Her chest rises and falls. Her eyes soften, as if remembering how firing two bullets into Askens’s head after shooting him in the back was an injection of pure bliss. I’d imagined doing something exactly like it to Coleman many times myself before Billy Railes took my place. But now, the thought makes the acidic taste at the back of my throat bite harder.
“Allison,” I say. I feel short on oxygen. My pulse beats faster in my throat. The trees and the clearing we’re in spin like a merry-go-round being pushed and flung by an angry bully. “Allison, Allison, listen to me, what about you?” I try turning the lens on her, trying to throw her off guard.
“What about me?”
“This is about public reckonings, right?”
She lifts her chin, her nostrils flaring.
“And if it’s about that, then don’t you have something to say to the world? Shouldn’t you confess what you’ve done to Askens, to Loman?”
Allison’s face crinkles like a child about to cry, but she straightens out in the next second. “Enough of this,” she says with a steely voice. She shakes her head like a dog repelling water. “You.” She lifts her gun higher. “You need to get down on your knees.”
My breath hitches high in my sternum. My knees go even weaker. “You shoot me out here,” I point out, “and that agent will be here in a split second. You won’t have time to get back to your car.”
“You don’t think I have something in mind?” she asks.
I shouldn’t underestimate her. She has killed two people with cold-blooded proficiency, garnered national attention for it, all while remaining under the radar of the FBI.
But I don’t believe her. She’s full of rage, but there’s also pain. She’s not enjoying the killings. She’s seeking justice, and some relief, and that’s it. She doesn’t care what happens to herself in the long run. She doesn’t have a plan B.
“I happen to be a fast runner,” she says, almost jokingly. “Now, keep your hands behind your head and get down on your knees.”
“Allison, you know they’ll catch you, and you’ll go down for three murders instead of two.”
“What’s one more life sentence?” She makes herself laugh, but suddenly her face flashes hard again. “Down.Now.”
I drop one leg at a time. My fingers thread tightly through my hair and press against my scalp. It’s surreal, realizing this might be the last timeI touch my own head and feel my own hair beneath my fingertips. The damp, cold underbrush seeps through my jeans to my knees. I desperately search my surroundings for a solution but see nothing useful, not even a good rock or solid stick to pick up.
Allison angles her gun down at me. From my kneeling position, looking up at her, she looks like she could blow away with a strong wind.
And that’s when a twig snaps off to my right.Thank God,I think.Greene.
But it’s not Greene.
It’s Sam. Slowly approaching.
Sam.A relief that he’s safe washes over me, but then it’s followed by a deep, stabbing fear.Sam, not now.“Sam, turn and go,” I order.
“Please don’t hurt my aunt,” he says.
Allison looks at him through the corner of her eye. She’s keeping her gun trained on me, which I’m grateful for.
“Sam,” I command, feeling like a bomb has detonated in me and all my insides are crumbling.You can’t be here now, around this, around Allison with a gun.“Sam,” I say. “Go back. Just for a little while.”
“Oh, honey,” she says. “It’s okay. You come here to me, and I won’t shoot your aunt.”
“No,” I say firmly. “Stay right there.”
He stares at us like a spooked animal, not moving.
“I mean it,” Allison says. “Come here, or you’ll give me no choice but to shoot her. You don’t want that, do you?”
Sam starts slowly walking toward us.
Panic shoots through me. I try to gulp in air, like I’m going to have an anxiety attack.
The ground fully collapses from under me. I’m teetering on a thin wire with nothing beneath me.Do something, Crosbie. Now. Dosomething.
