I don’t know how we get off the jet.
The experience is punctuated by pain so excruciating it provides its own anesthetic; I feel myself nearly lose consciousness on several occasions, and I can’t help but wonder if James, whose arm remains tight around my waist with every difficult step, isn’t giving me some kind of low-level relief.
The rain, at least, seems to have died down.
I welcome the evening chill on my feverish skin, feeling dislocated as I look around. Soldiers are assembled in shadow on the tarmac below. The air is fresh, the world cleansed. Moonlight washes over everything, casting the night in a ghostly, beautiful glow entirely at odds with the state of my mind.
“You okay?” James whispers.
Like a sledgehammer, these two words land an impact that craters my chest.
I risk a glance at him.
He’s soaked through; his face is streaked with blood; he’s wearing a sling fashioned from a torn length of cotton; his shoulder is immobilized because of what I did to him.
He still hasn’t mentioned the injury.
He hasn’t betrayed a moment of anger with me; not awhisper of resentment. He let me shoot him and simply moved on. Accepted it. Maybe forgave me for it.
I never even asked him if he was okay.
The cracks in my heart are threatening to give way altogether. I’m suddenly terrified of what I might find under all that ice.
“Yes,” I lie. “I’m okay.”
When we finally reach the bottom of the stairs, a welcoming party greets us by lifting their weapons in concert, aiming them at my head.
I feel the tension rise in James’s body as we pass through the procession of soldiers. He holds me a little tighter, and I nearly give in to the impulse to lean into him as I limp forward. His nearness is a gift; his touch is warm despite the chill; his very presence is keeping me calm.
They’ll either kill me now or take me somewhere to die.
There can be no other option.
If they let me live, I’ll never stop running. If they heal me and throw me back in prison, I’ll never stop breaking out. Even I know I’m a liability. I’d make the call to kill me, too.
I’ve accepted my fate.
I made my choice on that jet by making no choice. By not killing James, I sentenced my sister to certain death. I sentenced myself to certain death.
This is what I deserve.
Still—
When I see him standing there at the end of the line, the hard planes of his face illuminated by starlight, my fear response is immediate.
Aaron Warner Anderson.
James’s older brother is waiting for me. I steel myself as I read the cold fury in his eyes; the careful, violent control in his body.
Everything about this man seems lethal.
I saw him only on special occasions while I was in prison; he’d chosen to begin interrogations by breaking my mind over breaking my body—using my father to carefully fillet my soul—and I can’t say he was unsuccessful. The psychological damage from the hours I spent locked up with my estranged father has yet to be determined. I was hoping to die before I was ever compelled to examine those feelings.
This might be my chance.
Warner stands before me with deceptive composure, his golden hair glinting in a glare of light, his hands clasped in front of him. He doesn’t appear to be armed, though I know better than to believe that.
His eyes follow our every move.
