by Evelyn Glass
“You’re very kind,” she says. “Yes, very kind indeed.” With a lurch forward, she plants the gun deeper into my belly, something I didn’t think was possible; it smashes into my belly and twists in my gut. “You’re the kindest girl in the world, aren’t you, Anna? Seriously, what sort of name is that, anyway? What sort of pathetic name? Anna? It’s ludicrous!”
“I know,” I wheeze, just trying to draw her out. My world has honed down to one impulse now: survive. And I know I can’t fight her. Even if there was some way for me to grab the gun, wrench it form her grip, I wouldn’t be able to fight her. She’s had training. Her arms are corded with muscle and her face is stern-set, the face of somebody used to doing immense harm. No, there’s nothing I can do when it comes to a physical battle. I’ll have to fight a word battle and hope—pray—that Samson is somewhere close by, somewhere he can get to me. I don’t like to think of myself as a damsel, I never have, but like it or not, I’m in a situation where I need to be saved. “It is silly. I’ve often said so.”
Dad, River, Samson . . . all of it seems suddenly heavy on my shoulders. The pain in my belly wants me to keel over and the weight of the events dig between my shoulder blades, doing the same. It’s a struggle to stand up straight, and as I do I feel as though I’m shrugging off Dad’s sickening revelation and the sight of Samson being dragged away in the crowd and her, this woman, the way she looks at me like I’m a mass of flesh soon to be dead.
“Good,” she sighs. “This is so foolish. All of it. My brother had to die for you. What sense does that make? He was never a bad man, you know. Never as bad as you no doubt made out. No, no, Eric was a good man, a solid man. I never once saw him hit a woman. I never once saw him even be aggressive toward a woman. And then, what, you come along and he suddenly turns into a monster? Somehow, I doubt that. I doubt that he turned into a beast at the drop of a hat. No, no, no.”
I make to speak, mind reeling. Eric, her brother? Eric, the monster who beat me, her brother? Pieces of the puzzle which before seemed disconnected come together. It wasn’t just about the money for River. Or Samson. Or getting her revenge. Eric was her brother. It was about me. All of this time, all of this hunting and running, it was about me. Bile rises in my throat. There’s nothing I can do about it. I vomit violently, dribbling down my chin, dripping onto the concrete floor.
River steps back and for a second the gun sways unsteadily in her grip. I don’t plan it. I don’t imagine that the gun will sway side to side, that this steady, solid woman will momentarily be tipped off her balance. But when it happens, my body reacts before I do. I throw myself forward, arms outstretched, and grab her wrist. She yelps and tries to jostle me away, waving from side to side, the whole force of her muscular body turned against me.
I scream, my voice partially muffled from the vomit.
River wrenches me from left to right, left to right, and I feel like I’m a ragdoll. My body is thrown here and there as though I am weightless, as though River is a giant who can pick me up and place me wherever she likes.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
The whole time I yank at her, her grip never loosens on the gun, not once. She holds it solidly, her fingers a clamp tightened around it. She doesn’t lose her cool. Part of me hopes that she fires the gun accidently, at the wall or the floor, and the bang brings hordes of guards and fans down upon us. Or at the very least it will wake Elle and she’ll go for somebody. But she’s in control, as in control as Samson is on a job. She doesn’t fire the gun and soon the pain in my belly and the fire in my throat from the vomit tire me. River shows zero sign of tiredness. I get the sense that she could do this all day if it was necessary.
My grip lightens on her wrist for a half-second—and that’s all she needs.
She smacks me across the face with the gun, blood pouring from my mouth and dripping down my chin.
I fall back, stumble, and after what feels like minutes of rolling I’m on my back on the concrete, staring up at her.
Her brother, I think, wondering. Her brother.
And then, lying there and looking up at the woman who’s about to kill me, I remember the crazy look Eric would get.
Looking up at River, I think, it’s the same madness in her eyes, the same feral madness, the same anger. Yes, of course they’re related. Of course they are. Goddammit, I should’ve known the first moment I saw her!
She kneels down beside me and presses the barrel of the gun against the side of my head. The metal is cool and sends chill down my body. Her breathing quickens, and I know why without having to think about it. It is the quickening of breathing that comes to a predator moments before they kill their prey. I hear a tiny sound, almost too tiny to detect. I can’t turn and check to see if I’m right, but I know it’s her fingernail stroking the trigger, a minute nail-on-metal, a tsk-tsk that will soon be my death knell.
“He was never a bad man,” she sighs. “When we were children, we lived near a lake. One summer, I got it into my head that I wanted to swim out farther than any six-year-old should even think about. Don’t ask me why. Why does a little girl do anything?” Her tone is whimsical. She could be a kind woman sitting on a porch discussing her past with an eager child listening. A whimsical tone which has no business coming from the lips of such a deranged person. “I got it into my head, and I did it. I didn’t even change out of my clothes, just jumped right in and swam and swam and swam. And, well, you can guess what happened. I’d hardly been swimming for two minutes when I started to thrash around in the water, arms and legs so tired I was sure, even at an age where death was vague to me, that I was going to die. But Eric saved me, jumped right in and swam to me and saved me from myself. You see, Anna. He was a good man.”
She strokes my face with her free hand. Her palm is clammy, sticky against my skin, and then she sighs heavily.
“But no one will save you,” she says.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Samson
I struggle until the crowd grows quiet. My mind quiets with the crowd and my killer’s center returns. I’m panicking, I realize. I’m panicking and Anna is out there somewhere, in the opposite tunnel, with River chasing her, with River trying to kill her. I know that I need to act, and act quick, but I don’t let this knowledge panic me as it did moments before. I don’t let it take me over, twist me, make me forget who and what I am. I say it to myself, I am Samson Black and I am the most dangerous killer in New York City. I have risen higher than Dad or Black Knight ever dreamed of. I am Samson Black, killer, I am Samson Black—
Three men hold me, all of them carrying me down the tunnel to a room in the back. They are thick, large men, two of them larger than me. One has a scar which runs down the side of his face, making him look tougher and meaner than he probably is. He’s the one who holds my legs and when he sees me looking at him, he looks away uncomfortably. Okay, I think, knowing that every second I waste is another second closer to Anna’s death. I haven’t heard a gunshot, but neither have I heard the announcer say that they’ve apprehended a killer. As far as I can tell, nobody is sure what, exactly, happened. Except that I injured an NBA player. The only solace I can take is that the crowd saw him holding a knife.
I can’t punch or fight my way out of the embrace of these men, I know. They’re holding me too secure and they’re expecting me to throw myself at them, to punch and kick and growl and fight. They’re expecting me to throw my fists or kick. I relax my body as they carry me farther down the tunnel, and then I do the one thing I’m sure they’re not expecting.
I throw the entire weight of my body down toward the ground, twisting my hips and driving down to the concrete. The man with the scar yelps as I tumble downward, and the other two men grunt. I feel it, a tiny movement around my neck, the man slackens his grip. As I fall downward, I sink my teeth in the flesh of his arm. Blood fills my mouth, metallic and sour, and as I bite I kick with all my strength into the face of the scarred man. They’re caught off-guard, but I know it won’t las
t long. A moment, if I’m lucky. I kick out again, this time catching the man in the jaw. Blood gushes from his mouth. I release my teeth from the arm around my neck and then, as though a noose has just been loosened, I am slipping to the ground, only the spare man clutching onto my arm. I spin and look up at him as his friends are reeling, recovering. He looks down at me quizzically, stupidly, and I pull my head back and butt him in the nose.
“Uh,” he grunts, falling back into the wall.
I jump to my feet and make to sprint toward the court, desperate to get there, get to Anna, find her and save her from the mad bitch. I’m about to lurch into a run when the scarred man wraps his hand around my wrist. It’s a chunky hand, a hand that most men would fear. It’s the hand of a bouncer, the knuckles covered with old scars, the fingers callused until they are hard like the outer layer of an armadillo.
“Don’t,” I say, looking into his eyes. His friends are on their feet now, standing just beyond him, their hands raised in boxer’s stances. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you force me to.”
“Hurt us?” the scarred man says. “You just assaulted an NBA player. You need to come with us. What the hell are you doing?”
“I have somewhere more important to be,” I sigh. “Just let me go.”
“I can’t do that—”
His friends jump at me, fists pulled back. I know that if any one of those fists hit me, I’ll most likely be out cold. But they come at me too eagerly, come at me like men who have never been in a real fight before. Herding crowds of sweating NBA fans and standing beside barricades with a stern expression on your face doesn’t train you to fight a seasoned killer, a man who knew bloodshed and violence before most boys know algebra.
I wrench my hand free from Scar and jump back, dancing away from their fists. I duck left, bob right, always occupying the space just outside their fists. It infuriates them. I hear it in their grunts and their coughs and their spitting breaths. They swing and swing, all three of them, and I am like water; I move here and there, not thinking, just letting my training take control. I dance between their fists until I see an opening. When I backhand Scar across the jaw, he flies into the wall with such force that his eyelids flutter and he slides down to the concrete, coughing. I turn my attention to the other two men. They charge at me, not thinking, so angry that they don’t even aim their strikes. They come at me like children in a schoolyard. I dance aside, aim, and punch each of them once in the face, a jab with my left and a hook with my right. The man I hook stumbles back, bleeding from his nose, and falls to the ground. I jab the other man again, again, until I feel the bone in his nose cave in.
Then I jump away and wait for half a moment. All of them are on the floor, bleeding. But they’re breathing. I’m glad. I don’t want to kill these men, men who are only doing their job and have probably never hurt anyone in their life, men who are most likely paid shit and don’t get any recognition from anybody for what they do. When I see that they’re breathing, I turn and sprint toward the exit, the small hole of light which grows steadily bigger as my legs pump.
Anna, I think, mind frantic. Anna, Anna, Anna.
If she’s dead, I will never forgive myself. I will never let it go. As I run, I imagine a future in which Anna is dead because of me. I am a broken man. In my mind, my muscles have turned to flesh threadbare over bone, my skin sallow, my blue eyes dim and sunken. I see myself rise from a drunken stupor, grasp at a bottle with a cigarette butt swilling in it, and down it all and collapse onto the bed again. I would like to think that that wouldn’t happen; I wouldn’t let myself come to that even if Anna is hurt. But I know that’s impossible.
I love her, I love her, I love her.
That’s the truth, the truth that sits inside of me now, an integral part of who I am. If Anna dies, I die. If Anna gets hurt, I hurt myself. My body aches from where the men grabbed me, my neck and my legs from where they dug in their thick bouncer’s hands, but I ignore it. My pain is irrelevant. I could be bleeding from a thousand wounds, coated in slick crimson blood, and I wouldn’t stop. My life is one word now, one word that echoes deep inside of me and will echo until the day I, or she, dies: Anna.
I run and run and run, and though the beam of light grows bigger, I’m sure time is playing some trick on me. It seems to grow bigger so slowly that I’m sure it will be an eternity before I get there.
But then, finally, I am in the light. The arena is quiet, the crowd muttering to each other, whispering and wondering what the hell is going on. Several of them turn to me as I emerge, but not so many as to draw the entire attention of the crowd to me. The players stand in huddles either side of the court with their coaches, and the announcers sit at their table looking confused and out of place. Dimly, I hear sirens piercing the walls of the arena. So they’re waiting for the police.
The gunshot splits the air and the crowd erupts into frenzy. My gaze snaps to the source of the gunshot. The Bear stands with a pistol in his hand, aimed at the air, a twisted grin on his face.
Before I know it, the court is full of people, jostling, budging, kicking, blocking me from the tunnel where Anna is.
###
Everybody is on their feet, running nowhere in particular, like a herd of cattle at the sound of the farmer’s shotgun. A man smashes into me, knocks me backward, and immediately I’m swept up in the fray of people. I plant my feet and shoulder-barge people out of the way, continually nudging them, pushing them. I push and push until there is a small ‘safe zone’ around me, an area about three feet wide where nobody seems to want to step. I look at one of the men I’ve just pushed out of the way. He’s on the floor, blood spilling from his nose. A woman wearing heels almost steps on his head. I bend down and pick him up under the armpits, lift him to his feet.
“Get the hell out of here,” I say, giving him a nudge in the chest. He falls back into the crowd like a man falling into a tortuous sea, chaos all around him.
I begin to make my way through the crowd, heading in the general direction of the tunnel. I know that Anna is somewhere down there, River with her, being hurt badly. Maybe she’s already dead, my traitorous mind comments. Maybe she’s already dead, stone-dead, lying in a pool of her blood and you’re too late. I bite down so hard that my teeth ache and I keep pushing forward, diving into the fray. My only hope is that River has drawn the thing out, is gloating and talking. She’s held this inside of her for a long time now; surely she wants to take the chance to gloat, to make fun of Anna, to bask in her petty glory.
I spread my arms in front of me and push past people. They run nowhere and everywhere. The smell of sweat and panic is strong around me, rising in the air. I press forward, counting every foot pushed through the crowd as a victory. I can’t move any faster and it kills me, knowing that somewhere deep in the tunnels of the arena Anna is being hurt, maybe shot, maybe she’s already shot clean through the head and this is a delaying tactic, something to stop you from getting to River in time to exact revenge. I can’t believe that. I want my killer’s center back. I’m desperate for it. But the more I push through the crowd, the harder it is to keep my mind on the task hand. Absurdly, my mind flits back over previous jobs, thinking about the cool calm that gripped me then, and the pandemonium which grips me now. It’s completely opposite, something that can’t even be compared. Once, I was stone, an untouchable carving of stone which nothing could affect. Now, I am flesh and blood and heart, heart most of all because Anna has awoken something within me I don’t fully understand. Only that the desire to get to her, to be with her, to save her, is strong, overpowering. I need her desperately.
I’m about halfway across the court when The Butcher appears in front of me. Nobody even tries to step close to the huge monolith of the man. My safe zone is three feet, his is almost ten. People avoid him without even thinking about it. It’s like we’re in a movie and the struggling crowd are extras who have been directed to leave a space around the two of us. A moment later, The Gent pops up beside Butcher, l
ooking small and foppish in his tuxedo. The Butcher grins at me and The Gent shakes his head slowly.
“What are you doing, Samson?” Andy McCray says, making a tut noise from back in his throat like a disappointed teacher. “What are you thinking? Why are you putting yourself on the line like this? Why are you driving yourself crazy? All for a piece of cunt?”
I know he’s baiting me. It’s an old tactic. I can see it in the playful gleam in his eye. But though I know that, it kills me to hear him call Anna by a name like that, a cruel and unworthy name. I know he wants me to attack him, I know he has already planned out what he’s going to do when I attack him, and yet I don’t think. I launch myself like a torpedo through the air.
The Butcher cackles and brings his huge ham-fist down on the side of my head. The Gent giggles and kicks me in the stomach. The chaos is so great that nobody even stops to watch the fight. They push around us, but never through us, never disturbing the scene. I’m not even sure how it’s happened, but I’m on my belly, my hands clawing pointlessly at the court. I try to rise and The Butcher brings his boot down between my shoulder blades. Something cracks and the air is sucked out of me. I try to suck it back in, but all I get is hollow rasping breaths. No, no, no, I think, clenching my hands into fists and trying to stand up. No, no, no, Anna. Anna!
