Because I think about Afon.
Not the cold-eyed golem who threw me out of his truck this morning, but the one who draped a blanket over me when I was nothing but a concussed inconvenience on his doorstep. His hands on my waist as he lifted me onto the counter. The care in his touch, every single time, and the obvious restraint it took him in every single second to hold back the tide of violence that's defined his life.
It doesn't change the situation to think about him.
But it does make me feel just a tiny bit better.
Gold Chain unzips my jacket. The cold air buffets my chest through my thin thermal. He hooks his index finger under the hem and tugs it up over my belly.
Buzzcut is watching on and salivating. Beanie has looked away.
It's funny that Afon was right, in the end. He told me it wasn't safe.Go home, Caroline; you don't belong here.
And what did I do? I called him a coward.
He wasn't being a coward, though.
He was just the only person paying attention.
Gold Chain leans in close. His breath is hot and rancid on my neck. My stomach heaves.
I close my eyes.
10
CAROLINE
A whimper.
That's how I'm saved in the end.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
It's a single, muted groan from somewhere outside the bunkhouse. Like the last breath of air escaping someone's lungs. Gold Chain freezes with his finger still hooked under my thermal, the garment raised halfway over my bra. He turns his head to squint at the door. Beanie straightens up from the doorframe. Buzzcut's hand drifts toward the disassembled Glock on the cot, which is currently in four pieces on a rag and about as useful as a jigsaw puzzle at a gunfight.
Then the lights go out.
Not the dying evening light that comes through the windows—it's the generator that goeskaput.That background drone dies and the space heater does the same. Overhead, the single bare bulb that's the extent of the room's artificial illumination is black and cold.
In the dark, someone says, "The fuck?—?"
The door comes off its hinges.
I don't mean it opens. I mean it comesoff,inward, with a sound like a car crash and a rush of freezing mountain air that cold-cocks me across the face. A shape fills the doorframe. It's broad-shouldered, backlit by the last gray light of dusk, rifle raised, and impossible not to recognize.
Beanie goes for something at his hip. He doesn't get there. Truthfully, he doesn't even get halfway. There's a crack that splits the air in two, and Beanie crumples sideways against the wall and slides down it like he's had a very, very long day.
Gold Chain releases my shirt and lunges toward a gun locker in the back. Afon beats him there in one room-spanning lunge and drives the butt of the Remington into Gold Chain's sternum. The sound is awful.Thock,like Afon's axe hitting the woodblock back in his cabin, but with an extra wet, nasty crunch that can't be good from the perspective of Gold Chain's internal organs. Gold Chain makes a sound like his friend outside did, a sad little whine, and then Afon hits him once more with the rifle stock.
Gold Chain doesn't make any more noises after that.
Buzzcut is the last one standing. He's scrambling on the cot, fingers scrabbling for the Glock pieces in the dark. He gets the slide and the frame together, and even though that's basically a useless, non-firing hunk of metal, he still swings the thing around and aims it at Afon like he'll somehow magically conjure the bullet that will save him.
It doesn't work out quite like that.
Afon breaks Buzzcut's wrist with a single, effortless snap.Thock,then a scream.
With his other arm, Afon throws a crunching elbow into the bridge of Buzzcut's nose. Just like that, it's all over.
