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“I’m here, baby girl,” I say.
I guide her hands, aim, and put her finger and mine on the trigger.
“Where do you want to shoot him? We’ll do it together.”
“Daddy, I need to do it myself,” she whispers.
I don’t want this to eat at her. “You are. I’m just your guide.” It’s a lie. But she breathes out.
“Heart, Orion. That’s where I want to shoot him.”
I line it up and then say, “Now.”
I press the trigger a nanosecond before she does, and the kickback knocks her against me.
He twitches, and then he doesn’t move again.
Dakota pulls free and kicks him. Hard. She spits on him.
I’m not really sure what I expect, but she just hands me the gun and climbs the stairs.
It takes me a moment, but I follow and catch her arm near the boarded-up door. “Dakota.”
Her shoulders slump before she raises them. “We’re done, right?”
“I’ll get you a car.”
“That’s been arranged.” And she reaches once more for the door. Then she drops her arm and spins.
I can hear Alicia hand out orders as the crew up here moves down to the basement.
“You’re a coward,” Dakota says. “A gun-toting coward. You’re going to let me go, aren’t you?”
“You’re releasing the video. You’ll become even more famous,” I say, clenching my hands tight.
“If I didn’t? If I said I choose you?”
They didn’t have to give me an ultimatum. I understand the implicit meaning of her video that’s probably dropped by now. Of her help through her online presence.
If I chose her, the job would not just end, but I’d be cut off from them all. I could do that. In a heartbeat. It hits me hard that I could and would.
If it meant she didn’t suffer.
But she would.
For winning the dubious prize of Orion, a walking dead man with an erased past and an unclear future, she’d have to leave everything and everyone. She’d have to be me. Hiding in the shadows.
The Knights won’t kill me, but there’s a price for me doing the unthinkable and leaving.
On the run.
Living in that darkness beneath the world.
No contact.
Nothing.
I can do it. I don’t give a fuck.
