But that wasn’t true.
Rose had hesitated for the same reason her feet faltered as she walked out onto the dock now.
When she had reached out to Derrick on that bus, she had seen something so intense that her body had reacted by simply stopping.
She had seen his expression.
More aptly, his rage.
It hadn’t fit his face, contorting the youthful handsomeness into an awful mask of anger, making every angle across it a startling addition to the already nerve-wracking situation. In that moment, that anger had felt dangerous. Too dangerous, like a hammer racing towarda window that already had several cracks spiderwebbing across it.
So Rose had hesitated in caution.
Because every part of her at that time had believed that Derrick Tillman was ready to unleash that rage. And bringing him closer to the ten other ducks she needed to get to the pond?
Her body had acted before she could stop it.
We can’t afford that anger, it had said.
She had squashed that thought a few seconds later, reminding herself that, anger or not, rage or not, he was still one of her ducks, but it had been too late.
Now, coming to a stop a few feet from Damon, she could see the same rage that his little brother had been wearing, written clearly across his face.
It didn’t occur to her until that very moment to wonder where Derrick’s anger had come from.
The origin of Damon’s anger, however, was no secret.
“You know, I had no doubt you’d come here, Deputy.”
His head was shaved close, dark hair matching an outfit that had been picked with stealth in mind. He wore black clothing and work boots. There was a cell phone in his left hand, a gun in his right.
He held the cell phone up to his sight line, but the gun was down at his side.
Rose glanced around the rest of the dock. There was more rope behind him, also another set of cinder blocks.
“The way I see it, I didn’t have a choice,” Rose said.
Damon laughed, though it was wholly unkind.
“Normally, I would have said you just like the attention, but now, I guess I understand it.” His fake laughtermelted. He was seething next. “This is why I’ve never liked them.”
His phone vibrated and his gaze switched to its screen.
Whatever he saw must have been something he was waiting for. He nodded to himself.
Then he threw his phone into the water.
“Action heroes,” he continued. His laughter came back. Again, there was no humor in it. “Did you know that Derrick was obsessed with them growing up? You couldn’t walk into our house without seeing some kind of action movie on the TV. New ones, old ones, popular ones, ones that barely anyone had heard of…they were always there, filling the rooms of childhood.” He smiled, briefly. “I asked Derrick once if he wanted to be one of the heroes he loved so much but he said no. He just liked the idea of them.”
He sighed.
Rose looked at his finger next to the trigger.
“Someone, who by all accounts could have left the story at the beginning, decided to stay. To go against the insurmountable odds and try to make everything better.”
The anger in him was still there but Rose didn’t understand where he wanted it to go. Instead of being aimed at her, it seemed like it was burning him.
“Who did you take, Damon?” she ventured. “Where are they?”
