The woman rests her palms on the table and leans in.
I lean back.
“The man in the picture is Endo Macarley, Massio Crossbow’s half brother. They hate each other. We have a video of him shooting Massio. The woman is the daughter of a known weapons manufacturer. We’re not sure how they’re connected yet or why the meeting was called, but Endo wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t a life-or-death situation. I think this woman”—the detective pokes the brunette on the picture—“is the key to solving this case. Did she ask you to bring the rifle?”
Oh God. I nod.
“Very good. This woman called you, and Endo gave you a rifle.”
“I never made it inside the mansion.”
“Sure you did,” Detective Belvich says.
“I need you to help me connect the dots, Ms. Ferrar,” the woman follows up.
The lights go out, plunging us into pitch darkness. The alarms blare. The fire sprinkler showers us with water. The detectives shout as the door to the interrogation room opens and someone enters the room. I think it’s a guard, but then I hear popping sounds. The detectives hit the floor as if the intruder shot them.
The person unlocks my chains. He lifts me by sliding his hands under my armpits and starts to drag me out. I trip over bodies. I’m so terrified that I panic for the second time in two days. The first time I panicked was when they told me that the rifle was the weapon that killed Massio Crossbow.
I can barely breathe as he drags me through the hall. It’s dark. You would think the police station would have a generator in case of a power outage, but that might also be disabled. The red emergency lights flash in the corners, so we can see where we’re going a little.
The gun the man wields is like an extension of his arm, and people fall like bowling pins in front of him. Screams of pain. Shouts for help. The alarms blare, and water pours on us. It’s mayhem. It’s the Twilight Zone for me.
I can’t understand what’s happening. As I rush down the hallway with the man’s hand gripping my biceps as he drags me along, I feel like this is all happening to someone else. An out-of-body experience.
We burst outside, and I squint against the bright daylight. A black SUV appears, its brakes screeching on the asphalt. The man throws me inside it, and we peel off like bats out of hell.
In the back of the SUV, there are two seats like there are in limousines. The seats face each other. I sit on one, my palms on the leather cushions, balancing myself so I don’t hit my head on the window as the SUV sharply cuts corners.
Across from me sits a clean-shaven man in a sharp, tailored suit. One of his long legs is propped on the seat next to me, which I find odd. He’s looking down into his hands, which both hold silenced pistols. There’s another man next to me. Same obsidian suit. His weapons are golden, with silencers screwed onto the barrels. The tops of his hands are inked with skull-and-bone tattoos.
He lifts an arm and smears a spatter of blood over his chin and cheek.
He’s the one who…rescued me?
He extracted a detainee from a police station.
“Do I have something on my face?” he asks, his voice familiar, his profile undeniably the same as the man who was in my house. The one I ran over. The one who carried the rifle that I forgot to leave under the bridge with him. But I don’t remember him being tattooed. Are they stickers? Fake? What…
The man across from me looks up. One of his eyes is blue, the other light brown.
“You,” I manage to utter, my voice a bare whisper.
Quiet as ever, the man nods.
If this is the man who was at my apartment, then who got me out of the station? The one sitting next to me? It sure looks like him. His brother. His twin?
Chapter 15
Unexpected
Dina
Sergei was a foreign exchange student staying in the country on a temporary visa, and he left two days after we slept together for the first time. It was a goodbye fuck. My first. His one of many. We didn’t use protection, and we conceived a baby.
I remember sitting on an orange bench in front of the abortion clinic. I remember how I shook and threw up from the cocktail made of fear and first-trimester hormones wrecking my body.
I cried (because that’s what I do) until an older woman sat next to me. I swear to this day, she appeared out of nowhere, and when I looked over, she was lowering herself onto the bench. I recall her wrinkled hands when she folded them in front of her. Judging by her hands, she must’ve been a hundred years old.
