Now, again, I know it sounds hypocritical, but some of that trust had been broken. The idea he let me stay in a dangerous agreement with two notorious drug kingpins kinda pissed me off a bit. Now that I started gaining the capacity to even be pissed off again, I’d found a place to focus my anger.
What if something had gone wrong? Would he step in to save me? And would my testimony be given in exchange for immunity? Or would he see me sent off to prison anyway, my usefulness spent on his career-making case?
I assumed Sam heard his confession as well. And to think she wanted him dead before. Man, what the hell would she do to him if she caught us now?
“This way,” he tugged on my arm, pulling me around another corner. “Almost there.”
Hall and Oates went dead. She’d made it there, and we were almost out. I knew she would be listening for our footsteps and she’d track us quickly. Still, we’d made it far enough to have a chance.
And then what? How many more times would she catch us? Like a light switch flicking, I’d grown tired of running.
I had no more secrets to keep. No more lives to protect. I wanted it all to be over. Right then and there.
We smashed through the double doors and Lucas pulled me into a sprint down the hall.
“There’s a door directly into the parking garage from this floor,” he said.
I opened my eyes again, saw myself running away from the solution.
“Lucas, wait.” I tugged on his hand, slowing him down.
“What is it? Let’s go.”
“No, wait.” I came to a stop. Lucas gave me an anxious look. “I’m sorry.”
He panted for breath. “Is this the best time for that?”
“For everything. For getting you mixed up in my mess.” His eyes kept watch on the door behind me. “For this.”
With everything left in my brain, I brought my arm back, made a sloppy fist around the gun in my belt, brought it forward and drove the butt of Blake’s pistol across Lucas’s temple.
FACE TO FACE
As he fell I could tell he wasn’t out. The look on his face was confused, and a little betrayed. He must have thought he’d been wrong all along and I was really her.
The hard slap against the tile floor—that’s what knocked him out.
I lifted his legs and slid him backward to the stairwell, bumped the door open with my butt and dragged him in.
I started walking back to the fire doors on the library. If I could smack Lucas in the face, I may have a chance with her. Maybe.
I made it about half way down the hall before she came bursting out. She stopped almost immediately, coming to an awkward stop with a slight limp from the second of Blake’s two bullets in her.
Marjorie’s Smith and Wesson, already in her hand, came up to look me in the eye.
“Where is he?”
I stood still, looked her square, unblinking. Neither one of us bothered to be inside the other one’s head. We could see everything worth seeing from where we stood. I said, “What are we doing?”
The question threw her. I kept my gun at my side, trying to be as non-threatening as possible.
“You kill Lucas,” I said. “Then what?”
She froze up like someone forced to give an impromptu speech. “I don’t know.”
“Exactly. So why do it?”
Before, two days ago, she would have blurted out some cold blooded answer making her sound more machine than human. Now she paused.
Balance. A hesitation. It was all I was gonna get right then.
“There’s a lot of things we don’t know,” I said. I lifted my gun to meet hers in a staring contest. She realized the Samantha behind the gun was a different one than who came down the steps at Marjorie’s house. Something in my eyes, the way I held my body. I felt it, she saw it. “We still don’t know what happens if one of us dies.”
“You saying you want to find out?”
“I’m saying I want this to be over. You heard him, right?”
“He knew.”
“Yeah. He knew. So all of this has been for nothing. All the hiding, the lying, the making excuses to our self. All bullshit.” Ah, a little light profanity sure does spice up a conversation don’t it? You don’t miss it until it’s gone.
“So go ahead,” she said. “Pull the trigger, you feel so sure about yourself.” Her aim stayed true. Surprisingly, so did mine.
“We’re done anyway. You know that, right? Prison, probably for a long time. You can’t run forever. We couldn’t keep out of trouble, even on Calder and Rizzo’s payroll. Did we really think we could?” She listened attentively. I kept going, expecting to get cut off by a bullet any second. “What part of you kept the cotton in my ears and blinders over my eyes? I’m a decent person. I used to live inside you. And now? The good part of us? It’s all here for the looking. All out on top.”
We stood maybe fifteen feet apart. Arms out at right angles to our bodies, hunks of black steel at the end of each. I kept my speech going.
“I love him. I fucked him over, got him into this with your help. I’ve blown it for so many people. Cranner and Blake and Marjorie. But Lucas, I’d take a bullet for him. I would do it to make up for the lies. A bullet to burn away the guilt. Question is—do I shot myself, or does myself shoot me?”
“You really want to find out?”
“Don’t you?”
She adjusted the grip on her gun. “Guess my twenty million isn’t gonna happen.”
“Nope.”
“And our face is wanted by the cops, huh?”
“Cops, DEA, FBI. You name it. Homegrown terrorists, that’s what we are.”
“Then I guess there’s nothing left to fight for.”
“Not true,” I said. I held my aim, kept my eyes on hers despite the growing pain in my head. Napalm crept up the insides of my skull, ran fire down my veins out to my finger resting on the trigger. “We still have ourself to fight for. Which one is it gonna be?”
A slow smile crept across her face. A face that looked so damn familiar.
“Only one way to find out.”
Stereo gunshots in a concrete basement hallway. Damn, that had to be the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
DING DONG THE WHICH IS DEAD?
Blake sat up in bed, laughing at something Lucas said. I watched them from outside Blake’s hospital room. Never thought I’d see them paling around together. I guess it was good to see them laughing but, something about it unsettled me too.
I’d waited outside long enough. Blake would get out tomorrow or the next day, Lucas already had stitches in his head and a sling over his shoulder keeping his right arm in place from the dislocation when he hit the floor. All patched up and ready to go.