I empty my clip, slap home a fresh one. Count to ten. Make myself look down, sure of what I’m going to see when I do. Evan’s body at the bottom of the ravine, ripped to shreds, all because I was the one thing he found worth dying for. Me, the girl who let him kiss her but never kissed him first. The girl who never thanked him for saving her life but paid him back with sarcasm and accusations. I know what I’m going to see when I look down, but that’s not what I see.
Evan is gone.
The little voice inside my head whose job it is to keep me alive shouts, Run!
So I run.
Leaping over fallen trees and winter dry scrub, and now the familiar pop-pop-pop of rapid-arms fire.
Grenades. Flares. Assault weapons. These aren’t Twigs after us. These are pros.
Outside the fiendish glow of the flare, I hit a wall of dark, then run smack into a tree. The impact knocks me off my feet. I don’t know how far I ran, but it must be a good distance, because I can’t see the ravine, can’t hear anything but my own heartbeat roaring in my ears.
I scuttle forward to a fallen pine tree and huddle behind it, waiting for the breath I left back at the ravine to catch up with me. Waiting for another flare to drop into the woods in front of me. Waiting for the Silencers to come crashing through the underbrush.
A rifle pops in the distance, followed by a high-pitched scream. Then an answering barrage of automatic weapons and another grenade explosion, and then silence.
Well, it isn’t me they’re shooting at, so it must be Evan, I think. Which makes me feel better and a whole lot worse, because he’s out there alone against pros, and where am I? Hiding behind a tree like a girl.
But what about Sams? I can run back into a fight I’ll probably lose, or stay down to stay alive long enough to keep my promise.
It’s an either/or world.
Another crack! of a rifle. Another girly scream.
More silence.
He’s picking them off one by one. A farm boy with no combat experience against a squad of professional soldiers. Outnumbered. Outgunned. Cutting them down with the same brutal efficiency as the Silencer on the interstate, the hunter in the woods who chased me under a car and then mysteriously disappeared.
Crack!
Scream.
Silence.
I don’t move. I wait behind my log, terrified. Over the past ten minutes, it’s become such a dear friend, I consider naming it: Howard, my pet log.
You know, when I first saw you in the woods, I thought he was your bear.
The snap and crunch of dead leaves and twigs underfoot. A darker shadow against the dark of the woods. The soft call of the Silencer. My Silencer.
“Cassie? Cassie, it’s safe now.”
I heave myself upright and point my rifle directly at Evan Walker’s face.
68
HE PULLS UP QUICKLY, but the look of confusion comes slowly.
“Cassie, it’s me.”
“I know it’s you. I just don’t know who you are.”
His jaw tightens. His voice is strained. Anger? Frustration? I can’t tell. “Lower the gun, Cassie.”
“Who are you, Evan? If that’s evan your name. Even your name.”
He smiles wanly. And then he falls to his knees, sways, topples over, and lies still.
I wait, the gun trained on the back of his head. He doesn’t move. I hop over Howard and poke him with my toe. He still doesn’t move. I kneel beside him, resting the butt of my rifle on my thigh, and press my fingers against his neck, feeling for a pulse. He’s alive. His pants are shredded from the thighs down. Wet to the touch. I smell my fingertips. Blood.
I lean my M16 against the fallen tree and roll Evan onto his back. His eyelids flutter. He reaches up and touches my cheek with his bloody palm.
“Cassie,” he whispers. “Cassie for Cassiopeia.”
“Stop it,” I say. I notice his rifle lying next to him and kick it out of his reach. “How bad are you hurt?”
“I think pretty bad.”
“How many were there?”
“Four.”
“They never had a chance, did they?”
Long sigh. His eyes lift up to mine. I don’t need him to speak; I can see the answer in his eyes. “Not much, no.”
“Because you don’t have the heart to kill, but you have the heart to do what you have to do.” I hold my breath. He must know where I’m going with this.
He hesitates. Nods. I can see the pain in his eyes. I look away so he can’t see the pain in mine. But you started down this road, Cassie. No turning back now.
“And you’re very good at what you have the heart to do, aren’t you?”
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Yours, too: What do you have the heart to do, Cassie?
He saved my life. How could he also be the one who tried to take it? It doesn’t make sense.
Do I have the heart to let him bleed to death because now I know he lied to me—that he isn’t gentle Evan Walker the reluctant hunter, the grieving son and brother and lover, but something that might not even be human? Do I have what it takes to follow the first rule down to its final, brutal, unforgiving conclusion and put a bullet through his finely sculpted forehead?
Oh, crap, who are you kidding?
I start to unbutton his shirt. “Got to get these clothes off,” I mutter.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.” Smile. Lopsided. Sexy.
“You’re not charming your way out of this one, buddy. Can you sit up a little? A little more. Here, take these.” A couple of pain pills from the first aid kit. He swallows them with two long gulps of water from a bottle I hand him.
I pull off his shirt. He’s looking up into my face; I avoid his gaze. While I tug off his boots, he unbuckles his belt and pulls down the zipper. He lifts his butt, but I can’t get his pants off—they’re plastered to his body with tacky blood.
“Rip them,” he says. He rolls over onto his stomach. I try, but the material keeps slipping through my fingers when I pull.
“Here, use this.” He holds up a bloody knife. I don’t ask him where the blood came from.
I cut from hole to hole slowly; I’m terrified of cutting him. Then I strip the pants away from each leg, like peeling a banana. That’s it, the perfect metaphor: peeling a banana. I have to know what the truth is, and you can’t get to the tasty fruit without stripping off the outer layer.
Speaking of fruit, I’m down—I mean, he’s down—to his underwear.
Confronted with them, I ask, “Do I need to look at your butt?”
“I’ve been wondering about your opinion.”
“Enough with the lame attempts at humor.” I slice the material at both h*ps and peel back the underwear, exposing him. His butt is bad. I mean bad as in peppered with shrapnel wounds. Otherwise, it’s pretty good.
I dab at the blood with some gauze from the kit, fighting back hysterical giggles. I blame it on the unbearable stress, not on the fact that I’m wiping Evan Walker’s ass.
“God, you’re a mess.”
He’s gasping for air. “Just try to stop the bleeding for now.”
I pack the wounds on this side of him the best I can. “Can you roll back over?” I ask.
“I’d rather not.”
“I need to see the front.” Oh my God. The front?
“The front’s okay. Really.”
I sit back, exhausted. Guess that’s one thing I’ll take his word for. “Tell me what happened.”
“After I got you out of the ravine, I ran. Found a shallow spot to climb out. Circled around them. The rest you probably heard.”
“I heard three shots. You said there were four guys.”
“Knife.”
“This knife?”
“That knife. This is his blood on my hands, not mine.”
“Oh, thanks.” I scrub my cheek where he touched me. I decide to just come out with the worst explanation for what’s going on. “You’re a Silencer, aren’t you?”
Silence. How ironic.
“Or are you human?” I whisper. Say human, Evan. And when you say it, say it perfectly so there’s no doubt. Please, Evan, I really need you to take the doubt away. I know you said you can’t make yourself trust—so, damn it, make somebody else trust. Make me trust. Say it. Say you’re human.
“Cassie…”
“Are you human?”
“Of course I’m human.”
I take a deep breath. He said it, but not perfectly. I can’t see his face; it’s tucked beneath his elbow. Maybe if I could see his face that would make it perfect and I could let this awful thought go. I pick up some sterile wipes and begin to clean his blood—or whoever’s—from my hands.
“If you’re human, why have you been lying to me?”
“I haven’t lied to you about everything.”
“Just the parts that matter.”
“Those are the parts I haven’t lied about.”
“Did you kill those three people on the interstate?”
“Yes.”
I flinch. I didn’t expect him to say yes. I expected an Are you kidding? Stop being so paranoid. Instead I get a soft, simple answer, as if I asked him if he ever skinny-dipped.
Next question is the hardest yet: “Did you shoot me in the leg?”