:45 A.M. It would be another hour before anyone else was up and ready for the day. Plenty of time to work out the lightning zipping through my body, and return to some state of calm.
The light in the gym was already on, and my whole body tensed in anticipation when I saw who was running on the treadmill, taking quick, confident strides. Cole must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, but he kept running and didn’t acknowledge me until I was standing right next to the machine and its whirring belt.
“Not in the mood, Gem.” His voice was flat, edged with warning.
“Too bad,” I said, walking over to retrieve two pairs of gloves. “I am.”
I waited for him. Gloves on my hands, stretching, trying to warm my body up for this. Finally, after a good five minutes, he let out a grunt and hit the STOP button on the machine. Cole scooped up the gloves from the floor, his face flushed from the run, his eyes overly bright. I had half a second to drop back into a fighting stance before his knee rose up toward my stomach; I jumped back, but was caught by yet another obvious swing he made to my sternum. That, at least, sent the thoughts shooting out of me, along with every last ounce of air in my lungs. It was a distraction—he had me pinned against his chest in the space of a single heartbeat.
I twisted out from under his arm, trying to use the momentum to flip him over onto his back. Like that was ever going to happen. The best I got was a stomp to his instep. He didn’t back off, though, not the way he normally would have. I felt the temperature in the room spike dramatically, and then—
He pulled back, letting me drop onto the floor with a sound of disgust. No. The word shot through my mind as he turned his back to me and started to remove his gloves. The sparring may have started as a way to release some of the heat that was boiling me alive from the inside out, but my head had hooked into the rush of it in a way I hadn’t expected. I needed more. I needed to get the black thoughts of Cate and Jude and what was waiting for us at the end of all of this out of me. And that required sweating or bleeding it out.
I lowered my head and charged toward him. I saw his expression darken in the mirror in front of him just before he slammed into it. This time, momentum actually did its job, sending us both sprawling back onto the edge of the mat. Without a single word, Cole dragged me by my neck further onto the mat, and then he showed me just how pissed off he really was.
Trying to roll or kick him off did nothing. He had me pinned beneath him, his whole crushing weight settled on my chest. One hand pinned mine over my head, and the other arm came across my neck, applying just the right amount of pressure there to dwindle my oxygen supply down to nothing.
He eased up on my windpipe, but not by much. I thrashed under him, knees kicking up to try to hit his lower back. His skin seemed tight against his skull, his face set with fury.
I choked in a shallow breath, but he didn’t pull back—my mind was floating away from my body, drifting into that same pool of black forming in my eyes.
“Cole—” I choked out. “Stop—”
He didn’t hear me. Wherever he’d gone inside, I wasn’t going to be able to touch him. And I knew that the only way out of this was in.
I drove into his mind like I was throwing a punch. I should have landed the hit and bounced back out, let it register like an electrical shock to his system. But his thoughts had hooks; they caught my mind, dragging it back down, drowning me in the scene melting into place around me. Light swirled around me, bending into shadows that became a small kitchen paneled in dark wood. There was dim, warm light com
ing through the curtains that masked the window above the sink. I smelled something burning—food. The trail of gray floating around me was smoke drifting from the closed oven door. Pots and pans popped up on the stove, appearing one at a time. The faint sizzling sound came from the brown sauce that had boiled over the lip of the metal pan.
A woman appeared in front of me, wearing a simple blue dress. I had a low vantage point from the floor, I couldn’t see anything besides her long blond hair and the hands that kept pushing me back, back, back. A surge of anger flooded me and I saw, rather than felt, my own arms up, straining to reach for something—for—
The man was the last to materialize, facing the woman. His face was in shadows, but there was something familiar about it, the shape of the nose, the set of the jaw—I knew this face, I’d seen two younger versions of it. He had gone a shade past red and was screaming, screaming, sweat and fury pouring off him, clouding the room, making everything feel slow and heavy. My gaze shifted down, taking in his dark, wrinkled polo shirt, the squirming toddler he held like a sack in one arm, slowly going pink in the face as he cried, trying to wriggle free, reaching for my arms. His hair was lighter, curling at the ends. The first sound that broke through the muffled din of the memory was his piercing wail of terror as the man picked up the steaming iron from the board and brought it up near his face, as if he was going to press its tip against the baby’s cheek.
The woman in front of me fell onto her knees, begging. “Put him down, please, I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it, it’ll be all right, don’t you know I love you? I won’t have anyone over again, I promise. Just—please give him to me, please give him to me—”
The iron was lowered, set back down on the board, singing the shirt left there, waiting to be smoothed out. The man’s expression transformed, a sickening look of triumph crossing it as he shifted the sobbing boy, holding him under his other arm. He reached out to touch the woman, to stroke her face. The man was so fixated on her bowed head that he didn’t see the skillet she’d pulled off a nearby low shelf, not until she stood and swung it up in a clean arc toward his face.
The baby fell to the floor and I rushed toward him, the sound of gurgling and pain and metal striking flesh and bone drowned out by his hysterical tears. I turned his soft weight over and picked him up. There was a cut at the corner of his lips, where one of his new teeth had caught the tender skin. It was bleeding profusely, but the boy stilled and quieted, looking up into my face with these wide eyes, rimmed with big tears. His thumb slid into his mouth as I tried to wipe the blood away. He didn’t start bawling again until he saw the woman, his mother, crying too, reaching down to pick him up and clutch him to her chest.
She snatched up my hand and dragged me away from the man’s prone form on the floor, the mess of his blood on the black-and-white checkered tile. He shuddered and coughed and we only moved faster, toward the door. She swiped her purse off the counter, then doubled back for the keys when she realized they’d fallen out.
The door led to a garage, and the light that flooded the cramped, dark space dissolved the memory once and for all.
I surfaced at the exact moment the weight came off my chest. I was breathing, coughing, choking on the flood of air that filled it. I rolled onto my side, curling into as small a protective ball as I could. It was several agonizing minutes before fear released its claws from me.
The small, breathy sobs I heard weren’t my own. I propped myself up on my elbow, looking for the source.
Cole sat at the edge of the mat, his back to me as he hunched over his knees, struggling to master his breathing. The section of the mirror in front of him was a spiderweb of cracks, stained with blood. I forced my feet under me and stood on shaking legs, taking one halting step toward him, and then another. He clutched his right hand to his chest, ignoring the way it bled onto his shirt. I walked to the towel rack and returned with a small cloth, pulling his hand toward me so I could clean the blood away. His skin was hot, boiling to the touch as he shook.
“Fuck,” he breathed out. “I’m sorry—we shouldn’t do this anymore. Fuck.”
“Okay,” I said softly, and stayed anyway.
I was in the bathroom, still dripping from my shower, when I heard Chubs’s voice carry down the hallway. With one last glance to make sure my hoodie covered the worst of the new bruising on my neck, I dashed out of the room, calling after him.
He spun on his heel, clearly relieved. “There you are. You missed the others—they had to leave. Apparently it’s an eight-hour drive to Gold Beach and the idiots want to do it in one day.”
“They found a truck to carry the supplies?” I asked.
“Yeah, which you would have discovered for yourself, had you made an appearance at breakfast—ah, sorry, that came out wrong. I didn’t get to tell you last night, but I’m sorry about Agent Conner. I want to tell you everything will be all right, but I’m afraid you’ll punch me.”
It was the first faint smile I’d managed all day. “Was Vi okay about going?”
He let out a long sigh, deflating somewhat. “She was trying to find you last night to run ideas by you, but it’s probably for the best she didn’t. She had a million ideas of how the two of you could sneak off to find Agent Conner.”
There it was, the now-daily sensation of being the biggest asshole in the world. I hadn’t even tried to talk to her about this last night. I’d promised her that we would talk about these things, work through them together, and what had I done? Gone off alone to run my head clear.
“Are we still going to talk to Clancy?” he asked.
“Wait—how did you—?” I didn’t remember mentioning it to him, but that was exactly why I’d come out to catch him.
“We talked about this yesterday afternoon, when you were going to lie down for a while,” he said.
I gave him a look that must have registered how blank my mind felt. “We did?”
“Uh, we did. For at least ten minutes. You nodded. That’s generally a sign that you, you know, understand and agree.”
“Oh…you’re right. Sorry.”
“You are exhausted,” he said, poking my forehead. “Impaired judgment and forgetfulness are both symptoms.”
I nodded, giving him that. “Do you mind coming now? I have a feeling this might take a while.”
“And miss the chance to spend another day hauling around filthy, broken crap? Lead on.”
Cole hadn’t had the thought, or likely the time, to prepare Clancy’s meals for the day. I listened to Chubs complain about Vida and Vida’s language and how Vida’s “reckless history with firearms” was going to get us all killed as I did my best not to take Clancy’s water bottle, dump it out, and fill it with bleach.
The pantry had been nothing but bones a week ago, but the humanitarian rations had managed to flesh it out to the point that it was starting to look like a healthy stash. I glanced at the clipboard posted outside of its door, feeling a faint smile stretch across my lips at Liam’s neat, careful notes about what we’d already used, and what was on the menu for the rest of the week. Food allergies were noted at the very bottom of the chart—of course. Leave it to Liam to be thoughtful enough to kill himself to try to find almond milk and gluten-free pasta for the two whole kids that needed it.
“Ready?” Chubs asked once we were standing in the file room. I punched in the code, bringing him into the small hallway that connected it to the cells. The door at the other end of the hall had a small window he could observe us through.
“You have to stay here the whole time,” I said. “You can’t come in. I know you think he can’t affect you, but I’d rather not test the theory.”
“Hell no, I’m not coming in. If he takes over your head, I’m going to lock you both in there together and go get help.” He shot me a sharp look. “That’s not allowed to happen. Make sure you don’t put me in that position.”
I nodded. “One more thing. No matter what happens, I don’t want you giving Liam specifics of what I’m going
to do. Good or bad. Promise me.”
“What exactly are you planning on doing? Using your body to get him to talk instead of your—wow, I can’t even finish that sentence, my brain is already trying to purge it.”
My fingers tightened around the sack of food. “Nothing like that. I’d just rather not have this serve as a reminder of how far I can go.”
“Ruby…”
I pushed by him, stepping through the door and shutting it firmly behind me. I glanced back over my shoulder and met his gaze through the glass. Then he stepped back, just out of my line of sight.
“Taking time out of your busy schedule of sitting around, doing nothing to come for a quick visit? I’m honored.” Clancy sat in the middle of his cot reading, back against the wall. Blanket and pillow were neatly stowed beside him, both requests previously granted by Cole in the vain, stupid hope it might butter the kid up to be more loose-lipped. As I opened the door’s flap to throw his brown-bag meals in, Clancy flipped to the next page in his book, marked it, and set the book down on top of the pillow.
He might as well have thrown the copy of Watership Down at my face.
“Oh,” he said, all innocence. “Have you read it? Stewart brought it in for me since I’ve been such a good boy. I was hoping for War and Peace, but beggars can’t be choosers, et cetera et cetera.”
It was an old edition of the book—the cover was wrinkled by mistreatment and there were ancient-looking library stickers on its spine. The pages had yellowed, curved under too many rough grips. But I had a feeling if I brought it up to my nose, it would have that scent—that one indescribable fragrance that no amount of cleaning could ever scrub from libraries and bookstores. A few more books had been stacked neatly beneath the cot—battered copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, Sons and Lovers, a book called A Farewell to Arms. And a copy of a blue book—Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers—that had been torn to shreds and tossed across the cell.
Typical Cole. I wondered who he’d picked to watch his back last night.
In the Afterlight (Bonus Content) Page 20
