“Stay here.”
Jane ran back to the house. She pushed through the door into the kitchen. Paula was on her hands and knees, head shaking like a dog.
Without thinking, Jane kicked her in the face.
Paula oofed out a sound, then collapsed flat to the floor.
Jane patted Paula’s pockets until she found the keys. She was halfway to the van when she remembered the gun in Paula’s waistband. She could go back and get it, but what was the point? It was better to leave than risk giving Paula another chance to stop them.
“Jay—” Andrew watched her climb behind the wheel. “How did . . . how did they find . . .”
“Selden,” she told him. “Clara. She backed out. She changed her mind. Nick said we have to hurry.” Jane threw the van into reverse. She pressed the gas pedal to the floor as she drove back up the driveway. She checked the rearview mirror. All she saw was dust. Her heart kept pounding into her throat as she drove down the winding roads outside the farm. It wasn’t until they’d finally reached the interstate that Jane felt her breathing return to normal. She looked over at Andrew. His head was lolling to the side. She counted his arduous breaths, the painful in and out as he strained for air.
For the first time in almost two years, Jane felt at peace. An eerie calmness had taken over. This was the right thing to do. After giving herself over to Nick’s insanity for so long, she was finally lucid again.
Jane had been to Northwestern Hospital once before. She was in the middle of a tour and suffering from an earache. Pechenikov had driven her to the emergency room. He had fussed around her, telling the nurses that Jane was the most important patient that they would ever care for. Jane had rolled her eyes at the praise but been secretly pleased to be handled with such care. She had loved Pechenikov so much, not just because he was a teacher, but because he was a decent and loving man.
Which was likely why Nick had made Jane leave him.
Why did you give it up?
Because my boyfriend was jealous of a seventy-year-old homosexual.
An ambulance whizzed by on Jane’s right. She followed it up the exit. She saw the Northwestern Memorial Hospital sign glowing in the distance.
“Jane?” The ambulance siren had woken Andrew. “What are you doing?”
“Nick told me to take you to the hospital.” She pushed up the turn signal, waited for the light.
“Jane—” Andrew started coughing. He covered his mouth with both hands.
“I’m just doing what Nick told me to do,” she lied. Her voice was shaking. She had to keep strong. They were so close. “He made me promise, Andrew. Do you want me to break my promise to Nick?”
“You don’t—” he had to stop to catch his breath. “I know what you’re—that Nick didn’t—”
Jane looked at her brother. He reached out, his fingers gently touching her neck.
She glanced into the mirror, saw the bruises from Nick’s hands strangling her. Andrew knew what had happened in the bathroom, that Jane had chosen to stay with him.
She realized now that Nick must have given Andrew the same ultimatum. Andrew had not driven to New York with Nick. He had stayed at the farmhouse with Jane.
She told her brother, “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”
He closed his eyes. “We can’t,” he said. “Our faces—on the news—the police.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jane mumbled a curse at the red light, then another at herself. The van was the only vehicle in sight. It was the middle of the night and she was obeying traffic laws.
She pressed the gas and blew through the light.
“Jane—” Andrew broke off for another coughing fit. “Y-you can’t do this. They’ll catch you.”
Jane took another right, followed another blue sign with a white H on it.
“Please.” He rubbed his face with his hands, something he used to do when he was a boy and things got too frustrating for him to handle.
Jane coasted through another red light. She was on autopilot now. Everything inside of her was numb again. She was a machine as much as the van, a mode of conveyance that would take her brother to the hospital so he could die peacefully in his sleep.
Andrew tried, “Please. Listen to—” Another coughing fit took hold. There was no rattle, just a straining noise, as if he was trying to suck air through a reed.
She said, “Try to save your breath.”
“Jane,” he repeated, his voice no more than a whisper. “If you leave me, you have to leave me. You can’t let them catch you. You have to—” His words broke off into more coughing. He looked down at his hand. There was blood.
Jane swallowed back her grief. She was taking him to the hospital. They would put a tube down his throat to help him breathe. They would give him drugs to help him sleep. This was likely the last conversation they would ever have.
She told him, “I’m sorry, Andy. I love you.”
His eyes were watering. Tears slid down his face. “I know that you love me. Even when you hated me, I know that you loved me.”
“I never hated you.”
“I forgive you, but—” He coughed. “Forgive me, too. Okay?”
Jane pushed the van to go faster. “There’s nothing to forgive you for.”
“I knew, Janey. I knew who he was. What he was. It’s my—” he wheezed. “Fault. My fault. I’m so . . .”
Jane looked at him, but his eyes were closed. His head tilted back and forth with the motion of the van.
“Andrew?”
“I knew,” he mumbled. “I knew.”
She banked a hard left. Her heart shook at the sight of the NORTHWESTERN sign outside of the emergency room.
“Andy?” Jane panicked. She couldn’t hear him breathing anymore. She held onto his hand. His flesh was like ice. “We’re almost there, my darling. Just hang on.”
His eyelids fluttered open. “Trade—” He choked a cough. “Trade him.”
“Andy, don’t try to speak.” The hospital sign was getting closer. “We’re almost there. Just hang on, my darling. Hang on for just a moment more.”
“Trade all . . .” Andrew’s eyelids fluttered again. His chin dropped to his chest. Only the whistling sound of air being sucked through his teeth told her that he was still alive.
The hospital.
Jane almost lost control of the wheel when the tires bumped over a curb. The van fishtailed. She somehow managed to screech to a halt in front of the entrance to the ER. Two orderlies were smoking on a nearby bench.
“Help!” Jane jumped out of the van. “Help my brother. Please!”
The men were already off the bench. One ran back into the hospital. The other opened the van door.
“He has—” Jane’s voice caught. “He’s infected with—”
“I gotcha.” The man wrapped his arms around Andrew’s shoulders as he helped him out of the van. “Come on, buddy. We’re gonna take good care of you.”
Jane’s tears, long dried, started to flow again.
“You’re all right,” the man told Andrew. He sounded so kind that she wanted to fall to the ground and kiss his feet. He asked Andrew, “Can you walk? Let’s go to this bench and—”
“Where—” Andrew was looking for Jane.
“I’m right here, my darling.” She put her hand to his face. She pressed her lips to his forehead. His hand reached out. He was touching the round swell of her stomach.
“Trade . . .” he whispered, “. . . all of them.”
The other orderly ran back through the door with a gurney. The two men lifted Andrew off his feet. He was so light that they barely had to strain to get him onto the gurney. Andrew turned his head, looking for Jane.
He said, “I love you.”
The men started to roll the gurney inside. Andrew kept his eyes on Jane for as long as he could.
The doors closed.
She watched through the glass as Andrew was rolled into the back of the emergency room. The double doors swung open. Nurses and doctors swarmed around him. The doors closed again, and he was gone.
They’ll catch you.