It Ends With Her

by Brianna Labuskes

  She waited. And then waited longer.

  “Anna,” she finally said again. “We can take him.”

  “What if we can’t?” Finally. Bess’s breath caught in her throat. She wanted to cry but bit back the rush of emotion that pressed at her tear ducts. This she could handle. Even doubt was preferable to silence.

  “You almost could have gotten away last time, babes, and you weren’t even trying,” she said, keeping her voice light, positive. “You got the weapon. You got our key to freedom. You beat him already. We just have to do it again.”

  “We beat him.” It was quiet, but Bess wanted to pump her fist in the air. Confidence mattered. And the entire plan hinged on Anna being confident.

  “You won, babe,” Bess said. “You tricked him. You outsmarted him. You can do it again.”

  She closed her eyes waiting for the response.

  “Okay.”

  The footsteps. Bess could never quite get the sound of them out of her head. The heavy drum of boots on wood, then on concrete. When she closed her eyes, she heard them. When she tried to sleep, they were the pulse that echoed in her eardrums.

  But now, now they were the start of something. Something that could mean freedom. Or death. Either way it was forward movement. And she didn’t know if she cared which way the outcome shifted.

  But as soon as she had the thought, she realized it wasn’t true. She wanted to live. Maybe there had been times in the past that she hadn’t wanted to, where the ease of sinking into the oblivion had called to her, a siren’s song that had been hard to resist.

  But, when faced with the very real possibility of that abyss, she didn’t find it as inviting. What did seem inviting was fighting. Fighting for life.

  So if they were going to go down—which it seemed like his only plan for them—they were going to do it in a blaze of glory. So help her.

  The footsteps bypassed her huddled form, as per usual, and headed straight for Anna.

  “I have a treat for you, pet.” Simon’s voice was silk. It never failed to raise the hackles along Bess’s back. “You’re going to get to go on an adventure.”

  Shit. This changed their plan. Or maybe it wouldn’t. He still had to unlock Anna. He still had to make himself vulnerable.

  “Do you want to go on an adventure?” he prodded, and Bess heard the jangle of keys against metal.

  “Yes,” Anna said in the softest voice that could still manage to be a voice.

  “Good girl,” he said.

  There was some shuffling, and Anna let out a whimper.

  Then they were up. Moving toward Bess, but she knew Simon wouldn’t get too close. He’d learned his lesson. She didn’t need him close, though. She just needed Anna to hold her shit together.

  He shuffle-dragged her three more steps. Only about four more to the stairs.

  Come on, girl.

  It was only because she was watching so closely that she saw it. A tensing of Anna’s shoulders that hadn’t been there. It was only because she was listening so closely that she heard it. A catch in Anna’s breath.

  And then she struck. She’d tucked the jagged little piece of metal between her pointer and middle finger. It was a quick flash of movement, her hand shooting up to his unprotected neck.

  Bess didn’t even have a chance to yell “Again” as Anna sank the metal back into the flesh. Three more times.

  There was blood. Everywhere. His fingers were slick with it as they grasped at the metal Anna had left in on her final thrust. A high, thin keening note was humming out of his gaping mouth.

  “Keys, Anna.” Bess’s voice was sharp, to cut through the haze she was sure had descended on the girl.

  But it was in that moment Simon turned on Bess. It wasn’t his attention that bothered her—anything that could distract from Anna was a win in her book—but the look in those wide, soulless eyes. It was panic.

  He stumbled toward Bess, his movements uncoordinated and jerky, but his target was deliberate. Bess flicked her gaze over his right shoulder and realized Anna had the keys.

  Something bloomed in her chest that felt suspiciously like hope.

  It was a dangerous feeling, though, and she immediately quashed it. First, they had to finish Simon off. He was weakened, but she knew all too well the rush of adrenaline in his current state could make him strong. Wild. Unpredictably dangerous.

  She waited until he was almost too close, one blood-slicked hand reaching for her upper arm, when she lashed out with her foot, directly into his upper thigh. She’d been aiming for his groin, but he’d sensed her movement and shifted just in time. The blow still hurt, though. As much as it could with all of his pain sensors blitzing from the open wounds in his neck.

  He went down to his knees, and she kicked out again. She connected with the soft flesh of his hips. Not effective. He barely reacted.

  And his attention was no longer focused on her, no matter how many times she lashed out at him. His entire being was zeroed in on Anna.

  Anna. Anna, who stood at the foot of the stairs, keys clenched in her hands, eyes huge in her gaunt face. Frozen. Even though she held her freedom in her thin, weak fingers.

  “Anna,” Bess said. Not knowing what she was urging. Movement of some kind. To tell her to run or to fight for Bess? The selfish part of her, the one that wanted to live, the animal in her that gnawed at her belly and told her that her own survival was all that mattered, almost begged Anna to come closer. The better part, the one she knew she should listen to, urged her to tell Anna to run as fast as she could.

  In the end, Anna shifted. Closer. But then Simon lunged.

  “Anna, run.” Bess had never screamed so loud in her life. Her voice filled every space in the room. It became a hand placed in the dent between Anna’s shoulder blades, pushing her away. “Go!”

  They locked eyes. And then Simon pushed to his feet. Unsteady, but the blood was no longer gushing.

  “Go,” Bess yelled, and it finally worked.

  Anna fled. Up the stairs on her weak, spindly, once-upon-a-time runner legs. Bess closed her eyes, listening for the sound of keys in the lock.

  She opened them in time to see Simon sink back to the floor, when they both heard the door slam shut.

  “Fuck,” he said, but it didn’t have any heat to it.

  “Agreed, dude,” Bess said. She wasn’t trying to be flippant. It was just that she couldn’t care anymore. Every last bit of hope just walked through the door. Either Anna would magically stumble upon a cop who just happened to be waiting outside whatever hellhole lair Simon had kept them in, or Simon would immediately take Bess to some other secluded location and kill her.

  It was up to fate now.

  They sat in tense silence, and she was wondering if he was picturing a rescue team bursting through the door. When no one came, he managed to get himself upright once more. His shirt was soaked with blood, so he stripped out of it as he made his way to the bathroom. He came back a few minutes later with a bandage around his throat. He didn’t look good.

  Maybe he’d lost enough blood. He was quite pale. And he didn’t seem ready to finish her off on the spot. Which meant she had time. She had potential opportunities. There was a chance. There would always be a chance until she was dead. And then she wouldn’t care, she guessed.

  Too many times in her life, she’d stopped believing there would be a chance. A chance to survive. She’d given up before, but she wouldn’t this time. Every time she failed, she would just fight harder. And maybe she could fight harder than he could. Maybe she could win.

  “We have to go,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. She raised an eyebrow, glancing at her chain. The key to unlock her was on the ring Anna now had.

  For the first time since Anna had brought that metal up into his throat, he smiled. It was horrifying. “A little lesson from me to you, pet?” He reached into the front pocket of his tight, light-wash jeans and withdrew a tiny, delicate key. “Always carry a spare.”

  CHAPTER TWENT
Y-THREE

  CLARKE

  July 16, 2018

  It was a whimper. Just a whimper.

  Was she imagining it? But no. There it was again.

  Clarke held up her hand, and everyone drew to a sharp stop. They were three steps inside the pizza shop.

  There was a hush that hung heavy in the air, the kind that lingered in empty places. She’d already convinced herself they’d been wrong about the location when she heard it.

  She glanced at Sam and then inched forward. Her pulse pounded, and she felt it everywhere. In her fingertips, behind her knees, in the cradle of her stomach. One deep breath helped quiet it in her ears. She needed her ears.

  Working her way through the tables was an arduous process. As she cleared each one, she let the boys know.

  By the time she made her way to the pinball machines in the back of the restaurant, she half wondered if she’d imagined that little sound.

  It was only when she was about to turn around that her flashlight caught on the dark drops. They looked like pennies. She bent closer.

  Blood.

  She shifted around the last of the machines. There in the crack between it and the wall was a crumpled figure.

  “Shit.” Clarke crouched down to the unconscious girl. Anna, some distant part of her mind supplied, even though she was nearly unrecognizable underneath the blood and grime. But it was that same sweet face that she’d studied for hours, days, months.

  Clarke managed to get her fingers around the thin wrist and feel for a pulse. Once she’d located it, she shot back to her feet, waving in Sam’s direction.

  He was at her side immediately.

  “Watch her.”

  The warning in his eyes was clear. She nodded to acknowledge it and took off toward the door she figured led to the basement. Something was off. The girl shouldn’t have been up in the restaurant. And she certainly shouldn’t be alive. Not if everything had gone according to Cross’s plan.

  Perhaps it hadn’t, though. For the first time in a very long time.

  Roger had her back as she made her way down the creaky stairs. She didn’t think twice about how much trust she was granting him.

  They cleared the room and the smaller one in the back. Next to it was a small, tidy bathroom, but it was empty as well.

  Whoever had been there was gone.

  She walked in slow circles around the space as Roger knelt by the sturdy chains bolted to the floor.

  “Two chains,” he said, his fingers running over the metal.

  Her mouth was already open to reply when the glint of color caught her eye. The picture wasn’t even hidden this time. Or in a box, or a book, or some unusual package. It was just sitting atop a simple wooden chair slightly off to the side.

  Everything around her went quiet. Roger was saying something. Boots started sounding overhead as the rest of the team rushed in. There were sirens somewhere in the distance.

  But none of that registered. She just let her feet carry her over. Each step like a march toward fate. Toward life. Toward death. Toward some inevitability in which she and Simon were forever tangled together as they hurtled toward infinity.

  It was supposed to be different this time.

  It was all she could think. Different. They were going to catch him. They were wise. They were practiced. They knew his tricks. They knew what made him tick.

  The only difference, though, was this time the girl was alive. For now.

  Maybe it was a victory. But as the picture sharpened as she got closer, it didn’t feel like one.

  She stopped when her shins came flush up against the chair, and she dropped her head. The girl was supposed to have been tied to it, she realized. If Cross had had his way.

  Now the picture just floated there.

  Clarke knelt down so she wouldn’t have to touch the evidence, and at first nothing about it made sense. It was a simple photo—a picture of a man and a woman, with a little blonde child nestled in the space left by their sides. Then everything sharpened. And she wished she were still stuck in the moment only seconds earlier. In the in-between, when she hadn’t realized what she’d been about to look at.

  Never again would she live in that moment. Or the millions of moments before that when she hadn’t known.

  She didn’t recognize the small cry that shattered the silence as her own.

  “We spend too much time in hospitals together, Sam,” Clarke said, nudging his arm with the cup of coffee she’d brought for him. He reached up to take it but let his hand linger over hers before giving it a squeeze.

  “But we saved one, kid,” he said, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the sleeping girl hooked up to the machinery.

  Clarke shook her head, sinking into the chair next to his. “We didn’t, though. She saved herself. Or he let us find her.”

  “Was trying to look at the bright side,” Sam muttered into his cup. He took a swig, grimacing at the quality. It was shit.

  “She’s alive, that is a bright side,” Clarke said, relenting.

  He gaped at her in turn. “Who are you? What have you done with my partner?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him but resisted the urge to stick out her tongue. She was an adult, after all. “I have to focus on something other than the big question.”

  “Where’s Bess?” Sam ventured. “Or the other big question?”

  The other one. She wasn’t even ready to formulate that into an actual question, let alone have a discussion about it. “Where’s Bess.”

  “Don’t you want to talk about the pho—” He stopped when her panicked eyes flew to his. “Okay. Shh. It’s okay. I mean we’re going to have to soon.”

  She knew that. But it didn’t have to be this second. Or the one after that. And if she kept thinking like that, she might be able to stop herself from falling apart.

  “I know. It means something. And it’s going to help us find her,” she said. All truths. “But so can Anna.” Clarke turned her attention back to the girl. She looked so small, swallowed up by the cold, harsh room.

  Sam paused, then drew a breath. Let it out.

  “Say it,” she demanded, not looking at him.

  “Roger’s going to push. Once he knows . . .”

  She cut her eyes to him once more. “Does he know?”

  “Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time, Clarke,” he said, voice gentle. It was something about the way he said it, or the use of her name that stripped her down to a twelve-year-old who had just slightly disappointed someone with her weakness. Maybe even a year ago the feeling would have turned her mean.

  Now she just tipped her head against his shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispered. For not pushing her. For letting her be just for a tiny moment so she could process. For so many things.

  She felt him nod, but he didn’t move further to dislodge her.

  The gratitude she rarely let herself acknowledge pressed against the back of her eyes.

  The champagne had long ago gone flat, but Clarke sipped at it anyway. Not in desperation, but because she wanted to chase the happiness that lurked in its sweetness to amplify her own.

  “You did good, kid.” Sam moved a half-eaten slice of cake off the chair across from hers and sat down, propping his feet on the desk.

  The office was a mess from their mini celebration, but everyone else who would have cared about its state had buggered off for the night. She looked away from the empty Solo cups and back at Sam.

  “Seriously, kid.” He stretched his arms up to rest his hands on his head. “I’m proud of you.”

  Clarke blinked and studied a disturbing brown spot on the floor. It didn’t stop the chemicals from flooding her brain, demanding a trigger response of tears to dispose of the excess emotions. “Teamwork,” she managed to stutter out. The company line.

  “Nah. Most of the time it’s teamwork,” Sam countered, easy and low. “This time it was you. I don’t say that enough, you know.”

  “That I’m amazing?”

&n
bsp; “Yeah,” he said, all humor stripped from his voice.

  “Stop.”

  “You should know that, you know.” Sam cleared his throat, awkward but pushing forward anyway. “That I’m proud of you. That I haven’t done that many things right in my life. And you might not think I did this right, either. Hell, I don’t even know. But whatever happens, you should know that.”

  “You’re proud of me because I caught the serial killer,” she whispered, not recognizing the smallness of her own voice. Where had the confident, snarky, tough-as-nails agent gone?

  “Nah,” he said again, that same simple rebuttal. “It’s not about earning it, kid.”

  Was it really that simple?

  He nodded as if he’d read her mind, or maybe she’d said it aloud.

  “It’s really that simple.”

  The concept was still frightening, years later, still a challenge to wrap her brain around. They fought like wildcats sometimes, clawing at each other until they were bleeding on the floor, emotionally speaking. And in those moments it was hard to remember. In the chaotic moments, in the terrifying ones, in the ones that left her wanting to palm a razor blade, but one promise stilled her hand; it was hard to remember. Then he stayed anyway. He always stayed anyway.

  “I’m never going to be normal, Sam,” she said, though if nothing had done the trick to push him away up until now, this wouldn’t be it. “In the alleyway, before we went into the restaurant . . .” She paused, glancing back at Anna. She was still sleeping. “I needed it to end, and I didn’t care what that looked like.”

  “Did you not care? Or did you want one ending a little too much?” Sam asked.

  “You would be sad.” If I died, she finished the thought silently.

  He rumbled a low chuckle. “Yeah, kid. I would be sad. But that’s not enough, you know.”

  “If I die, he wins.”

  “Yup, that’s good, too. Gives you the fighting edge,” Sam said. “But you can’t keep living your life to spite other people.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?” It wasn’t a challenge. She really wanted to know. Is that what she had been doing? For years?