“Caden, it’s okay. It’s okay.” It was Danny’s sister; she was standing by Ellis’s left shoulder. She reached her hand out and gently touched Caden’s arm. Caden turned to her, imploringly.
“I wanna stay. Please…” he begged. “I’m scared.”
“You don’t have to be scared. It’ll be okay.” Her voice was soft. “It’s okay, Caden. You can do what Ellis says. It’ll all be okay.”
Caden looked behind him, across the line. Ellis shuffled forward incrementally.
“It’ll be okay?” He rubbed hard at his nose, then turned to face her. “You promise?”
She paused; her hand dropped from Caden’s arm. Would she be able to end this?
“Ellis! Twenty seconds!” Jade’s voice cut in.
“D’you promise?” Caden asked again. His fists had dropped, he was focused on Ana.
This was it—the moment. Caden had calmed down. He was distracted. Ellis had to act now. He had no choice. There was notime. No one else was going to do what needed to be done. He had to.He had to.
He pushed.
Just a small, firm shove, releasing his grip on Caden’s shirt as he stumbled across the line, one step—two, three.
Caden lost his balance and fell hard, momentarily disorientated, confused. He reached up and rubbed hard at his eyes, trying to focus. Slowly taking in what had happened, where he was.
He saw Ellis, Ana, and Jax standing in front of him. He saw the burned-out bus. And he saw the white line, between them.
That was the last thing he saw.
He never heard the gunshot.
23
Ana
53:31
Ana sat on the burning hot ground in front of the bus, her knees hugged to her chest; the sockets where the headlights had once been glared out blindly on either side of her. She kept her eyes down, away from the white line, away from the trail that Caden’s army boots had left when the two men had dragged his body away.
There had been a moment, one brief moment, when she had been tempted to make a desperate run for the red truck. Caden’s body had fallen so close to the line, the truck was maybe twenty feet away at most. But clearly she wasn’t the only one aware of the danger. One of the cowboys set himself up behind the open truck door with a rifle pointed at them, an ominous red dot making its way across them. The message was clear. You run. You die.
The others had left, desperate to get away from the scene of the crime, disappearing off to their separate corners of the motel. She’dneeded to be alone, just for a precious minute, before facing the next hour and whatever horrors it would inevitably bring.
The wind gently danced around her, stirring her dark hair, mocking her with its playfulness. She knew it was her fault Caden had died. She accepted responsibility for her part in sending him across the line. There was blood on her hands, again.
But she didn’t feel a thing.
Nothing.
It was as though her emotions had shut down and left a numb emptiness in her core. Something inside her was blocking her thoughts from going too deep, too dark. The turning of the final card, Caden’s bloodshot eyes, his body spread-eagled in the dirt; nothing was registering. Nothing other than her relief that Alex was safe.
Something tapped against her foot, pulling her reluctantly back to the present. She looked down.
A small pink square, caught in the wind, had blown up against her trainer. The final coaster—the final vote.
As she watched, the wind tauntingly whipped it up, carrying it into the shadows under the bus. It flipped over, burying Caden’s name deep in dust. The faded pink rose on the card rested on top, like a dead flower on a grave.
She reached under the bus and softly, almost tenderly, picked up the coaster.
Gently she blew on it to clear the dust off Caden’s name. The letters were crude, almost childlike and barely legible—it was Caden’s writing. It had to be. Jesus. He was so out of it he’d voted for himself. He hadn’t understood what the vote was for, he had just wanted to win.
