“You won’t kill me,” Tony challenged. “In front of your pretty wife? Kill the father of your little nephew?” But now fear undercut his words.
Ray squinted and closed his left eye, focusing his right. He had the advantage. He had the shot.
He couldn’t look after he flicked his index finger. The bullet was expelled with force from the barrel and met its target quickly.
He let the gun drop. It fell to the ground with a dull clang.
Then he raised his eyes and focused on Jem, who stood, frozen save for her trembling shoulders, against a column nearby. She looked at him with big, pleading eyes, her hand still fingering the sticky wound at the back of her head. Part of him wanted to press her to him and hold on for dear life, but she was there and Tony was on the ground, and she was to blame.
If she hadn’t been in Chicago. If she hadn’t followed Merinda into this mess. If she hadn’t insisted on coming to the bank, then maybe… maybe… Tony wouldn’t have picked up the gun and sparked Ray’s ire and…
Spots danced above his eyes, and every bone in his body seemed gelatin. He stole a look at Tony, but his eyes were blurred, and he couldn’t make out his features: just a slumped figure whose life had drained away. He crossed himself quickly and backed away. He had words. So many. They were all bottled up, and he thought they might choke him. He looked to Tony again, but it made his heart beat faster and his hand shake and black dots stab behind his eyes. He took a few deep breaths, swallowed down the nausea in his throat, and turned to Jem.
“You!” Ray said coldly, stabbing Jem with his eyes, unable to even raise his stilted voice to a yell. “Jem. How could you?” His voice had stopped on her name before it tripped out the rest of the question.
If Jem could look even more horrified, she did at that moment, slightly shaking her head and covering her hand with her mouth.
“I wanted him behind bars, and you made me send him to his grave!” His voice cracked, giving Jasper the opportunity to rise and attempt to take command of the situation.
“Ray! Calm down,” Jasper said. “This wasn’t Jem’s fault. You did what you had to.”
But Ray had nothing to say, looking wildly between Jem and Jasper, hand shaking uncontrollably. Then he looked at Tony, and his hand shook faster still.
A blast of shock. He put his hands over his face. “She’ll never forgive me.”
A split second. That was all it took for the ground to rumble and the blast to shock through them. Merinda knew and Benny knew what the smoke and dust signified, but their eyes wouldn’t meet. Then they had to run as people spilled out and police whistles blew. Benny looked left and right, dashed back to the scene, dropped his notes and the map of the Coliseum, and then sprinted back to Merinda and away from the scene.
“What did you do back there?” she panted once they had stopped. They’d reached the safety of Wabash Street and had blended with the crowd.*
“Set them off our trail.” Benny’s voice was low and lifeless. “Like wearing your snowshoes backward.” He stopped. “Something… ” But he couldn’t say Jonathan’s name. “He was my hero.” Benny’s voice cracked. “He was always my hero. He still is, Merinda. The sun rose and set by him. I believed in him.” He straightened his shoulders. Swallowed. Merinda watched him try to gain composure that could shatter at any moment.
Merinda blinked. She didn’t want Benny to see her eyes mist. She was certain that her ears would still make out the phantom sound that had sickeningly followed the blast. There was nothing scarier than silence. Not shrieks or threats or the lick of flame sizzling a wire. Not when the alternative was nothing.
Benny continued. “And I always wanted to be him, to outrun him, to be the best at everything. Though I never would be.”
“He loved you, Benny. He saved our lives. He saved all those people too.”
“It was a waste, though. The smartest and most talented man I have ever met.”
“You might be talking about yourself,” Merinda said impetuously, her eyes washing over his sad features.
“Sorry?”
She cleared her throat. Maybe it was the sentimental side she rarely showed reacting to his loss. But she knew the same pedestal he used for Jonathan she used for him. “That’s exactly what I think of you. You’re smart. You’re resourceful. There is nothing you cannot do. There is nowhere you cannot go and no person you could not be.” She paused, thinking he might fill the silence. He didn’t. “I think you can live a brilliant and daring life in his memory, Benny. That’s what I think, and cracker jacks, you’ll be a corker at it!”
“Jonathan died a criminal.” He had trouble getting the sentence out.
“Oh, he was so much more than that.”
“You don’t know that.”