19
I screamed, then was tackled to the floor.
Buck’s body had no head, and it slowly crumpled, landing with a thud on the floor. I was still screaming. I couldn’t stop. His head had just . . . disintegrated.
“Oh God oh God oh God . . .” I was curled into a ball. Unable to move.
“Shh, baby, it’s okay. You’re okay.” Clark was the one who’d tackled me.
“B-Buck,” I stammered. “He-he’s dead. His . . . his head . . .”
“I know, baby,” Clark said. His arms were wrapped completely around me. “I know.”
Jackson crawled over to us. “You both okay?”
“Yeah,” Clark said. “We’re good.” He looked at me. “We’ve gotta move. Can you stand?”
What a ridiculous question. Of course I could stand. I’d just seen a man’s head explode hours after watching my dad get shot to death, but standing? No problem.
They were both looking at me funny, and I realized I’d babbled all that out loud.
“I’m okay.” The shake in my voice belied that, but I struggled to my feet anyway.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jackson said.
They each had an arm and were half carrying, half herding me toward the door. I put on the brakes, planting my feet on the ground.
“No, we can’t! He’s still out there. If we walk out of here, he’ll shoot us.” I couldn’t breathe and my knees had folded. Only Jackson’s and Clark’s hold on my arms kept me upright.
“Look at me.” Clark grasped my shoulders and turned me toward him. “Look at me, China!”
His voice broke through my panic.
“You trust me, right? Trust me to keep you safe? Keep you alive?”
I nodded. “Yeah.” His eyes were burning into mine. “Yeah. I do.”
“Then don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay. Let’s go.”
We were downstairs in a flash. The receptionist was nowhere in sight. I just caught a glimpse of people emerging from offices before we were out the door. Jackson and Clark acted as human shields, which I was totally not okay with, but I didn’t get a say. It wasn’t until we were in the car that we saw it.
A Gemini sign had been spray-painted in black on the side of the building.
“Drive,” Clark said. Jackson hit the gas.
I slumped in the back seat. My glasses were fogged up from going from the warm into the cold, then back into the warm. I took them off and realized I was crying again. The last time I’d cried so much had been when Rose and the Doctor had been locked into separate universes forever. That had been an ugly cry night.
The drive back to the house was silent.
Everyone had gone by the time we returned. The house was cold and empty. The day was dark and gray with thick, ominous clouds. It was only midday, but it could easily have been closer to twilight.
“What do we do now?” I asked, sitting down in the kitchen. No way could I go into the family room.
“He’s obviously going to return here for me,” Clark said. “I think you two should bug out before it gets dark. I’ll stay here. He’ll be back.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not going to happen.”
“Why not?” Jackson asked.
I looked at him askance. “You’d just leave Clark to face his . . . crazy brother—who wants to kill him—alone?”
“If it means keeping you safe, then yeah.”
“You’re part of this,” I said to Jackson. “He came after you, too. You can’t just leave Clark to pay the piper for your sins.”
“You think what I did was wrong?”
His question had an edge to it that didn’t get by me. “I don’t look at things as black and white,” I said. “You know that. But leaving Clark to save ourselves . . . I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can, and you will,” Clark said. “I don’t know why Rob is doing what he’s doing, but if anyone can talk sense into him, it’s me. There’s a reason I’m still walking around, a reason he hasn’t killed me yet.”
“Yes, luck,” I retorted. “Who’s to say that you’re going to be the one to talk him off this psycho cliff? What if he kills you? Then he’ll just come after us. What then? And this whole scenario . . . there’s something wrong.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, Rob just can’t come back from the dead and start killing people. He needs basic necessities, ID, transportation, weapons. You can’t just get all those things at the corner Walmart.” I looked from one to the other. “Someone is helping him. Helping him do the dirty work.”
“She’s right,” Jackson said. “And my best guess would be Danvers.”
“Why now? Why wait all this time?”
“We don’t know where your brother has been or what he’s been doing for six years,” I said. “Something must’ve happened to trigger this. Maybe it was Danvers himself that set Rob on his killing spree.”
“But we have no idea where Danvers is or what his motive could be,” Clark said.
“We’ll have to deal with Danvers later. Right now, Rob is our immediate problem.”
“He’s not ‘our’ problem,” Clark argued. “He’s my problem.”
Jackson and Clark exchanged a look I couldn’t decipher. Then they both stood.
“Time to go,” Jackson said, taking a firm grip on my arm.
I tried to yank away. “I said that I wasn’t going. If you want to leave, fine. Leave. But I’m not leaving Clark to face his crazy brother alone!”
“Yes, you are,” Clark said, taking my other arm. “I appreciate the support, Mack, I really do. But you need to leave now.”
They were going to force me, strong-arm me. Make me. Which pissed me off something fierce.
“Don’t you dare make me go,” I threatened, struggling to free myself. We were already nearly to the front door. “I will never forgive either of you if you do this!”
“I’ll worry about that later,” Jackson said.
“So long as you’re alive, you can hate me as much as you want,” Clark added.
I started cursing at them and dragging my feet, but I might as well have been a misbehaving toddler, for all the good it did. I was so angry, I could literally feel my blood pressure climbing.
Jackson threw open the door and we all froze.
The barn was about a hundred and fifty yards away from us, and there was a giant flaming Gemini burning on its exterior.
Clark recovered first. “He’s here. Get to the car!”
“No!” But I was ignored. Clark picked me up bodily while Jackson ran ahead to open the door. Clark started stuffing me in the front seat.
“I am not leaving you!” I gritted out, grabbing fistfuls of his clothing and hanging on for dear life. I managed to get a leg hooked around his waist and clung like a koala bear digging into a tree.
“Look at me,” Clark said, grasping my chin and turning my face toward his. “Do you think I could live with myself if something happened to you? Do you?”
His insistence just frustrated me. “And you think I don’t feel the same? How can you expect me to just leave you here, maybe to die?” Only one man would walk out of here, I was sure, and I just didn’t think Clark had it in him to kill his brother. No matter the justification.
Clark’s eyes were filled with an emotion I was too afraid to name. His thumb brushed my cheek, and his gaze roved over my face as if he were memorizing it.
“If you have any faith in me at all, you’ll go.”
I stared at him, my head trying to form a logical argument. But my emotions were much louder than reason inside.
“There are no atheists in foxholes,” I murmured, remembering my idioms.
He frowned. “What? What does God have to do with this?”
“When the stakes are high, all that matters are the things you can’t see,” I tried to explain. “I have faith in you. I trust you.”
His lips did that slow curve into a smile that I knew I’d remember for the rest of my life. I could smell the fire and hear the crackle of burning wood. The cold was biting and the snow a pristine blanket of white. I could feel the warmth of Clark’s body as I clung to him, and see the length of his dark lashes framing his beautiful eyes.
“You’ve got to go,” he said, pressing a kiss to my forehead. And before I could protest again, he’d unwrapped me from around him, put me in the car, and slammed the door.
Jackson was behind the wheel, and he wasted no time hitting the locks and the gas. He buckled me in with one hand, and in seconds we were halfway down the drive. I twisted in my seat, but Clark had already disappeared.
I buried my head in my hands. “Oh God, Jackson. What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to get some backup,” he said. “Even Omaha has cops.”
I sat up straight. “You’re right! Of course! Why didn’t I think of it sooner?” Pulling out my cell phone, I dialed, waiting impatiently as it rang.
“Talk to me,” Dennon answered.
“I have your guy, but I need help,” I explained as quickly as I could. “And I think he’s going to keep going. He’ll try for the president again, I’m sure. He’s like a hand grenade that someone’s pulled the pin on and tossed out.”
“That analogy doesn’t quite make sense, but I get your drift,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do and get back to you.”
“Get back to me?” I nearly shouted. “This is happening now. There’s no time for you to ‘get back’ to me.”
“Then stop wasting time by being overly emotional and yelling at me.” The line went dead.
It took all my logic and self-control not to throw my phone at the windshield.
Jackson was driving fast and slowed down for a curve. There was something in the road ahead, something small and black. Like a backpack.
“Wait,” I said, suddenly realizing what it might be. “Stop—”
The backpack blew up, sending the SUV backward and flipping it. We rolled, the airbags cushioning the initial impact. I lost track of which way was up when we came to a jarring stop.
I was conscious and reached out to Jackson. We were upside down. The windows were gone and the windshield was shattered but still in place. I could feel Jackson’s arm.
“Jackson,” I half said, half groaned. My body hurt. “Are you okay? Jackson?”
But there was no answer. I couldn’t make out his face in the dark, and I began to panic.
“Jackson?” I shook his arm, but he didn’t respond.
A crunching sound from outside my window made me jerk in fear. A set of men’s boots were walking toward my window, the snow and ice making the crunching noise as he came nearer.
I couldn’t breathe and I was shaking. Jackson wasn’t okay. Clark was going to die. And whoever was coming for me wasn’t someone anxious to help, I was sure.
The feet stopped right outside my window. I waited, barely breathing. Suddenly, he bent down, and once I saw his face, I knew what hopelessness felt like.
Rob smiled. “Leaving so soon?”
Clark saw the explosion, and it nearly brought him to his knees. Oh God. China.
He was running before he’d even made the decision to, slipping and sliding on the snow. It seemed to take forever to get as far as Jackson had driven. Past the fields and into where the trees grew tall. Then he saw it . . . and stumbled to a halt.
The SUV was upside down and glass was everywhere. Somehow, the headlights still worked, their beams cutting through the gloom. There was a constant hissing as the hot water from the engine made contact with the snow. But for such a violent scene, it was eerily quiet.
Clark approached as carefully yet as quickly as he could. China was in there, if she hadn’t been thrown from the wreckage. He hadn’t buckled her in to the seat, so intent had he been on making sure she left quickly.
Crouching down next to the passenger window, he looked inside, using the flashlight on his phone to see.
China’s seat was empty. Jackson was still in his, but not moving, just held in place by the seat belt as he hung upside down.
“Looking for something, big bro?”
The voice he hadn’t heard in six years was like someone reaching from the grave. Clark stood, bracing himself as he turned, and it was still like a punch to the gut to see Rob standing not ten feet away.
“Rob,” he breathed. “I can’t believe it’s you. After all this time . . .”
“Yeah, I bet you didn’t think you’d see me again, that’s for damn sure.” Rob’s voice was hard, and as he stepped farther into the light, Clark saw he had China.
She could barely stand, Rob’s arm around her throat holding her upright, and her glasses were gone. Rob held a gun to her temple.
“Toss aside your weapon,” he demanded. “I hear her brain is precious, and I’d sure hate to splatter it all over the snow.” He tilted his head to the side. “Though I think that’d look real pretty, red against the white? Don’t you think?”
Clark swallowed. It was his brother . . . and not his brother. The body was the same, the voice and face the same . . . but that was all. He reached for the gun in the small of his back—
“Slowly, now,” Rob said. “I wouldn’t want my trigger finger to slip, and I’m feeling a little on edge.” His smile was a twisted thing.
Clark slowly pulled out his weapon, then tossed it aside. “Now what?”
“Why, now it’s time for that family reunion, brother!” And Rob shot him.
Pain ripped through his knee and Clark fell, his hands burying in the snow. The shock of the wound kept him immobile as he dealt with the pain. Then he was being dragged through the snow all the way to the light in front of the car.
“That should do,” Rob said, releasing him. A long red streak marked the snow from Clark’s leg, and Rob looked at it for a moment, then seemed to recover himself.
“I bet you’re wondering where the hell I’ve been,” Rob said, tucking his gun into a holster at his side. “Or maybe not. Maybe you were glad to put Tripoli behind you.” He went back to where China lay crumpled in the snow as he talked.
Grabbing her by the arm, he pulled her over to a tree. He set her upright, then wrapped a bungee cord around her body and hooked it behind the trunk. China’s head lolled on her chest.
Rob crouched, the headlights from the car throwing his face into sharp relief. It was only then that Clark saw the thin scar down the side of his face and the way it made his lips somewhat misshapen when he smiled, so it looked all wrong and twisted. Like the Joker but without the symmetry.
“They told me you’d gotten out,” Clark said. “They said everyone had gotten out.”
“They lied.”
“I didn’t know that. Not then. And once the mission was over, we thought everyone who didn’t make it out was dead. Including you.”
“Well, let me enlighten you, brother. I was captured. Not killed. By Gaddafi’s men. I’m sure you can imagine what that was like.” He was digging in a duffel as he spoke, unearthing a sheathed knife. When he removed the sheath, the silver blade shone.
“They tortured me for five years before I was let go,” he continued. “Almost killing me, over and over, then nursing me back to the edge of the land of the living. Then doing it all over again. You can’t imagine what it’s like, when you’re begging to die.”
Clark was cold all over, and it wasn’t because of the snow. “Rob—” His voice cracked. “God, Rob, I’m so sorry. I would never, never have left you there if I’d known—”
“How could you not know?” Rob’s shout reverberated through the trees, and Clark winced. “You were my brother,” he continued, not shouting, but his voice shook with anger. “You were supposed to have my back. And you left me there, in that shithole, to rot!”
“Rob, if I could have taken your place, I would’ve,” Clark said, trying to keep his voice calm despite the pain racking his body, inside and out. His gaze was following the knife as Rob stood and walked back over to China.
“Well, you’re going to,” Rob said. “Right now. Because it wasn’t just the physical pain. I guess anybody could get through that. It was knowing you’d been left. That everyone you counted on to help you make it out alive had turned their backs on you.” He waved his hand. “I guess you might say I have abandonment issues.” His laugh was chilling.
“Please, Rob, just stop all this,” Clark begged. “We can get you help. We can be brothers again. You’re the only family I have left. Just you and me.”
“Really? I don’t think so.” Now Rob crouched next to China, and fear spiked in Clark. “I think you’ve got a major thing for this one.” He yanked on China’s hair, pulling her head back, and Clark heard her gasp in pain.
“Rob, c’mon. You’re better than this. Hurting a woman? A girl? Are you insane?”
Rob seemed to think about that for a moment, and hope flared briefly in Clark, only to come crashing down with his next words. “Yeah, I think I might be. Which is why I can do this.” His knife caught the light.
“No!” Clark lurched to his feet, then crashed down again, gritting his teeth against the pain. He couldn’t black out.
“Take it easy there, bro,” Rob said affably. “I just nicked her carotid. They taught me just how to do it, so you bleed out real slow-like. We’ll just sit here and watch her fade away. Nothing you can do about it. That’s the real bitch.”
Clark stared in horror at China, who was awake and aware. Blood was seeping from her neck in a thin, steady stream, soaking her shirt in garish red.
“No, please,” Clark gasped, using his arms to crawl forward. “Please, Rob.” He couldn’t see, his eyes were blurry, and he had to blink hard. He moved another painful six inches.
“Now this . . . this is sweet revenge,” Rob said. He was leaning against a tree, taking in the scene with the same twisted smile. “She’ll bleed out, then you’ll get to cradle her lifeless body while you slowly die, too.” He sniffed an imaginary tear. “Honestly, someone should be filming this for the fucking Oscars or some shit.”
Rob didn’t impede Clark’s painfully slow journey to China. Dirt and snow crusted Clark’s hands and under his fingernails, each inch dragging white-hot claws into his injured knee. He was gasping for breath, able to go on through sheer will alone by the time he reached China’s side.
“Clark,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “I can’t move. Why? What happened?”
“Shh, baby. I’m here.” He moved as close as he could and unlatched the bungee cord. China fell into his arms. Blood soaked the front of her shirt as she gazed up at him. She wasn’t shivering.
“I’m so cold,” she said. “I can’t feel my legs. Or my hands.” She looked up into his eyes. “Am I dying?”
“No, of course not,” he assured her. He smiled through the tears dripping down his face. “Would I let you die?”
Her smile was slow. “No. I have faith in you, remember?”
Pain was a knife in his gut, but it wasn’t from his knee. China trusted him. And he’d let her down. Even now, he was lying to her. He was the reason she was dying.
Her eyes drifted closed and he bent his knees, pulling her closer to his chest. “Don’t shut your eyes, baby. Keep them open. Stay awake for me.”
“Seriously,” Rob said, “I’m getting all choked up, imagining a hiker or farmer stumbling on your frozen, entwined bodies. They’re going to make a movie of the week out of this. Definitely.”
Hatred and rage unlike anything he’d ever known welled up in Clark, until he shook with wanting to tear his brother apart.
“Don’t forget your last words,” Rob said. “Anything you want to tell her while she’s still conscious enough to hear you? I’d be quick, if I were you. She’s kind of small, so I can’t think she’s got much blood left in her.”
“China,” Clark whispered in her ear, “can you hear me, baby?” Snot, tears, sweat, and blood mingled on his face, marring her skin. She made a noise and opened her eyes.
“’m cold, Clark,” she said, frowning. “Why is it so cold? Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”
He forced himself to smile and stop bawling. “Nothing’s wrong, baby. I just wanted to tell you . . . h-how much . . . I love you. I thought you should know.” His fingers were dirt smeared, but he gently touched her cold cheek anyway. She was so pale.
“That’s so nice,” she said, smiling. “You love me. I’m glad.”
A gunshot rang out and Clark instinctively covered China with his body, waiting for the pain. But nothing happened. Tentatively, he looked up.
Rob stood, an expression of shock on his face, as he looked down at the blooming red stain on his chest. Then he looked to his right.
Jackson stood there, holding Clark’s discarded weapon. He was holding his left arm awkwardly against his side, but the hand pointing the gun at Rob was steady.
“You’re one sick son of a bitch,” Jackson bit out.
Rob fell to the ground and didn’t move.
Jackson approached him carefully, removed the gun from Rob’s holster, and tossed it aside, then felt for a pulse in his neck. After a moment, he moved to the duffel and began rummaging through it.
“Is he . . .” Clark couldn’t say the word. His own brother had wanted to kill him and China, but he couldn’t ask if he was dead.
“Yeah,” was Jackson’s clipped response.
The sound of helicopters in the distance made them look up. Jackson pulled something from the duffel. Emergency flares. He set four on the ground around them as the helicopters grew closer.
“Are you okay?” Clark asked Jackson.
He nodded. “Broken arm, I think. Other than that, I’m fine.” He fell to his knees in front of Clark, his haunted gaze on China. “Is she going to make it?”
“I don’t know. Sh-she’s lost a lot of blood.”
Then they couldn’t talk because the wind from the helicopters was too strong. Two choppers landed just in the clearing beyond where the SUV had turned over. Light flooded the woods, along with men toting automatic rifles.
“Medic!” Clark called out. “Over here! Medic!”
Men arrived with red crosses on their helmets, taking China’s limp body from him. She was unconscious now, and his fear ratcheted up another notch.
“Her carotid’s been nicked,” Clark explained. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“We’ll take care of her, sir.”
Stretchers arrived for him and China. He didn’t want to get on, but he wasn’t given a choice. Jackson was helped into the second chopper by another medic.
They were putting an IV in his arm and blocking his view of China. He grabbed the arm of the medic taking care of him. “Take my blood,” he demanded. “I’m O negative. She needs blood now.”
The two medics conversed. Clark yanked him back. “I said, take my blood, goddamn it!”
“Sir, you’re injured. It wouldn’t be wise to—”
Clark grabbed the medic’s shirt front and pulled him down. “Save her,” he gritted out. “You think I give a shit about me? Swear to me you’ll save her.”
The medic didn’t look rattled by Clark’s vehemence. “I swear to you, sir. We’ll save her. But we will need your blood.”
Clark let him go. “Take it.”
The sound of the choppers’ blades was loud and lulling. Clark closed his eyes, listening. What was it China had said?
There are no atheists in foxholes.
So he prayed. He hadn’t prayed since that night in Tripoli. That hadn’t turned out very well, he thought, but he shoved the thought away. All that was left to believe in was what he couldn’t see.
And the choppers’ blades turned.