“This is where they brought me.” Max heard an echo of Cameron’s voice as he’d talked to her that night, to keep her alive.
“Don’t tell me any more, Max. Come over here.” Angela pointed with the gun. Max followed.
“Don’t what, Angela? Don’t try to make you feel bad for what you’re about to do?”
Angela swiped at her soggy hair with her free hand, then gripped the gun with both hands. “I feel bad. All right? But I don’t have a choice.”
“It won’t be as easy for you as it was with Lance.”
“I know,” Angela said on the out-breath. “Let’s go.”
The trees enveloped them. Angela’s ragged breath sounded behind her. Max walked a hundred yards and stopped in a small clearing. “This is where they left me.” She pointed at the ground. Covered with leaves, the crushed remains of grass, and thousands of footprints, the long ago imprint of her body glowed like an aura. She looked up at Angela.
“Would you like me to lie down? Might as well do it in the same spot, then it’ll be like I never actually lived through that night. Maybe I didn’t, and this has all been a dream.”
“Please stop.” Angela’s chin quivered. Rain sluiced down her face. Max knew tears mixed with the raindrops.
“Am I making you feel guilty, Angela?”
“Yes.” For the first time, the gun trembled in her hands. “But that doesn’t change what I have to do. Turn around.” She gestured with the gun.
“No.” Max stood, legs slightly spread, rain cold down her back, beneath her shirt, her nose runny and her eyes blurring with wet mascara. “You’ve got to shoot me while I’m looking at you.”
“You’re very brave.” Angela sniffed loudly. “You must think I won’t do it.”
Max felt the squelch of her shoes as she shifted. Her stomach had climbed high up into her throat, and the beating of her heart washed away everything but the gun barrel pointed at her face. “I know you’re going to do it. I just want to make sure you remember this for the rest of your life.”
Silence descended, except for rain falling through the trees, Angela’s sniffles, the swish of fabric as she wiped her nose on her sleeve, and the distant thunder of traffic on the drenched concrete freeway. The smell of moldering leaves rose to her nostrils, the scent of her wet woolen slacks, the sweat of fear, hers, Angela’s.
Something cracked in front of her and slightly to the left. Angela heard it, too.
“Police. Drop your weapon.”
Angela swung her arms, gun in hand. Her finger trembled on the trigger, squeezed. Then a shot split the cold silence, and Angela crumbled to her knees. She stayed like that a moment or two, swaying, her finger still on the trigger she’d never managed to pull, then she toppled over onto her side.
The scent of gunpowder hung in the air briefly before the rain squashed it. Max knew it was Witt, but she couldn’t look at him. She could only stare at Angela lying on the ground. Death covered her face like a blanket—not the wide-eyed stare you see on TV. No, this was a loosening of the muscles, a slackening of the flesh, so that she looked slightly ... off, changed, reborn. In death, she lay peacefully, appearing younger in far more than years, almost as innocent as she’d been before she’d turned thirteen.
Twigs and leaves crunched beneath Witt’s shoes. He pushed the gun out of Angela’s reach with his foot, as if she might suddenly rise up like some unstoppable monster, then he went down on one knee to check her pulse. He looked up afterwards, his eyes reflecting the dark gray of the sky.
“How did you know where we were?”
“Horace.”
They spoke softly, in the shroud of the rain, the forest and death. “Your father?”
“My father’s ghost. Or so my mother said.”
“Ladybird called?”
“She interrupted an interrogation with her sense of urgency.” The muscles of his mouth moved, but nothing else.
“And Horace told her where to find me?”
“Horace and your husband. They were together ... somewhere.” Nothing flickered in his unreadable gaze, but the short pause shouted his uneasiness.
Horace had made a prediction. A prediction that one day Witt would kill someone to protect her.
That day had come.
Sirens sounded, far off, but coming inexorably closer. Witt rose, shoved his gun beneath his arm where supposedly he had a holster, and turned his back. His arm up, she was sure he wiped a hand down his face, a moment later he held it over his eyes.
He’d had to kill for her because she was stupid, because she hadn’t listened, and because she’d charged ahead without thinking of the consequences. The consequences didn’t involve only her.
Rounding Angela, gaze on the bloody stain spreading over her chest, Max moved in behind Witt. She was wet and cold, but she didn’t shiver. Steam rose off the shoulders of his jacket. His hair spiked in the rain. He shook his head and water flew. She put her arms around his waist and hugged. He shuddered.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered and knew the words would never be enough to fix what she’d done to him.