Kate Brian - Endless

Tristan let out a weak, gurgly moan.

“We have to move,” Joaquin said. “We can’t let him…”

“Die.” Lauren spoke for the first time in five minutes. She’d been so quiet I’d forgotten she was there, but now she turned her dark eyes up at me and stared, her arms limp like a rag doll’s at her sides. “ Die is the word you’re looking for.”

No one spoke. No one breathed. This wasn’t something we were ever supposed to face. I crouched down next to Lauren and took her hand. “It’s going to be all right.”

“How?” Her voice went childish as her bottom lip trembled. “How is it?”

I swallowed hard and looked to the others for help. Their faces were blank. A terrified blank. “I don’t know, but the sooner we get them back to the mayor, the sooner we can figure it out. Come on.”

I gripped Lauren’s upper arm and helped her up from the floor. Then Joaquin slid his hands under Tristan’s arms and lifted, letting Tristan’s head loll back against his chest, where it left a smear of blood. Bea grabbed beneath his calves, and Lauren, Cori, and I led the way out the door, down the stairs, and back into the night. The rain was sharp and driven, like tiny pinpricks against my skin.

This was not what I had imagined when we’d come out on this mission. I’d seen myself indignantly spitting questions at Tristan, him hanging his head in shame. I’d seen us gathering at the bridge to free the innocents from the Shadowlands. When we’d driven down here, I’d thought I knew exactly what I was doing. But now I was more confused than ever.

When we got to Tristan’s car, I opened the doors to the back. Bea and Joaquin carefully loaded Tristan onto the seat, laying his head down gingerly.

“We’ll take Nadia in the Jeep,” Fisher suggested.

“There’s not enough room,” Bea said.

“I’ll stay with you guys.” Kevin climbed into the front of the SUV.

I glanced around—at Kevin, at Joaquin, at Tristan. There was nothing left for me to do except climb into the back with him. The guy who’d betrayed me. The guy who had sent my family to hell. I thought about putting his head on my lap, but it seemed too intimate. So instead, I slammed the door, walked to the other side, and put his feet up awkwardly on my lap, every inch of my body tense enough to snap.

“You okay?” Joaquin asked as everyone else crammed into the Jeep.

I grit my teeth. “Let’s just go.”

Joaquin got in, and the engine roared to life. He flipped a quick U-turn and started up the hill toward town, the windshield wipers flapping a frantic beat from side to side. I couldn’t bear to look at Tristan’s face, so instead I stared out the window at the rain.

“It doesn’t make any sense. Who would do this?” I said as we drove out onto the town square, the tires sending walls of water flying up on either side of the car. “Who would attack them and leave them for dead? We’ve all been looking for him. We all want answers.”

“I don’t know,” Joaquin said, glancing over his shoulder at Tristan. “I just hope he lives long enough to explain what the hell is going on.”

The front tire bumped over a huge pothole, and Tristan groaned.

“Pete,” he muttered.

“What?” I said.

Kevin turned in his seat, his dark eyes alarmed. “What did he just say?”

“Pete…killed Nadia,” Tristan whispered hoarsely.

Joaquin nearly drove over the curb at the north end of town, but he turned the wheel at the last second, sending me slamming into the door. Tristan started to roll off the seat, but I grasped his shirt and steadied him before he could fall.

“Where the hell is Pete?” Kevin demanded.

“He’s in the other car!” I said.

“Call them,” Joaquin demanded, slamming on his brakes in front of the police station. “Do it now!”

Kevin fumbled for his walkie-talkie. “Lauren! Come in! Is Pete with you? Over.”

Joaquin was out of the car and storming toward the Jeep when the answer came.

“No. Why? We thought he was with you. Over.”

In the side mirror I saw Joaquin brace his hands on the top of Bea’s Jeep and bow his head. I looked at Kevin, my heart sinking into my toes. “Do you remember seeing him in the room at the house?”

He shook his head. “No. Do you?”

I closed my eyes and took a breath, cursing my own stupidity. But how could I have known? There was no way I could have known what we were going to find, let alone that one of our friends was the perpetrator. “He left the door open behind him. I thought he did it to keep from making noise.”

“I don’t understand,” Kevin said. “What the hell is going on?”

Tristan moaned again and turned on his side. The back of his head was a crater of blood and hair and shards of bone. I swallowed back a heaving breath.

“Pete knew what we were going to find in that room,” I said grimly. “He left the door open so he could run.”

“I don’t understand. If Pete had already found them, why didn’t he just tell us when we bumped into him on Magnolia?” Lauren wondered as we trudged across the sopping grass toward the mayor’s house. She had just radioed all the Lifers, telling them to be on the lookout for Pete. “Why did he let us walk in there all clueless?”

“Because clearly he had something to hide,” Kevin said. “He had his walkie-talkie. If he wanted to, he could have reported it right away. But instead, he attacked them and left them for dead.”

Dead. My brain still couldn’t wrap itself around the fact that we were using that word. Nadia was dead. And Tristan…

I looked ahead at Joaquin and Bea. Tristan’s body hung limply between them as they shoved through the back door of the house. Cori, Kevin, Lauren, and I hung back while Fisher walked past with Nadia slung over his shoulder. Cori’s head was bowed and her shoulders shook. I barely knew her, but I put my arm around her as we followed the others inside. She’d lost her best friend. I knew the sucking void that opened inside you—I was experiencing it right now with Darcy gone—and I wished there was something more I could do.

Every light was on in the kitchen and the wide-open great room beyond it, making for a blinding contrast to the dark night from which we’d come. The clinic had officially closed down now that the last patient had checked out, and the beds had been replaced with the original, beach-chic couches and chairs. The mayor was sitting in the living room in conference with Dorn and Grantz, while Krista stood in the kitchen wearing a yellow dress, making some kind of smoothie with a very loud, very grating blender. She blanched when Joaquin and Bea tromped past her, and the noise died.

“Tristan?”

Her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned forward, her hips pressing against the kitchen island as her hands flattened against its surface, as if she was clinging to this place, willing herself not to faint.

Fisher trudged across the hardwood floor, his massive boots leaving muddy footprints, and gently deposited Nadia onto the one empty couch. Joaquin and Bea shuffled toward the opposite one, which was occupied by the mayor and Dorn, who both stood up to scuttle out of the way, startled into motion. Neither could take their eyes off Tristan as Joaquin and Bea laid him down. His skin was noticeably paler than it had been at the gray house. When his head fell sideways, exposing his wound, the mayor’s mouth set in a grim line.

“What happened?” Dorn asked.

“Nadia’s dead,” Fisher said in his blunt way. He stepped to the side of the couch and took a wide-legged stance, like a soldier reporting for duty. I was starting to notice that when things got hairy, he reverted to this no-nonsense posture, his own personal defense mechanism.