Page 58

“Thomas?” Kimi repeats, and finally he clears his throat, wiping a sleeve across his eyes.

“Two. We’ve got two shots left.”

Kimi’s face nearly crumples as she eyes the eager spray of blood across the linoleum. A deep breath and she schools it back into compliance, forcing a nod. “We’re screwed,” she says, before turning back toward the office.

Thomas says nothing as he leaves Jim’s body once again, hands trembling around the very weapon that blew the man’s face off.

Back inside the office, an assortment of rigged knives, scissors, and pliers lay across the table from when Ashley earlier hacked off Thomas’s full arm cast. He glances to where it sits, split open and messily torn up from the unconventional removal method. Perhaps it might have hurt more had the shock after seeing Jim not paralyzed him so thoroughly; perhaps he would have felt some rush of grand relief, even, to have his dominant arm free again.

But the weight of the gun in his hands is heavier than expected—a gun that gives them only two chances at seeing this plan through. He hands it over to Kimi, wanting nothing more than to be rid of it.

Jane stands from the rolling chair and her eyes meet his, wide and alert like a soldier sprung into action. “These have batteries in them now.” She hands him a walkie-talkie, then gives another one to Ashley before hooking the remaining one at her hip. “We can communicate on the first channel.”

Thomas nods numbly as he accepts the small radio. His palms are stained in Jim’s blood, and he thinks this little grocery store must be filled with more DNA than a forensics lab.

Jane’s face is remarkably calm considering the blown-apart head she witnessed not long before. He had tried to keep her from seeing Jim; he was the first to the body, after all, able to throw up his hands and choke out words to stay back, to get away. She must have looked at him for only a few seconds, taking in the green tint to his cheeks and the tears blurring heavy in his eyes, before she darted forward, joining his side.

“I think we should address what needs to happen if this doesn’t work,” Jane says, tucking her short hair back behind her ears.

The blood-tinted haze around Thomas’s brain clears slightly. “What are you talking about?”

Jane steps closer to him, and for an instance she seems like the older one. “It’s me,” she says. “We both know that I’m the one it really wants.”

The familiar anger flares up inside of him. “I thought we already decided all that was bullshit,” he snaps. “Everybody is guilty of something, Jane; it doesn’t mean you go and give yourself up to some monster. It doesn’t mean you go and get yourself killed.”

“Look, I’m just being realistic here—”

A strangled laugh escapes Thomas as he covers his mouth with both hands. “Realistic?” he mutters through a pained smile. Tears blur his vision, sudden and hot. “Nothing about this is realistic, Jane. For Christ’s sake, we’re living in a goddamned nightmare!”

When she opens her mouth to speak, he grips both of her arms. His own right arm is weak, the trained athletic muscle all but gone, but he doesn’t let go as he forces her to meet his eyes. “You listen to me, alright? We have a good plan, a plan that’s going to work,” he tells her, swallowing hard at the lump forming in his throat. “So just shut up about it, Jane. Please.”

Her jaw twitches slightly before she pulls out of his grasp. She picks up the small mop bucket filled with several tied-off latex gloves, whose insides slosh around with lighter fluid and drops of blood from a shallow cut she made across her palm, identical to the ones he, Ashley, and Kimi grimly sliced across their own.

Jane shoves the bucket at him. “Let’s just get this over with,” she says.

Thomas’s shoulders relax only slightly as he accepts it. Kimi heaves a shaky sigh, moving toward the door with him.

“Good luck,” Ashley says, in the same tone a pastor at a graveside might say Rest in peace.

Out in the store beneath the overhead fluorescents once more, Kimi tries to meet Jane’s eyes. “We’ll be on channel one,” the cashier confirms. She reaches out and squeezes Jane’s shoulder lightly before glancing toward the office, where Ashley waits inside. “Look out for each other, alright?”

Jane nods. “You too.”

Kimi glances between her and Thomas for a moment before thrusting a thumb toward the back corner of the store. “I’ll be at the staircase,” she tells him.

It is inevitable, this moment, and yet he has to force his eyes up from the floor. He can tell Jane’s unhappy with him, even a little annoyed, in fact. It’s somewhat startling, given how apologetic and delicate she’s been the past few months, and it hits him hard how much he’s missed her being annoyed with him.

“Be careful up there,” Jane says.

He nods silently, staring at the scar that reaches toward her right eyebrow and noting all the bright sadness that has marked her face—the sadness he has so willfully ignored and resented. He curls his right hand into a fist, feeling the tendons and nerves tug in answer within his forearm.

Say something, he tells himself.

But his body feels frozen where he stands, and Jane only nods as if she expected nothing less before turning to leave.

“It’s my fault,” he blurts out.

She pauses a few steps away, keeping her back to him and her face forward like she isn’t sure something has actually been said.