Wade is a killer even though he has yet to take a life.
His hand comes down and my finger pulls and the rifle fires. Wade collapses onto me, and we fall to the floor. I feel the weight of him. The deadness of it.
And I know that this is, finally, over.
ChapterThirty-Three
I roll Wade off of me and stand. Then I turn to Billy Brannicks who has gone silent. He’d been more afraid of Wade than me, but now all of that has changed.
I look at him and try to process what I’m feeling. I walk to him slowly. “Do not scream.”
He nods.
I pull off the tape that covers his mouth. “Tell me how it happened.”
“How what happened?” he asks.
I say simply, “The gun.”
He’s heard enough to understand what this is about. How I’m connected to Wade and why Wade brought him here to die at my hand. So he tells me about Clay Lucas. Where they met, how they became friendly. Clay was medicated, so to Brannicks, it was just killing time, talking to this semiconscious kid. But Clay remembered things he’d said. He knew where Brannicks hung out. Where he sold his drugs. And Clay found him.
Brannicks gave him shelter for a few nights. Clay had access to a small stash of guns Brannicks’s roommate bought from a guy in New Jersey. It was done online, he tells me. They used code words. Transacted in cash. The drops were always remote. Nothing in person.
He tells me that Clay said some “crazy-assshit about demons and zombies” and that he was obsessed with some “chick” from a place his parents sent him when they had to work.
I ask him if her name was Laurel Hayes, and he says, “Yeah, I think.”
And then he tells me the strangest thing. “He said she was in trouble. That the devil was after her, and she was scared. He said he needed to kill the devil.”
And right then, the last few missing pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
“How did he end up at Nichols that day?” I ask him.
Brannicks tells me without hesitation. He has no idea how unhinged I might be. “I told him he had to leave. I asked him where he wanted to go, and he directed me through the streets until we got to this parking lot on Elmford...”
“Elmford? That’s adjacent to Clear Horizons. The adult care center.”
Brannicks doesn’t know the place. He let Clay out of his car in the parking lot, and he walked over to a blue truck—the same one that was sitting outside right now—and climbed in the open flatbed.
“Wait...” I stop him, thinking this through. “He climbed into the blue truck and hid in the back? With a gun he stole from your apartment?”
Brannicks shakes his head. “I didn’t know he had the gun. He carried a backpack. And he was fucking crazy! I dropped him and left. Never wanted to see him again.”
Wade and Laurel Hayes. Clay Lucas and Laurel Hayes. She must have confided in Clay about Wade’s behavior. He knew where to find Wade. Where he parked his truck near Laurel’s work. He got in Wade’s truck, and they drove to Nichols. Then he followed him inside. Hunted him like an animal.
My God.That’s why he didn’t shoot anyone else. That’s why he stopped when he found Wade in the men’s department. The cameras outside the store recorded Clay walking in alone with the backpack. And the few blurred images we had of Wade show him walking casually, not running or looking behind him. He had no idea he was being followed. Hunted down. Not even when he stood frozen, Clay right in front of him pointing the gun. He had no idea everything that happened that day was because of him. No one did. Until right here and now as the pieces all come together.
The thought tears through me, nearly sending me to my knees. Clay Lucas was going to kill Wade. He wasn’t there to draw fire on himself. He wasn’t trying to get killed—suicide by cop. I don’t know how this makes me feel. Now I’ve killed them both.
“I didn’t know,” Brannicks says again. “I mean, I thought he was just a weird dude on some weird shit.”
“Give me a name,” I tell him. “The guy in New Jersey.” I have no idea where this comes from. The rage hasn’t left me. Maybe it never will.
He shakes his head.
I raise the rifle and press it to his forehead. “Give me a name, and I’ll let you live.”
He doesn’t know what to make of me. I’ve just killed a man in front of him. He has no idea what I’m capable of. He didn’t see the hesitation. The missed beat. So he gives me a name. I’ve heard it before. He’s a known dealer who comes from Newark to feed on our little reef. And it’s enough. For now.
