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Russ laughs, then coughs. Blood spatters his chin. “You never knew, did you?”

I press harder against his throat.

His face reddens.

He keeps smiling.

“My dad was drunk that night,” Russ says, each word scraped raw.

Everything stops.

The crowd. The mall. The blood. The guns. The screaming. All of it drops away until there is only his throat under my hand and the words crawling out of his mouth.

Russ stares up at me, grinning through broken teeth.

“He hit them and drove home like nothing happened.”

My hand goes numb around his throat.

“He didn’t even know who they were until the next day,” Russ whispers.

My heart stops beating.

He leans into the silence like it feeds him.

“Tell me. Do you still hear the screams of your dying mother?”

The world turns red.

THIRTY-SIX

THIS BITCH.

CLAIR

No.

It can’t be.

I tighten my hold on Poppy’s shoulders as she presses into my side, shaking, her face turned against my ribs. My stomach drops through the blood-slick tile.

Russ’s father. The hit-and-run. Leon’s parents.

Leon’s first letter flashes through me.

Russ being nice after the accident. Asking what Leon remembered. What he saw. Whether he wanted to talk about it.

Not kindness.

Fear.

He had been checking whether his father was safe.

No. No, no, no.

Leon doesn’t move, and that scares me more than if he had lunged. He is still on top of Russ, one hand at his throat, but every inch of him has gone quiet. Not calm. Not safe. The kind of still that comes before something terrible breaks open.

Beside me, Jacob’s gun lowers an inch. “Motherfucker,” he whispers.