All she sees is a blur of movement: Sanchez trying to grab something from the beltline at the back of his pants; Gilloway’s face blanching as he recognizes what Sanchez is about to do; a glimpse of the gun tucked into Sanchez’s jeans, his hand on the grip already, lifting the weapon up and out; Gilloway moving as he realizes a gunshot will draw the entire building’s attention to them. He crosses the space between him and Sanchez in a second and—as Sanchez starts to arc the gun around, ready to point it at the cop, maybe even ready to fire it—Gilloway reaches him. He puts one hand on Sanchez’s arm, stopping the swing of the weapon immediately, and strikes once at Sanchez’s throat. It’s a single, brutal punch.
And it’s devastating.
There’s a gristly, horrible noise—a gurgle, a hiss—and then Sanchez starts to choke. He drops the gun, the weapon hitting the floor with a clunk, and clasps both of his hands to his throat. His legs wobble under him as he steps back, crashing against the wall like a deadweight. As he slides to the floor—one hand still on his windpipe, one reaching out to Gilloway, begging him for help—he looks right at Hallie.
She slaps a hand to her mouth.
Don’t make a sound, don’t make a sound, don’t make a—
“Fuck!” screams Gilloway.
The cop steps forward, eyeing the choking Sanchez, his fingers tapping out a rhythm on the hammer of his holstered pistol. Hallie watches him, hand still pressed to her mouth, her breath coming through her nose in short, sharp bursts.
Gilloway turns and hurries for the door.
When he exits into the hallway, he checks it for signs of anyone, and—with a last, lingering look back at Sanchez—he gently pulls the door to the apartment shut.
Hallie rushes out into the living room and across to Sanchez.
His hands are by his side now, his head slumped.
“Stay with me, Jordan,” she says, and crosses to his telephone. But as she picks up, ready to dial 911, she remembers that his line isn’t working.Shit. “I’ll get one of your neighbors,” she tells him and goes for the door.
But then she stops.
With her fingers on the handle and her head full of static, she glances back across her shoulder—to the bedroom, to the stack of pages under the bed.
Then she turns to Sanchez.
His chest is pulsing, his trachea completely pulverized, oxygen no longer passing into his blood. But his eyes, a deep red now, are locked onto hers. He blinks, a look so overt, so completely aware of what she’s thinking—even as he lies dying on the floor of his home—that Hallie has to turn away from him. As she does, Sanchez’s voice crackles in her head like an old cassette tape.
It’s dog-eat-dog out there, Hallie.
She closes her eyes and Sanchez’s mantra is gone. Now the only voice in her head is her own.This isn’t who I am, she thinks.This isn’t who I want to be. She glances at Sanchez for a second time and he makes a slight movement of his head, left to right, as if he’s saying to her,No, don’t do this. Please, Hallie.
“This isn’t who I want to be,” she repeats, this time out loud, to him, to herself, to whoever might one day judge her for this moment. Her words are so soft she can barelyeven hear them herself. Her stomach is churning. Her throat tremors.
This isn’t who I want to be.
But what if it’s the person I need to become?
She doesn’t look at Sanchez again.
She just listens to him—the wheezing, the choking—and lets herself cry, the swell of emotion hitting her like a bus. It comes so fast, with such power, she has to place a hand on the wall for support, her body almost bent double as convulsions rip through her. Her noise drowns out the sound of Jordan for a while, but as she slowly begins to recover her composure, she starts to hear him again: wet, soft, fading.
But she still doesn’t look at him.
She just waits for him to finally fall silent.
Hallie gets back to her apartment and grabs her Walkman, putting her headphones on, trying to use her music to drown out the echo of him in her head. She dumps her camera and all of the prep work she found stacked under Sanchez’s bed into her backpack—except for a single sheet. That one she folds and pockets.
It’s the most important piece of paper in the pile.
She doesn’t know how Sanchez got hold of it.
But he did, and now she has it.
“Take On Me” is blasting through her headphones but she barely hears it. Every time she blinks, she can see Jordan Sanchez clutching his throat. Every time there’s a pause in her music, she can hear him gurgling and wheezing and dying.
