by Amy Cross
“Give me the keys,” Ben said, opening the door on his side.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not getting out for a pee and leaving you sitting here with the goddamn keys. Do you think I’m that stupid?”
“Fine.” Luke switched off the engine and handed the keys to him. “I can look after the gun for you, though,” he added with a faint smile.
“You’re hilarious,” Ben replied, stepping out and leaving the door open as he took a few steps away from the car. Pausing, he looked around as a light breeze blew across the plain. “When I was a kid,” he continued after a moment, “I used to come out here all the time, just to get away from the rest of the world. My brother, he was this really annoying, holier-than-thou little…” He paused, and for a moment he caught himself remembering the old days with Jack. “I spent hours and hours trying to avoid him, day after day, and now, all I want is thirty seconds to tell him what I really thought about him. Not some fake, over-the-top garbage about truly loving him as a brother… I mean, I did love him, I still do, but there was also a lot about him that annoyed me. And when he died, he most likely still thought that I was the one holding the knife.”
He looked down at the gun.
“Do you have a brother, Luke?” he asked after a moment.
He waited.
No reply.
Turning, he saw that Luke was simply watching him from the driver’s seat.
“You know what?” Ben said after a moment. “I was about to tell you all about Jack, but there’s no point. It’d just be a load of self-serving garbage.”
He stood in silence for a moment.
“Are you…” Luke paused. “So are you gonna pee or not?”
Ben stared at him, before raising the gun. “I was lying. I don’t need to pee.”
VI
“She’s going to be fine,” Beth explained as she took a seat next to Bob in the hospital corridor. “The bullet didn’t do much damage, it really only grazed her, so even the scar is looking touch-and-go. She’s also an extremely good liar, although I guess that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you. She said someone tried to mug her, and she ran, and…” She paused. “If I hadn’t been there myself, I’d totally believe her. The lie she told was certainly more believable than the truth.”
Looking down at his hands, Bob couldn’t even meet his wife’s gaze.
“It’s nice of her,” Beth continued. “To lie for me on Christmas Day, I mean. To lie for us. Especially when it’s kind of slightly my fault she got shot.” She opened her mouth to say more, before falling silent as a sense of shock began to claw its way through her chest. “Oh God,” she whispered finally, closing her eyes and bowing her head, trying to find some way to reset her thoughts.
They sat in silence for a moment.
“Kind of?” Bob said eventually, his voice trembling with shock. “Slightly?” He waited for a reply. “Is that really all you’ve got to say for yourself?”
“It just happened that way.”
“Did you -” He turned to her. “Please, Beth, tell me it’s not true. This has to be a dream, or some kind of misunderstanding. Tell me you didn’t actually hire someone to…”
She paused, before nodding. “I did.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t know!” he hissed, exasperated. “I just found out that my own wife tried to have me killed, I’m kind of struggling to process everything right now!”
“Because life would be so much easier if you weren’t here.”
He stared at her, clearly aghast at the words he’d just heard.
“Do you think I don’t know what you were doing?” she asked. “All those times you worked late, all those times you popped out for five minutes and didn’t come home until a couple of hours later. All those times you kept your phone real close, even when you went to the bathroom. Jesus, Bob, I’m not an idiot. I know exactly what you’ve been doing.”
Silence fell again.
“Having an affair,” he said finally, “is a little different to hiring an assassin. In the grand scheme of things, I mean. There’s a slight moral imbalance there.”
“I know.”
“I mean, they both hint at character flaws. I’m not saying I’m completely innocent here, but… Hiring someone to kill me? Seriously?”
“It just sort of happened step by step,” she replied. “It’s much easier to cross a moral line when you inch closer slowly, making lots of little decisions instead of one big one. Somehow, I just ended up at this point.” She paused. “Are you going to go to the police and have me arrested?”
“I…” He paused. “No. No, I’m not going to do that. For Lucy’s sake.”
“I don’t want her to know about any of this.”
“Neither do I.”
“So now we’re back to square one,” she continued, glancing along the corridor. “I’m not even going to ask you not to see that woman again. Hell, I doubt she’ll want anything to do with either of us again, but even so, you’d just go looking for someone else.”
She waited for a reply.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” she asked. “You would look for someone else, wouldn’t you?”
Again, she waited.
“You…” He paused. “You tried to have me killed.”
“Not really. I teased myself with the idea, but when I realized it might actually happen, I came to stop it.”
“Forgive me if that doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
“Well,” she continued, leaning back in her chair, “it’s Christmas, and I suppose we should act happy for Lucy’s sake. Everything else, we can deal with in a few days’ time.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked. “I was almost executed, Candy was actually shot! That was a real-life gangland thug you hired! Jesus Christ, Beth, do you have any idea what you’ve done? How can I even turn my back on you for a second? How do I know you won’t try to strangle me or stab me or…” His voice trailed off for a moment, before he leaned forward with his head in his hands. “Oh God, this is insane. I never thought you were this kind of person.”
“Me neither,” she replied, staring at the noticeboard on the opposite wall. “I guess maybe it runs in the family.”
***
Stopping at the kitchen drawer, Ben took a moment to wrap the gun in a towel before heading to the sink and starting to wash his hands. After a few seconds, he turned the lever on the side of the faucet and felt the water heating up, but he kept his hands in the stream even though his skin was starting to burn. Finally, unable to stand the pain for a moment longer, he pulled his hands back and examined them closely.
No blood.
“Hey.”
Turning, he saw Jane standing in the doorway. Her face was pale and her eyes were red-raw, and she had a slightly vacant expression, as if just walking and talking was a huge effort.
“I…” Ben paused. “Um, how are the kids?”
“Oliver’s crying. Stuart seems to be getting angry, I’m not sure what to do about that. I guess they’re both in shock. Your mother’s talking to them.” She made her way over to the breakfast bar and looked at the towel on the counter, almost as if she instinctively knew that there was a gun inside. “Where did you and Beth rush off to?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She nodded.
“We…” He paused again. “We had to go and stop the hit-man Beth had hired, before he executed Bob out by the old Sumper gas station. We got there just in time.”
“That’s good,” Jane replied, as if the news didn’t shock her at all.
“And then…”
“And then what?”
“And then I took the hit-man further out of town.”
She stared at him. “I see,” she said finally.
“And -”
“I get it,” she added.
He paused. “Thank you.”
“You did what you had
to do in order to protect your family,” she continued. “You knew Beth wouldn’t have been safe.”
“The guy would have come back for her,” he replied. “I know how these things work, he couldn’t risk having people know who he was. He’d have come back and killed her, and Bob and that other girl, and me too. In the circumstances -”
“One life instead of four,” she said, interrupting him. “That seems like a fair trade.”
“It wasn’t quite so easy.”
“But you still managed to do it?”
He paused, before nodding.
“Well,” she continued, “I hope you dealt with everything properly. I really don’t want to have to deal with some hit-man’s corpse showing up.”
“Of course not, but…” He watched her for a moment. “You’re okay with this?”
She shrugged.
“Jane, listen -”
“I just don’t want to have to think about it,” she continued. “I don’t see any kind of threat to anyone, and like I said, you did what you had to do in order to protect your family. Right now, I completely understand that impulse.”
“I’m not done yet.”
“I guessed.”
“I have to…” He paused, before looking over at the towel with the gun inside. “I have to go and do something I should have done a long time ago.”
She nodded.
“I’ll make it as neat as possible,” he continued, “but -”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No way.”
“You can’t stop me,” she told him. “I’m an officer of the law, remember? The Border has to be closed down, it has to be ripped out from the heart of this town and destroyed. We’ve let it fester long enough.”
“We should have done this years ago.”
“We should.”
“Jack would still be alive.”
She nodded.
“So would a lot of people,” he added.
“We can’t change the past,” she replied, “we can only change the future.”
“Are you going to get Alex involved?”
She shook her head.
“Are you sure? He might -”
“This is so far beyond Alex’s ability to understand,” she continued, “that I don’t think he’d have a chance. You and I know about that place, Ben. We’re the ones who should do something about it.”
“Well, I’ve got a gun now,” he pointed out.
“I’ve got a gun too, and access to a couple more.”
“So what do we do?” he asked. “Go in shooting, guns ablaze, and keep on firing until the Border has been cleared out?”
“I’ve heard of worse plans.”
“Do you have a map of the place?”
She shook her head. “Do you?”
“I know the first two levels pretty well. Beyond that, no.”
“We’ll figure it out.” She paused, before heading to the door. “I’ll get those guns.”
“When are we going?” he asked.
“Tonight.”
“And then this’ll be over, right?”
She turned to him. “I’m not going to let the Border last any longer. The things that happen down there, they ripple up into the town. Even the people who don’t know about it, they feel it in their souls. Our children…” She paused. “It’s too late for us, Ben. Whatever’s driving the Border, it got into our souls long ago and froze, and the cracks are too wide to be repaired. But Stuart and Oliver, and Lucy… There’s still time for them. They don’t have to grow up with that place under their feet. Think about it, Stuart and Oliver would probably end up becoming customers and Lucy… Well, I don’t even want to think about that. No-one else is going to stop it, so we have to.”
He paused, shocked by the change in her tone, before finally nodding.
“So you’re with me?” she asked.
“I’m with you.”
“Meet me in the town square at ten tonight,” she continued. “It’s Christmas, hopefully the place won’t be quite so full, we’ll manage to get through it a little more easily. Either way, we’re going to finish the job.”
He nodded again.
“So get some sleep,” she added, leaving the room. “Or rest. Whatever.”
Left alone, Ben paused before turning to look at the towel. He’d always known this day would come, but now it had arrived and he felt torn. There was still a chance to run, to go back to Paula and pretend that Bowley didn’t even exist, to go away and this time to stay away forever. At the same time, he knew he had to finish what he’d started all those years ago when he’d defended himself against Garland Packer. Opening the towel, he took hold of the gun and began to figure out where he could get extra ammunition on Christmas Day.
NEXT
The Border
Part Eight
The final part of The Border sees an unlikely team come together to fight the evil that lurks beneath the town. As more lives are lost, it becomes apparent that something dark and cruel is lurking in the shadows, and the ghosts of its victims are agitating for revenge. After a deadly confrontation, the survivors are forced to go down and face the true horror the lurks on the Border’s lowest level.
Available soon to pre-order. Release date: September 17th 2015
OTHER BOOKS
BY AMY CROSS INCLUDE
Horror
3AM
The Farm
The Scream
Tenderling
The Girl Clay
The Haunting of Emily Stone
The Prison
Asylum
American Coven
The Night Girl
Devil’s Briar
Ward Z
Ward Z: Revelation
The Devil’s Photographer
Fantasy / Horror
Dark Season series 1, 2 & 3
The Hollow Church (Abby Hart 1)
Vampire Asylum (Abby Hart 2)
Dead Souls volumes 1, 2 & 3
Lupine Howl series 1 to 4
Grave Girl
Graver Girl (Grave Girl 2)
Ghosts
The Library
Journey to the Library (The Library Saga 2)
The Ghosts of London
Archangel (The Ghosts of London 2)
Thriller
Ophelia
The Dead City (Ophelia 2)
Fallen Heroes (Ophelia 3)
The Girl Who Never Came Back
The Dead and the Dying (Joanna Mason 1)
The House of Broken Backs (Joanna Mason 2)
The Pornographer’s Wife
Other People’s Bodies
Dystopia / Science Fiction
The Shades
Mass Extinction Event series 1 to 4
Table of Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Epilogue
