Slow Agony (14 page)

I grasped the barrel.

We wrestled over it for several seconds.

He was stronger than me. He was going to get it.

I brought up my knee. I was aiming for his crotch.

I missed that. Instead I drove it into his stomach.

It was enough.

His grip on the gun loosened. Just a hair. Just a little bit.

But I got the gun from him.

I got it, and I turned it on him, and I pressed it up to his head, and I pulled the trigger, and then I pulled it again, and then I pulled it again.

And he was dark.

But he wasn’t dead.

No. He’d said, “Wolfman is indestructible.” Somehow, the psycho had the serum.

I padded him down until I found his knife.

I rolled him over onto his stomach.

I sliced deep into his neck.

Blood spurted all over my hands, my arms, my torso. It was slippery work, but I got it done. I killed him.

He was dead.

I sat back, shaking all over.

That was when I realized that the sobbing noise I kept hearing?

I was making it.

Silas pried the knife out of my hand. “Leigh? Leigh, are you with me?”

I was still shaking all over. I couldn’t look at him.

“Come on, Leigh, say something for God’s sake.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yeah,” he said. He helped me get to my feet. “Yeah, he is.”

My hair was in my face. I reached up to brush it away. My hands were covered with blood. I whimpered.

Silas’ voice softened. “You’re okay.”

I bit down on my lip. I tasted blood. I shuddered. “I killed him.”

“Why don’t you go back to your room and get cleaned up?” he said.

“Alone?” Terror coursed through me.

He looked around. “I’ll walk you over and lock the door behind you, okay? Don’t open the door to anyone but me.”

“Can’t you stay with me?”

“I need to clean up this room.”

Oh. I guessed there were dead bodies everywhere. I nodded. “Okay.”

“You’re all right. You got him. It was him or us, and you had to take him out. You know that right?”

I nodded. “I know that.” It didn’t make it any easier, though. I’d only used a knife to kill someone once, and I’d been so worried about getting out of Op Wraith with Griffin at the time that I hadn’t had time to let it get to me. This was different somehow.

Silas walked me next door to my room. Together, we made sure I was alone in there. Then he closed the door after me.

I took the hottest shower I could stand. I hugged the smooth, tiled walls. And I sobbed again. Sobbed. And scrubbed.

And still didn’t quite feel clean.

It was dark outside when I left my room. My skin was raw from the heat of the shower, from the force of my scrubbing. A cool breeze wafted through the air outside the motel. It felt soothing against my skin. I followed Silas into the darkened parking lot. He was trying the doors on cars, looking for one that was already unlocked.

It was time to steal a new car.

Silas found one that was dark blue. It almost seemed to melt into the darkness. We got inside.

He hotwired the car.

Then we pulled out of the parking lot of the motel. We’d been driving all day, and we’d thought we’d get to sleep there. But we couldn’t stay after what had happened.

“I called Griffin,” said Silas. “He knows everything’s okay, but he wants us to meet up tomorrow morning, so we’re going to have to drive through tonight.”

“Can you manage that?” I said. “You haven’t gotten any sleep since last night. I can take over and drive later if you want.”

He nodded. “That might be good. You should try to sleep now.”

I twisted my hands together in my lap. “I don’t know if I can. I keep thinking about...”
Blood
.

His knuckles tightened on the wheel. “This is what you gotta do, Leigh. You gotta face that thought head on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why does it frighten you? Is it because you think you’re a bad person or something? Because you’re not.”

“Saying that doesn’t make it go away.”

“That’s why you face it. You say to yourself, ‘So what if I was a bad person? What would that mean?’ And the more you think about it, you realize nothing would change. And then when you feel it again, when you’re afraid again, you tell it fuck off, because you can’t be scared by that anymore.”

“I don’t want to be a bad person.”

“Well, you aren’t. Know that you aren’t. But accept that you could be.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Doesn’t have to.”

I ran my fingers over the dashboard of the new car we’d taken. It was dusty. I rubbed the dust off on my pants’ leg. “Is that what you do? How you keep cool?”

“Sure,” he said. “I got that girl killed tonight, you know.”

“No,” I said. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I didn’t care about her. I wanted her for my own pleasure, right? Now, she’s dead.” His voice was flat. “And I can handle the implications of that. So what if I am a really bad person? So what if I am.”

We were both quiet.

Eventually, his last words echoing through my head, my eyes closed. I slept. My sleep was deep and dreamless. Guiltless.

Chapter Nine

We met Griffin and Sloane at a rest area the next morning. The sun had wrestled its way into the sky, brilliant and warm. The grass was dew-covered, freshly cut, and fragrant. The sky was blue like a robin’s egg. Cloudless. They were waiting for us at a picnic table, with two big bags of McDonald’s food. And it was surreal how cheery everything seemed.

Griffin caught me in a big hug the minute he saw me, and Sloane threw her arms around her brother, who hugged her back just as tightly.

Griffin murmured into my hair that he was glad I was okay. I clung to him. He was strong and firm, and I could depend on him. I was happy to see him too.

All four of us sat down at the picnic table, and Sloane began distributing breakfast sandwiches and hash browns. We chattered easily about who wanted the sandwich with sausage and who wanted to try the chicken. We sipped orange juice through straws and stirred sugar into big Styrofoam cups of coffee. We seemed normal, then. I was astounded by how easy it was to go back into all of it, to pretend as if we weren’t on the run from psychotic men who wanted to make us suffer. As if I hadn’t killed one of them last night, spattered his blood everywhere.

So what if I am a bad person?

And then I didn’t question my ease. I gave in to it.

Eventually, breakfast wore down, and our topic turned to things more serious.

“So, what’s our plan at this point?” said Silas.

“I don’t know,” said Griffin. “I wish we knew more. You killed Wolfman. Does Marcel have others working for him, or was that it? Our attempts to lose them haven’t been working very well, obviously. They’re tracking us somehow.”

“They tracked Leigh,” said Silas. “Not you. Which doesn’t make sense if it’s you they want.”

“Maybe they’re messing with him,” said Sloane.

“Obviously, they are,” said Griffin. “It’s horrible, though. I feel so helpless.”

“It seems to me like they’re going after Leigh primarily,” said Silas. “That’s who they made the initial contact with. That’s who they keep attacking.”

“But only when I’m not with Griffin,” I said.

“That’s true,” said Griffin, furrowing his brow. “Well, to be on the safe side, then, I want Leigh with me.”

“Are we splitting up again?” I asked.

Sloane looked at everyone questioningly. “What do you guys think? Should we?”

“It’s harder to hide four people,” said Silas.

“But splitting up didn’t help us last time,” I said.

“Well, we can’t be sure of that,” said Sloane. “Maybe they could only follow one of us.”

“But we were the ones who were the hardest to follow,” said Silas. “You guys were taking a direct route.”

“I want to check on my family,” said Griffin.

“That’s probably a bad idea,” said Silas. “You know that.”

“If he’s using people that I care about to mess with my head, then he’s going to go for my family next,” said Griffin. “I have to make sure they’re okay.”

“And for all you know, Marcel is waiting for you there,” said Sloane. “It could be a trap.”

“Right,” said Griffin. “And Marcel would know that I’d be too smart to actually go see them, so he’d assume that I’d send you guys to do it. So if you and Silas go somewhere else, they’ll follow you, thinking that you’re Leigh and me.”

Sloane raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure about your logic.”

“Maybe he’s right,” said Silas. “At any rate, I’d rather be able to keep an eye on my sister, no matter what.”

She rolled her eyes. “I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” said Silas. “But these guys after us are really out there. You should have seen what he did to that girl in our hotel room.”

“I did,” said Sloane. “I saw the picture he sent Griffin.”

We were all quiet. I was thinking about the heart carved into her forehead.

Sloane sighed. “Well, it’s not like we didn’t get wigs. Griffin and I went shopping. So, if we’re doing this, then let’s go to the bathroom and change clothes.”

I peered around us. “You really think someone’s watching us right now?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Griffin. “It’s always better to be cautious.”

“Right,” I said. That was like Griffin’s catchphrase.

I adjusted Sloane’s shirt, which was a little tight on me. “I think I’ve gained weight. Must be all those homebrews you fed me,” I joked.

“Whatever, you look great,” she said from the stall next to me.

“Not in your clothes.” I opened the bathroom stall and emerged into the restroom area. I went over to the sink to look at myself in the mirror. I was wearing a dark wig as well, and I straightened it to make sure it looked okay.

She came up behind me in a blonde wig. “I think you look wonderful.”

I giggled. “Wigs are kind of fun.”

She smiled. “Yeah. I only wish that we were using them to have fun instead of run for our lives.”

I had to agree with that. Everything was dangerous and tense. And the situation with Griffin wasn’t any better. I sighed. “I’m a little nervous about being alone with Griffin again. The last time we saw each other, we fought.”

“Actually, I know all about it,” she said. “I made him talk to me. He was really upset, and that made him unpleasant to be around.”

My stomach turned over. “He told you everything?”

She nodded. “I know why you did it, Leigh. Any woman in a situation like that—”

“Not any woman,” I said. “Some women would have stayed pregnant.”

“Maybe.” She scrutinized herself in the mirror, messing with her wig. “I told him he wasn’t being fair to you.”

“Maybe he is, though.”

“He agreed with me,” she said.

“He did?”

“He knows this is partly his fault,” said Sloane. “He actually blames himself a lot.”

“Well, he did disappear.”

“Exactly.” Sloane grabbed my hands. “Hey, listen. He loves you. I can tell. He just hasn’t figured out how to process all of this. He doesn’t know how to feel.”

“Seemed to me like he felt really freaking mad.”

“Well...”

“I knew it.”

“No, it’s okay. You guys need to be alone together. It’s the right thing, I’m sure of it. If it’s meant to be you’re going to work it out.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You can’t ever know,” she said. “The future is unpredictable. Hell, we could all be dead tomorrow. The longer we’re on this road trip, the more of a possibility that seems.”

I laughed. “That’s true.”

She hugged me. “I’m pulling for you guys.”

When we left the bathroom, Griffin was wearing a wig too. He had a dark ponytail like Silas did. And Silas had on a skull cap. Up close, it wasn’t too convincing, but from a few feet away, he did look like Griffin.

Silas wound his arm around Sloane. “Hey, sis.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ew, is this how you treat your sluts? No thank you.”

“I’m being Griffin,” he said. “Act like Leigh and pretend you like me.”

She leaned close.

Griffin and I didn’t touch, which was actually a mercy. We said our goodbyes to the twins, and we were all back on the road.

We traveled in silence for hours, scanning for new radio stations when the last ones went to static. We might never have talked at all if my bladder hadn’t interfered. At first, I told myself I could hold it. But as time passed, and Griffin didn’t seem to be going to stop any time soon, I finally had to speak up.

“Sure, we can stop,” he said. “We’ll get some food too.”

So I ended up in the bathroom at a Jack in the Box, a fast food chain that Griffin and I had been to on our trip to Texas to see his family last Christmas. We’d both been pleasantly surprised by the restaurant. There weren’t any on the east coast. We liked that there were actually jalapenos as a regular condiment. It was a sure sign that we were close to Texas.

But being here reminded me of the way Griffin and I had been last year. That Christmas trip was probably the last time we’d been truly happy. Before that, problems had been starting to surface, mostly centered around how often we made love.

The frequency of our lovemaking had been dwindling. And it made me feel like Griffin loved me less if he didn’t want to get busy with me every night. He pointed out that having sex every day was exhausting, and maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t need it
every
day. But the fact that it had decreased at all made me scared. I felt like I was losing Griffin.

So, of course, I’d handled it in the worst possible way, by freaking out and yelling at him about it. Which had so not put him in the mood to have sex.

Things had been strained from then on out.

But that trip, we’d gotten away, and we’d been free, somehow. Being on the road, it was where we’d really gotten to know each other. And it seemed like the trip had allowed us to rediscover our relationship. After Christmas, everything was better.

Until New Year’s Eve.