The antidote?—
Chase is out. In my limited experience, whenever a survivor was given an antidote, it takes a while for it to do what it’s supposed to. The host body needs every bit of energy it has to fight against the lurker venom. It’ll win, the antidote will work, but it takes time.
Good. He doesn’t need to distract me while I find out what the hell is going on with Maverick.
Climbing off of Chase, I whirl on Mav. “What the fuck were you doing with my antidote?”
I expect him to deny it. I’m a loose cannon with a hair-trigger temper and the ability to build a firebomb and a flamethrower—and I’m furious. I’d deny it, too. Pretend I also had the brilliant idea to sneak around with an antidote tucked in a sock.
That’s what I would do.
Maverick doesn’t.
Taking a tone that screams “dad dealing with irrational teenage daughter”, he holds up his hands in a placating gesture as he says, “Kid…Xandra, you gotta stay calm. Getting angry isn’t going to solve anything.”
Wrong answer, dickhead.
I dive for the ground and snatch up Maverick’s gun before he can even blink. My hands are covered in Chase’s sticky blood. One of them is badly damaged, though I haven’t come down from my adrenaline high to feel it yet.
But, no matter how much I’m trembling, I don’t drop the gun the way that Maverick must have when I appeared in the clearing, dragging Chase with me.
“You had it,” I say, my voice shaking before it bursts out as a shout: “You asshole! Fucking answer me! How long have you had it?”
There are times when a survivor’s sense of self-preservation really kicks in. When facing down a slightly deranged, undeniably murderous woman fifteen years your junior… one who’s covered in blood and unsteadily wielding a gun she doesn’t really have any clue how to use… that’s a pretty good one.
Facing down the barrel of his own gun, the cop might’ve thought about lying to me for all of five seconds in an attempt to talk me down like I was a jumper or something before changing his mind. He has to understand that the only way he’s going to get out of this without a bullet hole in him somewhere is by telling the truth?—
“Since the first night.”
—even if it’s something I don’t want to hear.
“What?”
He gulps. His hands are still hovering in the air, though he keeps looking at a place somewhere near my knees. I don’tblame him for not making eye contact. If looks could kill, he’d be a dead man right now.
“Alexandra,” and his voice is so similar to Jack’s, I jolt. “Put the gun down. I’ll tell you what happened?—”
I steady my arms. “No. Truth first. Then I drop the gun.”
“You won’t like it.”
Funny. He said something similar when we were in East Jersey and he was telling me all about hisbrilliantplan to save me from the block.
He’s right. I didn’t like it then, and I won’t like it now. Still, I’m loyal. Trustworthy. If I give him my word, I’ll stand by it.
“I probably won’t,” I agree, “but either tell me the truth and you get your gun back or fuck with me and I’ll shoot into the sky.”
His fingers flex. That same familiar gesture when he knows he’s outmatched and thinks he can just outlast his opponent.
It didn’t work with Darryl. He had to waste one of his precious bullets on blowing the old convict away. Now there’s only one left, and while I could no more murder Maverick after all these weeks together than take out Chase before he fully Turned, I’ll throw that bullet away if I have to.
“The truth, Mav. I want the truth.”
“Fine. Jack told me you’d have one. It was his ace in the hole, the reason I was willing to stick around and let you tag along. With an antidote, you’d be safe if…”
“If what?”
He shakes his head. “You started to stir right when I got it out of your pack,” he tells me, answering one question, but not the other. He shudders out a breath. “I didn’t hear anything that night when I put the fire out?—”
