by L. T. Vargus
She raised her hands in front of her, wind whipping strands of hair into her face. The traffic roared behind her. All of the people hurtling past, indifferent to the dramatic scene.
His lip twitched, twice, three times, but nothing came out.
“Get down, Levi. No one needs to get hurt. Not you or anyone else.”
And then he pointed the gun at her.
“Stay back,” he said. “I don’t have the detonator. I don’t have anything for you. I don’t matter anymore.”
“That’s not true.”
Darger took a step forward as she spoke.
“Get the fuck back!”
Spit flew out of Levi’s mouth as he growled, the gun trembling at the end of his arm.
”You think I’m fucking around? You think taking one more life makes any difference to me? You think anything makes a difference now?”
Darger froze, eyes on the pistol in Levi’s hand. She wondered if she’d been wrong about him all along.
Chapter 71
Luke squatted in the bathroom. Waiting. Listening. He pointed one ear and then the other toward the partially open bathroom door, as though the second might hear something the first had missed.
Nothing. The house was quiet.
He shuffled forward a few paces, pulling alongside the sink, and he caught his reflection in the mirror, his one eye all squinched up into a mess of wrinkles. Angry red puffs of swollen flesh swaddled his face from his brow to his cheek bones — inflammation trying to fight off the acidic fury of the mace. He wondered if the swelling and redness would make him less recognizable and almost laughed.
Something creaked in the distance, and he snapped his head around to face the bathroom door again. His mind raced. It didn’t sound like a floorboard, but it was vaguely familiar. He wanted more than anything to believe that it was the house settling, the old wood giving off a random groan, but he didn’t think so. A bed, maybe, he thought. A box spring.
He held his breath and listened some more, sliding two paces to his left to conceal himself behind the bathroom door.
Another noise. Definitely a squawking box spring. Additional sounds followed shortly after.
Thumps. Footsteps. The slow, careful patter of someone headed his way. The floorboards whining a little with every step.
Luke scanned what he could see of the bathroom for a weapon. But he’d let Levi hold the pistol back at the school, leaving his own in the car. Now he was contemplating arming himself with a toilet brush.
The steps grew closer, and he held his breath. Whoever it was, they were in the hallway, and they were creeping this way with great care. Surely they’d peek into the bathroom, wouldn’t they?
The shadow darkened the crack between the bathroom door and the frame for a moment. Someone moved past very slowly. He couldn’t make out any details from where he stood, except that the figure was tall enough to most likely be a man.
And then the footsteps stopped. The creeper must be gazing into the doorway. Seeing the broken window. The shards of glass scattered on the throw rug in front of the toilet.
Blood roared in Luke’s ears, and cold fear trickled outward from the center of his chest, flowing into his shoulders and spreading from there.
He tried to think of what he should do — what he would do — when the man entered the bathroom. If the man had a gun, it would be over quickly.
The creeper took a breath, air hissing out of his nostrils on the exhale. It sounded aggressive. Frustrated. Very ape.
Something clunked against the door, swinging it a touch wider in slow motion.
Luke turned so his shoulders were parallel to the wall, making himself as skinny as he could. The door’s swing stopped just shy of his quivering chest.
Even without closing his eyes, he could picture it. The image of the gun rising, the blaze and pop of the kill shot exiting the muzzle.
But then the footsteps resumed, moving further down the hall.
Luke leaned to peer through the crack. He didn’t get a very good look, but he saw the man’s hands before he moved out of view.
No gun. He had something thin and metallic in his hand. Maybe a crow bar or fire poker.
The whining floorboards trailed away, like a wave that had reached its furthest bit of beach and now receded, rolling back from the land to gather itself.
Luke took a breath, finally, concentrating on keeping it quiet. The relief he felt wasn’t enough to squelch that cold trickle of fear in his torso, but he’d at least gained some time and options.
His mind spun through the possible ways to interpret what had just happened.
Had the guy not seen the broken window? Had he seen it but assumed the empty bathroom meant that the intruder had moved on? He suspected the latter, if only because of the way that angry puff of breath seemed to signify the moment he’d spotted the window.
Either way, staying put wasn’t an option. Luke needed to move.
The way he saw it, he had a choice. He could scurry back out the window and be gone, or he could venture further into the house in hopes of finding a weapon. Armed with even a blunt object, he was reasonably confident he could handle things here and come out of this with a car. A car that could quickly whisk him away from this neighborhood where the police were searching for a suspect on foot.
He took another deep breath, the panic now fleeing his body, morphing into something more aggressive. The guy didn’t have a gun. Luke could handle this. This fuck with the fire poker had no clue who he was dealing with.
He stalked forward.
Again he looked at his reflection in the mirror, his chest heaving, his face all battered looking. Maybe it was a trick of the shadow he was standing in, but the red splotching his eyelids looked darker now. Angrier. He made eye contact with himself — the eye that wasn’t swollen shut staring straight into itself, a dead expression set in the flesh around it.
He crossed through the doorway, pressing deeper into the house.
Chapter 72
Tyrone saw it. Sunlight streaming through the gaping rectangle where the frosted bathroom window should be. It was wide open, and the bottom pane of glass was busted out.
Goddamn. After all of that paranoia, all of that lost sleep, it was really happening. Someone was inside the house. And with the sheer quantity of sirens blaring outside? It had to be something big. A serious criminal. Maybe even… He tried to stop the headlines about the snipers from flashing through his head, but it was too late.
He let his eyes fall to the floor where the broken bits of glass lay. They glittered a little when the clouds shifted outside and the light in the room changed.
Goddamn.
He let out a single angry breath and listened for a moment. Nothing stirred that he could hear. Whoever he was, the guy was running from the law. He was probably heading for the garage. For the car.
Tyrone headed that way, taking careful steps, quiet steps. The hallway opened up into the kitchen, and he could see the doorway into the garage ahead.
He changed his grip on the fire poker, bringing it up to rest on his shoulder like a baseball player stepping into the batter’s box. The muscles in his arms rippled, ready to deal out some punishment.
He didn’t figure this guy likely to drive away with his Lexus, what with the three feet of fire poker he was about to lodge in his ass.
Then something crunched behind him. A footstep from somewhere back down the hallway. It had to be him.
Tyrone turned.
Kitty litter.
Luke had stepped on a few granules of crystal kitty litter, grinding them into the ceramic tile floor with great gusto. After all of the quiet, it was loud as hell — a grinding noise mixed with a high pitched shriek. He thought it sounded like someone chewing on ice with just a hint of nails on blackboard blended in for good measure. He also thought he was about four seconds away from getting beaten to death with a fire poker.
He’d moved from the bathroom into a small office across the hall. He had
n’t paid much mind to the litter box in the corner, though he could smell the cat piss faintly. He didn’t actually see the litter on the floor until it was crushed into a fine white powder by the heel of his sneaker.
The footsteps heading his way made no attempt to conceal themselves now. They pounded out an angry beat, the volume swelling with each step.
Luke crawled under the desk, knowing it was useless. All he could see from this vantage point was the plain white wall, a brown filing cabinet, and the litter tray loaded with a couple of fresh clumps. He pulled the office chair close in an attempt to conceal himself, even if he knew the hiding spot would be short-lived.
Cold sweat slimed his body, and the pulse of the blood beating through his ears grew louder and louder. His jaw clenched so hard that the muscles twitched under his cheek bones.
He tried to think, but the panic overwhelmed his ability to reason. Fight or flight were the only possibilities. He’d have to choose one any second now.
The footsteps entered the room somewhere behind him and got closer and closer until the man’s legs walked into view.
Luke chose fight.
Chapter 73
Levi faced her now, extending the gun so it pointed at her chest. Cars ripped past on the asphalt behind her.
He watched as her gaze shifted downward.
Her pupils swelled. Her eyes locked onto the gun trembling in his hand, the barrel aimed straight at her. She took a shaky step backward, her pleading cutting off into silence, and fear flashed on her face for the first time in their encounter. Good, Levi thought. Perhaps it was dawning on her that she had no control here. That she wasn’t going to save the day this time. Wasn’t going to talk him down. They weren’t going to fix this with pretty words.
He was lost. He was beyond saving now. It was too late to talk, too late to beg or plead. Too late to pray.
It was too fucking late.
Levi turned again and looked down at the river. He knew that jumping from this height would end it. It would be like landing on concrete. He tried to picture it, tried to imagine connecting head first, his skull shattering like a dropped jar.
The daylight reflected from the ripples on the water, shimmering white shards of light up at him. Between the glare and the murk of the water itself, he couldn’t make out anything beneath the surface.
It calmed him some to watch the rushing river. He thought about all of Luke’s talk about symbols. Pregnancy was a symbol of life persisting. The police were symbols of order. Water was a symbol of life, wasn’t it? What did it mean to kill yourself in water, then?
And then it clicked. Water was the place the shadow went to die. Nothing could wash away what he’d done, but the river could sure wash him away. This was the symbol of life conquering death, for now and for always.
He closed his eyes. Took a breath, slow and deep.
Her voice called out from behind him, rising above the drone of the traffic.
“You’re the only one who can stop him, Levi. Luke is going to hurt so many more people if you let him. I don’t think that’s what you want.”
His eyes snapped open, blinked a few times. He didn’t turn back to face her.
“Look, we can talk about this. Just hang out for a minute, and we can talk.”
She didn’t have a clue. And there was nothing left to say. Not to her. Not to anyone.
No more words.
He pushed one foot out into the void, almost testing the nothingness — the empty space that lay between him and death.
“You’re not like Luke. I know that. He was nothing but trouble his whole life, but not you. You were a good writer. A good kid. And everyone knew that. Your mom. Shelly. They knew. And they know that all of this rage, all of this violence, that’s not you, Levi. It’s not.”
The wind picked up, battering him in the chest once more, lifting him a little. It swooped under his shirt and inflated it partially, the front plastered to his ribs and the back billowing like a cape.
It was almost like something was easing him back, some hand of fate, some force of nature trying to talk him down.
He blinked a few times. The air dry in his eyes.
And then he jumped.
Empty. Weightless. Flying.
His field of vision tilted toward the water. The dark swirls coiling there. He could see the black give way to blue in them now as they grew closer, could see hints of the depths that lay below the shimmer of the surface.
The cold of the wind stung his eyes. But he fought it off, held them open wide, stared straight into the end.
The river rushed up. Anxious to meet him. Anxious to be done with it.
His breath caught in his throat as the collision neared, a little gurgle emitting from behind his tongue. He still didn’t close his eyes.
Let it be over. Head fucking first.
Bright white shot all through him upon impact. Knotting his muscles. Clenching his jaw. Pain jolting everywhere as his body broke against the rock hard surface. A final sizzle in his skull.
And the dark water lurched once and swallowed him.
Chapter 74
Darger screamed for him to stop, but it was too late. He stepped into the open air beyond the bridge and disappeared from her sight.
A dream-like detachment came over her, as if she were watching the scene unfold from a distance versus actively participating in it. Almost an out of body experience.
Her feet moved the two paces to the guard rail. Her fingers wrapped around the cool metal, knuckles white with tension. Her eyes searched the swirling tumult of the water, waiting to catch sight of him. Nothing but the rapids marred the surface.
He was gone. One moment he’d been standing on the rail, and in the span of a single breath, he’d vanished, swallowed by the cold, black depths.
He hadn’t even screamed. But the sound of his body hitting the water was as violent as an explosion. A hard, percussive crack.
She’d thought she could talk him down, but she’d failed.
Shelly Webb’s words floated out from her subconscious.
Maybe everyone would have been better off if he’d just ended it and left everyone else out of it.
But Shelly had been talking about Luke. Levi, on the other hand… for some reason, Darger had been convinced she’d be able to get through to him.
And then it struck her: Luke. He might still be out there somewhere.
A sucking sound slurped in her shoe as she hobbled back the way she’d come. Blood from the dog bite continued dribbling down her leg, soaking into her sock. She got out her phone and called Loshak.
“Do you have Luke?” she barked into the mouthpiece as soon as he picked up.
“No.”
“Fuck!”
“They’re setting up roadblocks all around the area. They’ve got choppers in the air. He won’t get far. What about Levi?”
Her rib cage shuddered as she inhaled, not wanting to give him this particular news.
“Levi’s gone. There’s a bridge a few blocks from the school. He jumped.”
“Jumped? You mean…”
“Yeah.”
Loshak sighed. “Well, I suppose that’s one way to end it.”
“I tried to stop him, he—”
“Shit, I know that. I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I’m sorry. You did everything you could.”
But she was angry with herself, no matter what Loshak said. She swallowed against bitter tears.
“Where are you?” Loshak asked. “I’ll come pick you up.”
“That would be good. I had a little incident.”
“Levi?”
“No. A dog.”
“Hell, Darger. You’re like a shit-storm magnet, you know that?”
“Are you going to come pick me up, or what? I’m on…” she glanced at a street sign, “Carlson Avenue, right before the bridge.”
“Hold tight. I’ll be there.”
Chapter 75
The office chair jerked away from the desk, w
heels scraping over the ceramic floor. Before Tyrone had time to react, a blur of a human figure dove out from under it. A man. The shoulders connected with Tyrone’s thighs.
He flung his arms out to try to regain some balance, but it was no use. The tackle uprooted him, smacked him ass-first into the wall, and then both bodies went down in a heap.
Tyrone was so stunned that his first instinct was to get to his feet. He struggled for a moment — both men confused, off balance, fumbling and bumping into each other. Then he remembered the weapon in his hand and took a couple of swings.
The hooked part of the poker raked the back of the intruder’s head on the second strike, and the man screamed and scrambled back, hands clutching his punctured scalp. His voice seemed high. Almost shrill.
Now Tyrone had enough room to stand. He got to his feet quickly and stalked after the wounded animal before him. The panicked creature could only scuttle backward like a crab.
Tyrone stood over him, his muscles tightening as he prepared to destroy. This time he wound up for a bigger swing, two handed — somewhere between Bryce Harper and Tiger Woods.
Luke brought his head up just in time to catch sight of the iron rod racing toward his face. It caught him in the mouth — a clean, powerful stroke.
Everything went white.
The seconds stretched out, and he felt his teeth come apart in stages — the lightning flash of pain where the metal impacted his lip and mouth, the incredible pressure of all that force trying to wrench his teeth out of place, and then the tension releasing, and shards of tooth crumbling all over his tongue.
A sound came out of him, a throaty heave like a vomiting cat, and then pieces of his teeth spilled from his lips, clattering on the floor.
There was one big downbeat after that, a swoon of his consciousness into blackness, and then he bobbed back up into awareness and full color and a mouthful of pain. He spit out more bits of tooth, watching the white flecks skitter away on the gray tile.
