“Same…” Harlen tries to speak but he chokes. He’s not looking at me. He stares ahead.
I swallow the bile burning up my throat. “Devil’s Tunnel?” My words are spoken through the clenching of my teeth.
Harlen nods, chin meeting his chest. His eyes screw closed, fingers curling around the steering wheel. He lifts his palm and slams it down, then does it again and again before twisting toward me, one hand coming to the side of my chair, the other at the wheel. “The motherfucker just dumpedherthere, man. As ifshewas disposable.” He is shaking his head, still talking, but I can barely hear him. “Rusty and Skinner foundher.”
My head cuts toward him and my pupils shake when I ask the question, “Her?”
He squeezes his eyes closed and an action so simple shouldn’t be so painful, and yet the way his face contorts tells me that it is, that this kind of pain had the ability to fuck up even the strongest of people.
Harlen blinks them open and his voice breaks. “Jade.”
Hearing him say my sister’s name felt like he’d jammed a screwdriver in my ear.
My world spins.
Flashes of darkness bursting in front of my eyes.
My heart is slamming inside my chest, and I reach to rub against it, only to find my limbs unresponsive, shaking in their place.
All I can hear is white noise.
I fight to speak.
“And Laiken?”
It is all I can get out, the question like glass in my throat.
There is a pause, and when I reach for Harlen’s clouded, grief-stricken gaze, he keeps his eyes on mine, swallows, and whispers, “Laiken is alive.”
Blood seeps through my fingers as I cradle the gunshot wound at my arm.
His hands are around the back of Jade’s neck. Her torso is lifted, a sharp slope curving off the blood drenched earth. Her legs are floppy beneath her, her arms too.
She makes no noise.
She is silent.
Frozen.
Paralyzed.
Soundless tears roll in a turbulent sheen down my cheeks.
My best friend's face is covered in dirt, leaves and twigs stuck in her bloodied hair, her lips losing color, and when she opens her eyes, each reaching for mine, all I see is terror, the kind that even if she somehow survived this, it would kill her.
Snap.
I fly upward, cracking my eyes open, finding myself in a bed I don’t recognize, my hands cradled in cool, leathery palms that I knew instantly belonged to my nan.
Safety.
I was afforded it.
My best friend wasn’t.
Nan holds me close, her breath over my scalp, my ear pressed to her chest. I listen to it thud along with the whirs and beeps of machines punctuating the beat of her heart.
“You are safe, sweetheart. You are safe.”
