Kristen Simmons - Breaking Point

“But one main reason, I suppose,” he finished flatly.

“Care to elaborate?” challenged Chase.

“Not really,” he said. And his head hung down, as if in shame. As if he were capable of such a human emotion. “But for the record, she kissed me .”

The shock exploded within me.

“You…” I began, ready to spring on him again. To scratch out his eyes and choke him with my bare hands. He spoke as if my mother’s murder held the same gravity of some stupid, fraudulent kiss! As if either one of these occurrences could be the reason Chase might want to kill him.

“Stay back,” Chase whispered to me. I felt a string break somewhere inside, beneath the hardened exterior of fury. That kiss was a secret I would have taken to the grave.

I stood as tall as I could, feeling Chase warm and solid against my back, and Wallace just inches in front of me. I placed my hands squarely on his narrow chest and pushed him away.

“We have to get out,” I hissed at Wallace, every muscle braced to defend myself. “He’s brought others!”

“He’s brought no one,” said Wallace.

“I got kicked out,” said Tucker. “Because of you.” His voice was rougher than the last time I’d seen him, but it still sent waves of dread through me. A hateful, green-eyed gaze met mine.

“Hey, come on, man,” said Sean, nursing his jaw and grimacing at his recruit.

Wallace put one hand on my vibrating shoulder and clamped down slowly, like a tightening vise. Then he turned around to Tucker and told him authoritatively:

“We play nice around here. We play nice, or we don’t play at all.”

Tucker scoffed, then stared at the wall beside him, as if it might burn him to look at me one second longer. The air hummed with tension.

“I don’t know what he told you,” I said, voice shaking with adrenaline. “But he lies. That’s all he does. He’s here to take us down.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” said Tucker, his face dirty, his expression flat. “I liked you better when you thought you were dying.” He turned to Sean, who was now snarling in my defense. “If she and Jennings are here, forget it. I’m out.”

Every nerve crackled within me like the end of a live wire. The hallway thickened with spectators, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Tucker. I had to watch him, be ready for anything.

“Cool off,” said Wallace loudly. I tried to jerk away but his grip on my bicep did not loosen. “We knew he was coming, remember? The recruit from the Knoxville base. Billy retrieved his discharge papers from the mainframe after he made contact with Sean last week.”

I lowered my center of gravity, ready to punch, kick, bite, whatever I had to do should Tucker spring on me.

“We need him, Miller. To get into the base. He’s got information no one else has. And now we have you to back up if it’s legitimate. We need to make this work.”

It took me a second to grasp what he was saying. He meant for Chase to go, but for me to stay. With Tucker Morris.

“Make it work without me,” I said.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Riggins, face grim. “You know what it’s like out there. You’re wanted in connection with the sniper murders.” He sounded genuinely worried.

“I’m only wanted because he turned me in,” I spat, jerking my head toward Tucker.

“That, actually,” ticked Tucker, “is not true.”

“Like I believe you!”

“I’m guilty of most everything she’ll accuse me of,” said Tucker, now speaking to everyone. “But not that. They arrested me before I made it back to my office. You remember Delilah, don’t you, Ember? You should. You tied her up and locked her in a cell.”

An image came before me of an elderly woman with white hair and blue, translucent irises.

“Did you kill her, too?” I asked. “You said you would if she ever told anyone.”

“I never said that.” He glanced at his feet. I couldn’t deny he looked beaten down. I reminded myself this was all part of his plan to lure us in.

“The guard on rounds found her. Lucky for you, she’d refused to talk, but they had a whole team waiting to question me when I got back. I said you were dead, completed, just like Jennings.” His expression turned sour. “The gatekeeper didn’t agree.”

The gate guard at the back of the complex had let me out to deliver the body—Chase’s body—to the crematorium, just as I’d done the days before. He would have seen Tucker follow me, then return alone.

“And they decided to kick you out, but not report me missing for another month? Let me guess, they wanted to give me a head start,” I said.

Tucker scoffed. “You think they wanted the region to know someone—a girl, no less—escaped the holding cells? How do you think that makes them look? At least now they can build you up as accessory to a serial killer.”

I had no retort. Tucker’s story was actually possible. And now it made sense why I’d been listed with the other four suspects. The MM wanted me dead, and linking me to the sniper made me appear dangerous, reckless. Capable of escape. They could justify admitting I bettered them if I was a hardened criminal.

“But… he’s a murderer,” I stammered.

“Do you think he’s the first person here to be called that?” Wallace was wild-eyed now, and shaking. “Do you think I’m so different?”

Every voice was silent. Every eye on Wallace. Even mine, which had torn away from Tucker’s petulant form.

Wallace had killed people. Maybe Article violators. Maybe people just like my mother. And others—Riggins, Houston, Lincoln—they might have, too. Not Sean, Rebecca had told me, but he had taken girls at the reform school down to the shack. Girls like Rosa Montoya, who’d ridden beside me on the bus. Who’d turned hollow after the torture Sean and the guards had inflicted upon her.

I’d lived here for weeks feeling safer than I had since my mother’s arrest, avoiding the most obvious fact in the world: I didn’t talk about my past, and neither did they .

It isn’t so bad, I told myself, even though I trembled with this new reality. They’d done bad things; they weren’t bad people. Hadn’t Chase been just inches away from that cliff as well? And he’d come back to me, redeemed himself. As had Wallace, and these others, too.

But not Tucker. Tucker Morris could never be good.

He was sulking now, but that was just pretend. He was trying to pull me in with his tattered street clothes and his dirty face. With his fake discharge that Billy had supposedly seen on the FBR mainframe and his anger, like I’d ruined his precious career. I wouldn’t fall for it.

“It’s him or us— both of us—Wallace. Make your choice,” I said firmly, but my thoughts begged him to see reason, to believe us about Tucker and to begin a full-scale evacuation.

“I should go,” said Tucker. “I’ll go… I don’t know. I’ll go somewhere.”

“You’re staying,” Wallace told him.

I felt my knees shake for the first time.

Wallace had chosen. For the resistance, I told myself, nothing personal . But it felt personal. He’d hooked me with that family talk, and like a sucker, I’d bought it. As though it could fill the void within me. I had to tell myself three times to move before I finally did.

“Can I get our things, please?”

Wallace’s face twisted. “Someone get their bag. Just what they came in with.” He turned back in to the supply room.

A minute later Billy appeared, our backpack in hand. He didn’t look up at me. Better that way. I hated losing friends.

Sean swore a lot, but couldn’t leave while information about Rebecca was on the line. Riggins tried to reason with Wallace. In the end it was Lincoln and Houston that escorted us downstairs, past the smoke-filled lobby. Past John the landlord, who unknowingly reminded us to bring back a pack of smokes. And then we were outside on the street in the unfriendly morning light, exposed to whomever challenged us, barred from the only place that had felt like home in a long time.