Behind me, Resi gasped, then snarled. I ducked as a bullet from Noam’s pistol shattered the glass windowpane, sending shards of glittering rain down on the plush carpet and bed. But I was already moving. I grabbed the fallen prod, flipped it in my grip, and swung.
Resi crumpled, twitching, the air crackling with the sharp scent of burned ozone and the sound of her breath hitching in a raw, ugly gasp. She was already getting back up, I knew, but I didn’t wait to see it. It didn’t matter. “The handcuff key,” I ordered.
She didn’t hesitate to flip it toward me.
Louisa’s lashes fluttered. Her lips parted. A breath, shaky but real. I crushed her against me, against my chest, pressing my forehead to hers, as I undid her remaining cuff and the one on my other hand. I knew I had seconds only before the other goon’s gun went off again, and this time he wouldn’t miss.
“I got you,mäi léift,” I whispered. “I got you.”
“Back off,” Resi rasped from the carpet. But she was talking to her goons, not to me. “Leave him alone.”
“But—” Noam began.
“You heard me. Put the gun away,” Resi said and I realized—they didn’t have to shoot us.They didn’t have to do anything. They just had to watch us immolate ourselves.
Because Louisa was drawing in another choking gasp of air and half-raised her head, her limp hair matted and formless and damp, half-hiding the red, pus-filled blisters on her face that glistened, intermixed with bloody abrasions from the muzzle and rainy streaks of tears. For a second, we regarded each other unblinkingly. Her mouth wavered at the corner, marred by the shininess of the burn. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at the rest of her body, afraid I’d be sick. She moaned again, a weak, rattling, helpless sound. I knew how it felt, exactly how it continued to burn, the receptors burrowing like insects underneath the skin even after the initial heat was gone. Insult to injury; humiliation to hurt.
They owned you, after all.
How the fuck was there any fixing this? “I’m?—”
“Don’t touch me,” Louisa shrieked suddenly, ear-piercingly, leaping up from the floor and pawing half-blindly at her remaining clothing scattered across the room. Her hands and arms were stiff as claws, and she was unsteady on her feet, the lamplight just enough to reveal the blisters all over her body had begun to glisten and ooze.
“Where are you going?”
I dove for my own clothes and started throwing them on. Whatever shit options I had to fix this situation, I wasn’t going to accomplish any of them naked. From the pocket of my suit jacket, I felt the vibration of my phone. Without looking, I knew who was calling. I ignored it, just as I ignored the rapt, blood-sprayed peanut gallery staring at the drama unfolding before them.
“Where do you think?” Louisa hissed back, tripping drunkenly down the stairs two at a time before unlocking the door, across the lawn next door, into the vast, dry suburban sandscape that sprawled around us in every direction. “To find Maeve and the rest. Maybe it’s not too late. No thanks to you.”
“I know, but you’re burned. They almostkilledyou. You can’t just?—”
She swung her knee and landed a blow with an amount of force I was, somehow, not at all surprised to find she still had in her, knocking the breath out of me and sending me reeling backward. Away from her.
She turned back, only once. Raised her eyebrows. “Yes. And?” Flat, bitter. No improv this time. Not a callback.
Just a goodbye.
And she ran, blazing her erratic path out into the street, still clutching her clothes to her chest. Her skin was awash in the orange-gold glow of the identical lampposts planted in every yard, while the remains of the torn white chemise and her wild, tangled hair swirled around her like ghosts. She dashed blindly, right in front of an oncoming van.
I shouted at her again, but the van slammed on the brakes inches away from her face, honking furiously. She paused in a daze but only for a second, then kept running in a zigzag pattern, her bare feet crunching across the neighbors’ landscaping rocks,over a low fence and into another yard and behind another house, where she disappeared from sight.
And then I was alone forever. Again.
“The boss says you got three hours to deliver those files,” Noam said suddenly, casually, from behind me.
“I was lying about that, you idiot,” I said without turning around.
“She knows it was a lie,” he said as he lumbered away, and when I turned my head, I caught him lovingly petting the pistol concealed in his jacket. “But now ya gotta make it true.”
Oh, right. Now I could frame and defraud Keith all I liked because Louisa would never speak to me again either way, and Resi and her goons would kill me if I didn’t.
I guessed that explained why they weren’t killing me now. Because they’d have plenty of chances to kill me later—and everyone I cared about, too.
My phone was still vibrating. Slowly, numbly, I swiped and raised it to my ear.
“Hey. Kid.”
From a cottonwood across the street came the lonely, croaky chirp of a nightjar, followed by the soft, leathery wing flaps as it took flight, its body ablaze with orange light from the identikit globes lining each yard, bathing this serene residential neighborhood that, for years, had hidden the evilest depravity humans could devise.
