“You’re assuming they all died.”
Her heart fell out of her then—her soul dropped to the dirty floor. She felt that this was probably a trick, but a part of her—in her heart—asked if it still might be true. She looked around her, wildly, and she heard a little girl’s baby voice piping up inside her, all full of hope:
“She’s alive?”
He cocked his head, taking pleasure in this moment.
“Maybe. Maybe I didn’t kill them all.”
She thought her heart might stop from the stress. She glanced around her, looking in vain for a door that she knew didn’t exist. If her mother was alive, she was not here. She had to be somewhere, but where?
“Tell me where she is. I promise—” She heard her voice crack.
He sat back, truly enjoying this.
“Promise what? You’ll let me go?” he asked. “Her life for mine?”
Ruby swallowed.Maybe you can get him to tell,her heart said. But she knew he would kill her before she could tell anyone what he had done. He was not going to let her leave here alive.
Her dark eyes, so much like his, met his. Her lips opened.
“No,” she said.
He laughed. It was a real laugh, too. Without any warning, he moved. It was a deceptively leisurely move, born of long practice: One moment he was sitting, beer bottle in hand, and the next he was standing over her.
Ruby jerked. She had not seen it coming—she should have, but what he had said had rattled her to her core. She jumped to her feet, reaching for her gun, but somehow he had gotten there first. She felt a deep sense of shock, as if she had been asleep without knowing it and was just now waking up. With astonishing, frightening ease, he grabbed her gun from her hand. He was so much faster than she had expected. He swung his hand, still holding the empty bottle, over the back of her head, and she felt as if a sledgehammer had hit her.
She blinked, stunned, and he clubbed her again, and again, and she felt herself falling to the dirty floor. Her last view was the same one that others had seen. His horrible, grinning face.
Then she was unconscious. Her gun skittered across the floor like a small animal, and he kicked it into a corner. With a grunt, he picked up her feet.
The officers strapped Mitchell to the gurney. The doctor came in, and without looking at Mitchell’s face, easily found a vein and taped in the needle. Some of the men, addicts in a previous life, had collapsed veins, but this time the process went faster.
The doctor left the chamber, and the warden entered. He stoodbehind Mitchell, looking steadily through the glass at the people gathering. When the moment came, he would open the valve, and the poisons would flow. First a sedative would relax the inmate. Then the chemicals would stop his heart. It was painless. That’s what the prisons said, but how would they know? It wasn’t like they tested it on themselves first.
Mitchell’s frightened eyes swept the room. He was still looking for the exonerator. He saw his attorney, and they locked eyes. His teeth were chattering. The sound was loud in the death chamber.
The officers leaned over him, checking the restraints.
It hadn’t taken very long to get him ready—they were early. They had to wait for the clock to strike the hour. That was when it would be legal to kill him.
Frank Castle dragged the unconscious woman past the abandoned car. She was out cold, her eyes closed. Her lips were parted, as if she were dreaming. Her bloody head bumped over the ground.
Back in his house, her phone began ringing. It was in her bag, left on the floor. He stopped, listening to the sound.
Then he shrugged and kept dragging her toward the trees.
On the other end of the call, all the way in the Reed College lab in Portland, Oregon, Delaney Ford hung up. She was worried about Ruby. She had a bad feeling about this case, and the funny part was that it seemed to be coming from the bone she had finished testing—with a result that surprised her.
I called for you,the bone said.
Ruby was being dragged over the red clay soil, over the dead carcasses of the cicadas, which smelled like rotting cheese. The back of her head hurt. Her hair snagged on roots.
Her eyelids fluttered. Someone was pulling her by her feet.
Who are you?she asked, deep in her mind.
Charise.
