He thinks about it for a few seconds. ‘Fuck,’ he says.
‘See, you’re being driven by emotion, not logic. You should have known that. It’s a pretty simple equation, and you looked right over it. Don’t do this. Don’t throw away your life.’
He takes a step forward, raises the gun so it’s pointing at my head. But the cold and the nerves are too much for him to control, and his hand is shaking badly. His breathing is ragged.
He’s fighting with the same decision I had back when the roles were reversed, only it was a decision I didn’t fight with. I was comfortable holding a gun. I just aimed and fired.
“I’m going to do it,’ he says.
‘You’ve got no argument from me.’
‘Shut up, damn it. Let me think.’
I stay on my knees and I force myself to keep looking at the gun, and it terrifies me. His face is taut with pain, his mouth forms a grimace as he runs through the scenarios in his mind.
One, he walks away with blood on his hands; the other, he walks away feeling a little unsatisfied. I decide against giving him any more advice. He’s a big boy. He can make up his own mind.
It takes him a minute. It’s painful to watch. Painful to stare at the gun and wonder if he’s about to pull the trigger. In the end he takes a step back. Then another. But he keeps the gun pointing at me.
If she dies,’ he says, ‘we’re coming back out here.’
He backs away, turns, and then I am alone.
chapter thirty-four
I lie on my side and bring my knees to my chest and squirm around to bring my hands up under my feet. It doesn’t work. I roll around, but the plastic ties are securing my wrists, and there isn’t enough room to stretch my arms all the way around. I get back to my knees and sit down, stretch my legs out, and start rubbing them back and forth across a mossy rock. The moss scrapes away and exposes an edge for me to saw against. It takes only about a minute for the binding to snap through. I do the same with my wrists, then pull the syringe needle out of my arm. I toss it on the ground next to my busted cellphone.
I head in the same direction as the lawyer. My clothes are damp and cold. Donovan Green, if that’s his real name, may not have finished me off with a bullet, but that doesn’t mean I’m getting out of here alive. Unless I can rub some bandages together and make a fire, I’m going to freeze to death out here. The trees and ferns brush at me, scraping my hands and snagging my
clothes. Small grazes lead to cuts and then to bleeding. My head is still throbbing, and my chest is sore from the taser barbs. My hand hurts the most: the finger with the ripped off nail feels as if it’s on fire.
The lawyer has left a path. I keep my eyes on the ground
and follow the twin lines that have been cut into the dirt by my dragging feet. I figure he would have parked nearby, not wanting to drag me far in these conditions, and a moment later I hear a car pass by. I pick up the pace and a minute later break through some trees and onto a road. Red tail lights are disappearing in the distance.
The mud has had a snowball effect on my shoes, and I kick and scrape them against a tree to break it off. I dig my hands into my pockets and start walking. No other cars come past as I walk in the same direction as the one I saw. I still don’t even know where I am. My teeth are chattering and every minute or so my body gives an involuntary spasm that lasts a couple of seconds.
Quentin James would have had a similar walk if I’d have let him, except his would have been in nicer conditions. I brought him out on a sunny day, a warm day, as sure as hell a nicer day than today.
I reach an intersection and a couple of cars go by. I wipe my sleeve at my face to clean away some blood. I start to have an idea where I am. Nobody pulls over to offer me a lift, and I don’t put my bite-scarred thumb out to ask for one.
The road heads towards the city and, eventually, towards home. It’ll be a fifteen-minute trip if I was driving. Walking, i’ts going to take me a few hours. At least. If I was driving I’d be doing eighty kilometres an hour out here.
The day becomes evening and the evening is dark. The rain begins again. It gets heavy for a while and washes the mud and dirt down my body before lessening to a drizzle. My joints grow increasingly numb. My feet feel like slabs of ice. The walk is a sobering end to a day and to a way of life.
It’s almost midnight when I get home. I don’t have my keys and I hadn’t even thought about them until now. They’re in my car, and my car is in an impound lot somewhere, or maybe a wrecker’s yard. I sit down on the front step and lean against the door. I’m exhausted. The soles of my shoes have small stones and slivers of glass buried into the tread. I feel like I could fall asleep here.