A wave of helplessness overtook him. He made a final, futile attempt to free himself. The chair jumped forward a few inches on the concrete floor. “Please,” he said. “Natalie.”
“I’m sorry, Dodge,” Nat said. “I’ll be back as soon as the challenge is over. I swear.”
She was fumbling with his phone, and the screen lit up temporarily, casting her face in brightness, showing the deep, mournful hollows of her eyes, her expression of pity and regret. And lighting up, too, the guy behind her. The one who’d wrestled Dodge into the chair.
He’d gained weight—at least thirty pounds—and he’d let his hair get long. Fifty grand wasn’t sitting too well on him. But there was no mistaking his eyes, the hard set of his jaw, and the scar, like a small white worm, cutting straight through his left eyebrow.
Dodge felt a fist of shock plunge straight through him. He could no longer speak, or even breathe.
Luke Hanrahan.
heather
HEATHER WAITED IN THE CAR WHILE NATALIE AND LUKE did whatever they had to do. She was trying to breathe normally, but her lungs weren’t obeying and kept fluttering weirdly in her chest. She would have to go up against Ray Hanrahan now. There was no giving in or weaseling out.
She wondered what Dodge had had planned for tonight. Luke hadn’t exactly known either, although he’d shown Nat and Heather some of the threatening messages that had come from Dodge. It was surreal, sitting in Nat’s kitchen with Luke Hanrahan, football star Luke Hanrahan, the homecoming king who’d gotten kicked out of homecoming for smoking weed in the locker room during the announcement of the court. Winner of Panic. Who’d once assaulted a cashier at the 7-Eleven in Hudson when the guy wouldn’t sell him cigarettes.
He looked like shit. Two years away from Carp hadn’t done him any good, which was shocking to Heather. She thought all you needed to do—all any of them needed—was to get out. But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.
He’d found Nat, he said, because of a betting slip that had reached him all the way in Buffalo. And because of that stupid video—the one filmed at the water towers, which showed Dodge with his arm slung around Nat. Nat had been the easiest of the remaining players to locate, and he was hoping he could talk her into helping him convince Dodge to bow out.
Nat emerged from the house at last. Heather watched her talking with Luke on the front porch; he was nearly double her size. Crazy how several years ago, Nat would have freaked at the idea that Luke might ever look in her direction or know who she was. It was so strange, the way that life moved forward: the twists and the dead ends, the sudden opportunities.
The promise was always in the possibility.
“Is Dodge okay?” Heather asked when Nat slid into the car.
“He’s mad,” Nat said.
“You did kidnap him,” Heather pointed out.
“For his own good,” Nat said, and for a minute she looked angry. But then she smiled. “I’ve never kidnapped someone before.”
“Don’t make a habit of it.” They both seemed to have resolved not to mention their fight, and Heather was glad. She nodded at Luke, who was getting into his truck. “Is he coming to watch?”
Nat shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She paused, and said in a low voice, “It’s awful, what he did to Dayna. I think he must hate himself.”
“He seems like he does,” Heather said. But she didn’t want to think about Luke, or Dodge’s sister, or legs buried beneath a ton of metal, rendered useless. She was already sick with nerves.
“Are you okay?” Nat said.
“No,” Heather said bluntly.
“You’re so close, Heather. You’re almost at the end. You’re winning.”
“I’m not winning yet,” Heather said. But she put the car into gear. There was no more delaying it. There was hardly any light left in the sky—as though the horizon were a black hole, sucking all the color away. Something else occurred to her. “Jesus. This is Anne’s car. I’m barely allowed to be driving it. I can’t go up against Ray in this.”
“You don’t have to.” Nat reached into her purse and extracted a set of keys, jiggling them dramatically.
Heather looked at her. “Where’d you get those?”
“Dodge,” Nat said. She flipped the keys into her palm and returned them to her bag. “You can use his car. Better to be safe than sorry, right?”
As the last of the sun vanished, and the moon, like a giant scythe, cut through the clouds, they gathered. Quietly they materialized from the woods; they came down the gully, scattering gravel, sliding on the hill; or they came packed together in cars, driving slowly, headlights off, like submarines in the dark.
And by the time stars surfaced from the darkness, they were all there: all the kids of Carp, come to witness the final challenge.
It was time. There was no need for Diggin to repeat the rules; everyone knew the rules of Joust. Each car aimed for the other, going fast in a single lane. The first person to swerve would lose.