Linda’s eyes go wide and she looks at Ava as though to confirm that at least someone here is smart enough to realize there was never any prize money. No one was ever getting out alive. “Yes, of course,” Linda says, her tone placating. “We’ll give her the fifty thousand dollars.”
“Okay.” Mack feels peaceful. Truly peaceful. She’s not hiding anymore. She’s in control for the first time in her life. “Right now, though. Give her the money right now.”
“I don’t have fifty thousand dollars on me!”
“Whatever you have in the house.” Mack shrugs. She can wait. The night is long, the dawn and its approaching death far enough away still.
“Oh god.” Linda closes her eyes, but her tone is less worried and more annoyed. “In my bedroom, in the closet, there’s a safe. The code is seven-fourteen-seven. You’ll find cash in there. Don’t touch the jewelry. It was my mother’s.”
“Mack,” Ava pleads.
“Go get it,” Mack says. “I’m gonna untape her, and then we’ll drive back to the park. No one else needs to know what’s happened, right, Linda? You tell them the monster rejected Ava and Brandon died in an accident, so you need two more.”
“That’s acceptable. How did you kill Ray? I’ll need to do damage control.”
“Bashed his head in.” Ava walks away to find Linda’s bedroom. She doesn’t know why she’s doing it. Why any of this. She’s lost control. She’s not in the lead. It’s all impossibly fucked. She can’t drag Mack away, can’t force LeGrand into the car. What is happening? What did they see that she didn’t? She thought she was too late to save Brandon. It turns out she was too late to save them all.
Linda nods, organizing her thoughts. “Bashed in the head. That’s easy enough. He fell off his tower. Too old to be doing that, anyway.” She puts on her best let’s-get-to-work smile as Mack carefully peels back the tape one limb at a time. She rubs her wrists and stands. “Let me get cleaned up and then we’ll get you kids back where you belong.”
Mack nods, sweeping Linda’s things back into her purse, bending down to retrieve several of the lipstick tubes where Linda can’t see. Mack keeps the car keys out. She’s ready. She knows Ava is hurt—wishes she could make it better—but she’s so glad Ava decided to come with them rather than leaving right now.
She could do this alone, if she had to, but it’s a relief that she doesn’t have to. Ava cracked her open, started this whole business. She wants Ava with her to finish it, too. Mack follows Linda into the kitchen, hovering nearby.
LeGrand keeps the rifle. He’s cradling it, gaze indistinct, the resolve that had reshaped his face softened once again. He saved Almera. Not the way he wanted to, or the way he hoped to, but it makes sense. God is letting him save her, but only at the cost of himself. When he tried to help her before, he thought it cost him everything. Now it actually will.
Ava reappears, face grim, pockets bulging. She shakes a prescription bottle at Linda. “This label accurate?”
Linda frowns, offended, gently dabbing the side of her head with a washcloth. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Ava takes two pills, swallows them dry. “I can’t afford this shit, and I actually need it.”
“It’s not my fault you’re poor,” Linda snarls.
Ava takes the car keys from the table. “Agree to disagree.” She’s not looking at Mack, deliberately avoiding her gaze as they get into Linda’s massive sedan, Ava driving. Mack can see the pain around Ava’s eyes, the strange bravado that has settled in now that Ava has accepted her fate.
Maybe Mack wishes Ava had decided to leave them, had opted to get into the car and drive away from all of this madness that has no claim on her. Ava didn’t see the monster. She can’t understand, not really, why Mack has to go back in.
Ava backs up recklessly, knocking over Linda’s floral-painted mailbox and taking out several of her flower beds. Linda hisses in displeasure, but apparently thinks better of calling her on it.
Once on the road, though, Ava drives with a steady hand in spite of her pain and her painkillers. She knows Linda and her cronies will try to kill her. She’s looking forward to it, actually. At least that’ll be an enemy she can face, can make bleed.
How can she fight back against Mack’s decision to self-destruct though? Ava gets it. When she was in the hospital, alone, being pinned back together, she had wished more than once that her life had ended on that road next to Maria. She nearly drifts off the road, remembering Maria. She’s going to watch Mack die, too.
She course-corrects roughly. No. She’ll come up with a plan. Something. Something. But she can help only if she stays with them. She grits her teeth against the fading pain, steels her head against the impending disconnection of the really good drugs.
Either way, Mack’s been alone. So long. And so has Ava. They’ll have a last few hours of not being alone, and then Ava will figure something else out. She will because she has to.
LeGrand stares straight ahead into the night and sighs, so tired. At least this way he’s being consumed, and not consuming others. In another life, he would have grown. Become an elder. Become the same as his father, a devourer, a small, petty god of a small, pathetic world. It’s in the blood of this town, after all. Rulon Pulsipher just went a different route than Linda.
None of it matters. Almera will be safe, and that’s all he ever wanted. Though now that he’s flying through the night back toward the park, he has to admit: He would also like to live.
“Where did you climb out?” Linda asks as the road turns to dirt and gets bumpy.
“Ray’s guard tower.”
“And I suppose that’s where you left his body, as well.” Linda sounds cross.
“Sure is!” Ava chirps.
“Pull over here, then, before the gate guard sees us. You can go back over the fence that way.”
Ava pulls to an abrupt stop, then climbs out of the car. She leads them through the woods, her sense of direction unerring. At the base of the empty guard tower, she points to where Ray’s body is.
“Drag him out,” Linda says.
“Drag him out yourself. You’re not my boss.”
“Leave the rifle,” Linda snaps. “Otherwise they’ll know something happened.”
LeGrand holds it out, but Ava grabs it before Linda can. Rifle in hand, she briefly considers holding Mack and LeGrand hostage. Forcing them back to the car. But she knows they won’t go, and she won’t shoot them. She should dump Linda into the park, let the monster eat her. But LeGrand is depending on Linda to protect Almera. He wouldn’t allow it.
Okay, so, make it so that they don’t need to bring in new sacrifices. Get Linda into the park. Then somehow find three more guards, and, not getting shot, lure or throw them into the park, too, all while going undiscovered by the rest of the guards and the town. And without full use of her leg, and this crescendo of pain, and maybe having to fight LeGrand and Mack, who seem bent on self-sacrifice, and—
It’s all hopeless. Ava pulls out the firing pin of the rifle, instead. “Just in case you decided to shoot me in the back as soon as we’re over the fence.”