Fragile Darkness (34 page)

Like I'd seen in my vision.

The reality of that chilled me to the bone. “You have to find him first,” I gritted out.

He laughed. “Already taken care of that, sweetheart. You kids and your phones make things so easy.”

A quick blast of horror went through me. That's why Will hadn't answered his phone.

“You're wrong,” I said, edging back until my heels dropped off. “You can get rid of me and Will, but it won't change anything. The police are onto you. They already have everything they need.”

“Then where are they?” he mused. “Why aren't they here? At my house?” Smiling, he pulled his hand from his pocket, lifting a hypodermic needle between us.

My heart kicked. Adrenaline raced. There were only two ways off the bridge: down into the dark swirl of the water, or past Mr. Greenwood, toward the woods. If I could push past him, the angle of the bridge would increase my momentum. But it would increase his, too. Then it would be a footrace, me against him.

“What is that?” I made myself ask, in case anyone else was listening.

“It's what's coming,” he said. “What everyone is waiting for. Faster. More escape.” Lovingly, he smiled. “Liquid bliss—there's nothing else like it.”

Disgust blasted me. He was talking about a lethal drug like it was any other random merchandise.

“Didn't you hear what I said? People are going to die!” I shouted, horrified. “How can you do that? How can you put something on the street, knowing what it does? You have kids.”

His eyes, warm and mild a moment before, flashed. “It's called free will, sweetheart. I taught my boys how to make smart choices. I don't make anyone do anything they don't want to.” Another step. “If people want escape, that's their choice, not mine.”

“But it
is
your choice!” I threw back. “
You're
choosing to put a dangerous drug on the street.
You're
making it more dangerous.”

“And you, sweetheart, chose to ignore warnings.” He hesitated, lifting the syringe to the moonlight. “Like I said. We all have choices.”

Only three steps separated us.

With a hand to the rail he took one. “Drop the flashlight.”

Curled around it, my fingers tightened. “What?”

Smiling,
smiling,
he lifted the syringe between us, and took the second-to-last step.

“Poor Trinity,” he mused. “No one will be surprised, when they find your body, either, will they? After everything you've been through, you simply couldn't take the guilt and the grief anymore.”

I realized it then.

He wanted me to jump.

 

THIRTY-FOUR

The night stilled.

“Drop the flashlight,” Mr. Greenwood said again. “Or your friends won't be the only ones with a date with destiny.”

I scanned the darkness. My options were limited. “What are you talking about?”

His eyes, nowhere near as placid as they'd been, met mine. “Funny thing about buildings in the French Quarter. They're old, bad wiring. When a fire starts downstairs, it all goes.” He snapped his fingers. “Fast.”

Aunt Sara and Julian.

“I have someone outside Horizons right now,” he said coldly. “All I have to do is say the word, and it's bye-bye to New Orleans's favorite quack shop.”

A thousand screams tore through me, but none of them found voice. I twisted to my right, toward the other side, but darkness and the hulk of steel stole everything.

I was out of time.

“Please don't hurt them,” I whispered, pretending to play his sick little game. Doing my best to look like I was giving up, I dropped the flashlight.

What appeared to be my only weapon rolled down the incline.

“It's not me,” he said. “You're the one who didn't mind your own business. You're the one who had to play superhero.”

Choices. Mr. Greenwood liked to blame them on everyone else. I wanted to shout that at him, but the words were too strong, and I needed him to think I was weak.

“Now climb.”

The time for stalling was over. Knowing I would only get one chance, I detached myself from all emotion and lifted my other hand to the cool steel of the trestle.

The night wind slapped at me, cool and sharp,
alive.
I stared out over the dark swirl of water, holding myself still as Mr. Greenwood took that final step, the one that brought the tip of the needle to my side. Then I came alive, ramming my elbow back as hard as I could, straight into his nose.

He recoiled with a shout of pain, staggering back. Momentum and gravity sent him sprawling. The syringe flew from his fingers.

Heart slamming, I pushed from the rail and fumbled for the hypodermic, not thinking, not planning, just grabbing it as fast as I could and lunging for him before he realized my intent.

The needle penetrated the sleeve of his shirt.

He swung toward me.

I stabbed the stopper down and quick-stepped away.

“You little bitch!” he roared.

But already I was running, gravity pulling me down the steep incline with the out-of-control speed of a downhill sprinter. My legs flew wildly, but I refused to fall. I had no idea what liquid bliss would do, but with any luck it would work fast.

“Stop or they burn!” Mr. Greenwood slurred.

I stumbled.

“I'll make that call! I swear to God!”

Darkness fell in a thick shroud, the faint light of the moon showing the dance of shadows among the tall, waving grass. My flashlight lay in the scrub, more than two body lengths away, and Mr. Greenwood wasn't down yet.

I darted toward it, and with a quick slip of the shadows, felt everything inside me start to race, hard and fast, like a waking dream.

“Good girl,” Mr. Greenwood sneered, misinterpreting my sudden stillness as compliance, but I didn't care, not with Dylan rising from the water's edge with his switchblade in his hands and murder glittering in his eyes.

Quietly, he lifted a finger to his mouth.

Wordlessly I looked into his eyes, and told him that I understood. That I trusted. Because I did.

I swung back toward Mr. Greenwood. He was at the base of the bridge now, staggering like I had Sunday night through the woods. It seemed like a lifetime ago. In many ways, it was. Life was so much more than simply a collection of moments. It was each and every moment, each bursting with its own heartbeat.

Out of the corner of my eye, movement slipped against the far side of the bridge.

“What are you going to do now?” I challenged. Cautiously I glanced toward the shadows, where Jim Fourcade lifted his gun toward Mr. Greenwood.

“Maybe you should make that call,” I suggested, standing taller. Then I smiled. “Because you really don't have much more time.”

Mr. Greenwood swayed and at the exact same moment Dylan and his father swung into view, one on each side of the bridge, me in the middle.

There was nowhere to run, even if Mr. Greenwood could have. Which he couldn't.

Liquid bliss was fast.

Mr. Greenwood's eyes widened as he stumbled back, and then he was twisting around and running, or at least trying to run. But he was beyond coordination now, beyond the control he craved.

Jim sprinted after him. “Freeze!”

I ran forward, too, but then Dylan was there, reaching for me, and this time when he pulled me into his arms, I didn't fight him.

“You're okay,” I breathed, hugging him as tightly as I could. As tightly as I'd wanted to for so very, very long. I held him against me, loving the feel of him, so strong and solid, of his heart slamming against mine.
“You're okay.”

The damp heat of his body soaked into mine. The warmth of his breath feathered against my neck. Almost savagely, he pulled back and lifted his hands to my face, revealing the dark drench of horror and relief and something else, something
timeless,
gleaming in his eyes.

“Did he touch you?” His voice shook. “Did he hurt—”

I pushed up on my toes and pressed my mouth to his. “No,” I whispered against his lips. “No.”

He crushed me against him, his mouth moving against mine with a ferocity that fired through me, and a fever that seared through to my soul.

He was safe.

Jim's shout stopped everything. “Don't do it!”

Simultaneously we twisted around.

Jim stood with his gun pointed toward the high angle of the bridge, the edge beyond which nothingness gaped, and where Mr. Greenwood stood clutching a steel rail.

Then he jumped.

 

THIRTY-FIVE

We found Will in Mr. Greenwood's trunk.

“He was tracking us,” Will told me after the doctors cleared him and I was finally allowed to see him. He sat propped up in the hospital bed, with Kendall curled up beside him, her hand protectively against his chest. “That's how he kept finding us. He put something on our phones.”

“Sunday night,” I realized, when both of us had been given bliss.

Will nodded. “I was hiding in an old mall,” he said. “I thought I was safe. I was working on the list, when…” He slid Kendall a quick tentative look.

She smiled. “I told you,” she said, widening her dark expressive eyes. “I
don't
think you're crazy. I think it's cool. I mean, how many boyfriends can talk with your grandfather on the other side? That doesn't happen every day.”

But it might now, I thought with a quick smile of my own.

Will pulled her closer, sliding a kiss to her cheek. “I was behind the counter in the food court when like ten different people started shouting for me to get out of there.” The confused terror of the experience lingered in his eyes. “I ran, but Mr. Greenwood had one of those Tasers like that guy used on you, and I went down.”

I squeezed his hand. “I'm sorry.” Greenwood had tied Will up and locked him in his trunk. In two days, he would have been given a lethal dose of the new liquid bliss and dumped at the party by the canal, where he would have been written off as yet another overdose.

It was a diabolically perfect plan. Mr. Greenwood was right. No one would have suspected foul play.

Of course it wouldn't have been that simple, not when
everyone
at the party collapsed.
That
wasn't the kind of new product launch he'd planned. Death didn't do a lot for demand.

“I should have known,” Will was saying. “I mean, it was the party at his house where everything started getting freaky.”

I'd felt it, too. “Sometimes it's hard to know, especially at first. With time, you'll learn what to pay attention to.”

“So your vision…” He hesitated, his eyes searching mine. “You finally saw what was trying to form?”

I pulled back, looking toward the window as the image flashed all over again, the grotesquely twisted bodies, frozen where they lay, as if they'd been dancing when the world ended.

Because they would have been.

“Yeah,” I said, filling them in on liquid bliss and the upcoming party. “The name that you wrote yesterday on that wall? Brandy? That was a girl I go to school with, Amber.” The memory of her unseeing, doll-like eyes haunted me. “She would have been there, at the railroad bridge, like you wrote.”

Dancing.

When her world ended.

But it wasn't going to end now. Instead she was getting help. Everyone was. Jessica and Kiki had approached Amber's parents, the police issued a broadcast alert to all media, ten cases of bliss were confiscated, and the man behind it all was dead. The police found the older man's body within half an hour, trapped by a fallen tree. He'd drowned, like I was pretty sure he'd intended as soon as he realized he was facing the rest of his life in prison, or worse.

He'd chosen the worse.

Once Jackson and Kiki started looking, the illusion of refined antiques dealer that Paul Greenwood had built for the community quickly came crumbling down. His money was old money, and he'd lost most of it in the stock market. In debt, his business failing, and on the verge of losing his house—
and his standing
—he'd been experimenting with more lucrative merchandise. His frequent trips to Europe gave him a constant source, and a solid alibi. No one had ever suspected him. Hosting a party at his house was all part of the pretend world.

“Hey,” came a quiet voice from the doorway, and then Will's parents and little sister were slipping back into the room with four cups of steaming hot cocoa and a big Mylar balloon in the shape of a puppy.

Realizing they needed time alone, I eased back from the bed. “Give me a call when you're ready,” I said. Now that his secret was out of the bag, he had a ton of questions. “I've got some people I want you to meet.” Like Julian and Grace.

Will grinned. “I was born ready.”

Smiling back at him, I turned to leave, but hesitated when I noticed the little girl watching me.

“Hi,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “Thank you,” she said, all fast-like. “Thank you for helping my brother.”

Will's mother glanced back. “Yes,” she said as her husband slid in next to her. “Thank you.”

“You did a very brave thing,” he said. “We'll be forever grateful.”

A few seconds later I opened the door and slipped into the stillness of the hall, with the buzz of fluorescent lights and the sparsely manned nurse's station.

It was a few minutes after midnight.

I walked through the silence, not sure where I was going or what to do next, until laughter drifted from the television in the lounge, and I turned to see them, see them all: Aunt Sara, with her soft wavy hair falling loose around her face and Julian by her side, a hand at the small of her back; Detective Jackson sprawled in a plastic chair two sizes too small for him, tapping out something on his phone; Grace in her grandmother's arms and Victoria in Trey's; Deuce and …
Jessica
rising from the sofa; and Jim Fourcade with his silver ponytail turning from the window.