Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

As if reading his thoughts, Dax said, “I’ve cleaned it all up pretty well so far. Things had the potential to get out of hand, and now they’re back in my control. Do you still think my father and uncle would have done it better?”

“They couldn’t have done it any better than this,” Gerry said, “and there were two of them.”

Dax’s face split into a wide smile beneath the shadow cast by his baseball cap.

“You’re right,” he said. “Since there’s just me, I’ve got to be twice as good, don’t I? Nobody in my corner. They were good, but there were two of them. I’m solo. I have to reach their level and then push beyond it.”

“You’re on your way,” Gerry told him, unsettled by the conversation, by the way the kid happily measured himself against dead men. He nodded at Oltamu’s cloned phone, which was still sitting on the counter. “But you got some work left to do. Let’s not waste time.”

“They liked you,” Dax said, as if he hadn’t heard the instruction. “They didn’t like many people either. But my father once told me that there were only two things I could trust. One of them was Gerry Connors.”

This was oddly flattering. Gerry had looked out for the kid. Giving him chances, bringing him along in the business. And now, he’d decided to let him live. He’d extend their relationship; grow it, even. It wasn’t too late for that.

“Glad to hear I earned their trust,” Gerry said. “Who was the second man?”

“What?”

“You said he told you to put your trust in two things.”

“Oh.” Dax laughed. “I confused you, sorry. The second one wasn’t a person.”

Gerry cocked his head and frowned. A question was rising to his lips when Dax Blackwell said, “It was this,” and then there was a clap and a spark of light that seemed to come from within the kid’s black hoodie, and suddenly Gerry was down on the floor, hot blood pumping out of his stomach. He put a hand to the wound and let out a high moan that brought the taste of blood into his throat and mouth. He looked at the counter and saw his gun sitting there, out of reach.

Dax took a black revolver with gleaming chrome cylinders out of his hoodie pocket and waved it in the air like a taunt. Or a reminder.

It was this. Gerry saw that gun and remembered where he’d seen it before: Jack Blackwell’s hand.

Of course, he thought, the pain not yet rising, the panic not rising, nothing rising but the taste of blood and the sense of inevitability. Of course Jack would have told the boy to trust the gun above all else.

Dax knelt beside him and brought his face down low. This close, Gerry could finally see his eyes beneath the shadows of the baseball cap. They were a light blue, and the expression in them could almost pass for compassionate. Gerry needed some compassion now. Just a trace of it. He needed the kid to understand that they could make this right. They could get Gerry patched up, could save his life, and if that happened, he would never turn the kid in, would never try to get revenge for this. He’d never even speak of it. If the kid just gave him life, there would be no end to Gerry’s kindness.

He opened his mouth to speak, to convey his promise, but all that left his lips was a warm stream of blood.

Dax Blackwell looked down at him sadly, and then he leaned even closer, his eyes still on Gerry’s, his gaze unblinking.

“I want you to know,” he said, “how much I’ve appreciated the opportunities.”

When Gerry opened his mouth to beg for his life, Dax shoved the gun between his lips and pulled the trigger once more.

Gerry Connors died on his kitchen floor, three thousand miles and thirty years from the place where he’d first met the Blackwell family.

Abby had succeeded in lifting the headrest to its fully extended position, which required bracing her feet on the front of the seat and arching and twisting her back like an Olympic diver attempting a half gainer. She could feel the release buttons, but removing the headrest entirely required more pressure and a lifting motion, a feat that was not easy to execute when you were tied to the damned thing and each lift strangled you and each push at the release buttons numbed already clumsy fingers.

She was close, though. She was very close, and she was so intent on the task that she’d almost forgotten about the scene playing out on Dax’s phone.

Then came the gunshot.

She spun at the sound and slipped, and the headrest slid back into place. She could hear it clinking down, level by level, lock by lock, like an extension ladder closing.

“Shit!” she cried, the cord tight against her throat, her swollen fingers numb, all of her gains lost. She could see the display of the phone again, though, and so she was looking at it when a man’s horrified face came into view, the man Dax had called Gerry. Gerry’s lips parted, and blood ran over them and down his chin. Abby stared at the image in horror, and when the revolver appeared from offscreen and slipped between the man’s bloodied lips, she closed her eyes, a reflex action.

“I want you to know,” Dax said, “how much I’ve appreciated the opportunities.”

She didn’t see the second shot, but she heard it. The sound was loud on the phone, but out here in the driveway, beyond the walls of the brick house, it was softer, swift and insignificant.

That was how a human life could end. Neither with a whimper nor a bang — just a muffled pop that wouldn’t turn any heads in the neighborhood. The night didn’t pause for the kill shot. The night carried on.

The night always would.

Abby sat in the passenger seat, breathing hard, eyes squeezed shut, sweat on her brow from the exertion of her work on the headrest. She’d been so close. A fraction of an inch away, a few more seconds, that was all she’d needed, but now she would have to start over, and without even opening her eyes to check the phone display, she knew that time was short.

It was. She opened her eyes in time to see the kid moving for the door, and then she didn’t require the display anymore, because she could see Dax emerging from the shadows. He was walking at a leisurely pace, no sign of panic or even concern. There was a brown paper bag in his hand. The gun he’d just killed with was nowhere to be seen.

He used the key fob to unlock the Challenger, and too late Abby wondered whether there was any sign of her nearly successful effort to free herself. Dax opened the door, dropped into the driver’s seat, and looked her over quickly but carefully, but if he saw anything that troubled him, he didn’t show it.

“Sorry you had to watch that,” he said, apparently attributing Abby’s sweat to fear over what she’d seen play out on the phone. “Remember, the man was going to kill you too.”

When Abby didn’t answer, Dax lifted a hand in an It’s all right gesture and said, “No thanks needed. Happy to help.”

He tossed the brown paper bag into the backseat. It landed heavily, and Dax registered Abby’s response to the sound.

“There’s a wallet, a watch, a gun, a phone, and two hundred thousand dollars cash in there,” he said. “I’m afraid Gerry was robbed. But good news — if anything happens to me, all of that is yours.”

He picked up the phone from the center console and closed out of the concealed-camera application. The video disappeared, and audio replaced it — the feed from Tara Beckley’s hospital room. Abby recognized Shannon’s voice and a lower, male voice that she thought was the doctor who’d been with them previously. They were making small talk now, long pauses between comments.