Vicki Pettersson - The Given

Grif trudged over to the grave. Zicaro had ceased writhing atop it and had picked up the pickax Justin had thrown him as well. Zicaro was injured, and Grif was starting the Fade, but they’d do what they could to live a little longer. Survival, it seemed, was the strongest instinct of all.

For a time, the only sound was that of their pickaxes striking the black earth. The volcanic rock was harder than the sandstone that burst from the desert floor farther north, but softer than the caliche plaguing most of the valley. Grif had to admit, Sal had picked a great place to bury him.

After the top layer was dislodged, the digging became easier. His wound and age caused Zicaro to flag, but he pressed on, clearly intent on seeing the diamonds he was likely to die for. Eighteen inches straight down now. It wouldn’t be long.

“Go wide,” Zicaro suddenly said, grunting as he cut away more of the dense earth. “They’re going to want us to make room for three.”

Evie heard him and cocked her weapon. “No talking!”

“Unless Justin here has changed his mind about that as well.”

“You heard the woman, Zicaro,” Grif grunted, sweating and focused. “No talking.”

“Fine. Just thought you’d want to know what’s gonna happen to your dearest treasure.”

The vicious heat in Zicaro’s words couldn’t keep Grif from freezing. He swiveled slowly to look at the old man and, locating him, still saw only darkness.

“She’s in the car,” Zicaro sneered. “Hog-tied . . . or at least zip-tied.”

Justin was suddenly there, squatting next to the hole, his gun level with Grif’s gaze. “Shut up and dig, Al.”

Zicaro thought about it for a moment before throwing down his pickax. He looked resolute, like he knew he wasn’t going to be able to figure a way out of this one. No sense in making it easy on his killers. “Make me,” he said, crossing his arms.

A howl rose on the wind as if in response, ripping the silence of the night. Zicaro jumped, and whirled in time to catch the moving silhouette of a lone coyote trotting along the ridge above them. Backlit, it lay opaque and flat against the far-off wink of the city lights.

Cursing, Evie shot at it.

Grif’s ears rang again with the report and he dropped his ax, clutching his skull with both hands. The throb in his head pulsed from the center of his brain now, sending concentric ripples of pain to batter his skull. His stomach began to ache in the left side, too, and he realized he’d felt both of these injuries before. They were the ones that’d killed him the first time around.

A blow across his face—Justin’s way of getting his attention—brought him back to the present. It wasn’t much more than a slap, but it knocked his fedora from his head and gave the throb an extra kick. “Pick up your ax and—”

And Evie screamed behind him. Justin began to turn, but the dark shape that’d sprung from the desert floor was already in flight. Evie hit the volcanic floor on her back, the gun going off as she grunted under her attacker’s weight. Meanwhile, Grif did as Justin said. He picked up his ax and, using every ounce of strength left to him, lit up the left side of the crouching man’s face.

Yet he’d also lost his equilibrium, and momentum sent him headlong into his own old grave.

The move saved him. Justin recovered quickly, and shot at the first thing that moved. Zicaro grunted once, fell atop Grif, and didn’t move again. Justin then trained the gun between Grif’s eyes, but behind him was a figure haloed in moonlight. Her hands were bound by zip ties . . . but there was still enough room to grip a shovel. With one solid thwack, she sent Justin sailing into the grave as well. Grif’s body was now trapped beneath two still men, and a third—his own aged bones—lay beneath him.

For a moment, there was only his labored breath to break the silence. The wind settled. The coyotes fell still. The city was just a far-off glittering thing.

“Grif?” Kit finally said, voice thick with worry that he wouldn’t answer.

Exhausted, in pain from injuries both old and new, Grif closed his eyes . . . and smiled into the cold night sky. “Hey, doll. Think you can give me a hand?”

He heard a click. Grif’s eyes shot open and he saw that two women suddenly loomed above him, and the second one had a gun planted at Kit’s temple.

“My husband,” Evie told Kit. “Always loved his five-shooter best.”

And she had already fired four times.

Neither Grif nor Kit spoke, causing Evie to laugh, a harsh ring of satisfaction in the cold night. “In fact, I’d say he was downright passionate about this gun. Same as with his lousy job as a P.I. Same with me. Every damned thing Griffin has ever done, he’s done with great passion.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Kit said. Her voice was stiff, but with a gun pressed against her skull, it was brave of her to speak at all.

“I agree. Passion can be the most powerful emotion in the world when properly directed. I tried to explain this to Justin once, when we first agreed to work together. I even explained the etymological root of the word, passus. It’s Latin. It means . . .”

“To suffer,” Kit finished for her. Evie blinked at Kit, who looked back, effectively turning her face directly into the gun. “Justin already explained all this to me, so you can save your fucking breath.”

Evie’s jigsaw expression reordered itself into a cold, firm mask. “Fine. No point in wasting time speaking to the dead, anyway. Though I do need to thank you. I still hadn’t figured out a way to get rid of Justin after the three of you were buried.”

“So that’s how you’ve lived the whole of your life?” Kit asked disdainfully. “Using men up, then burying them when you’re done?”

“It’s worked wonderfully.”

“I think the men might disagree.”

Grif was still too stunned at seeing these two women together, engaging, to speak at all. Weakness, too, turned him into a mere bystander, gaping as Evie turned fully to Kit, straightening in her fur.

“Yes, well, if it were left to the men in my life, I’d have spent the whole of it scrubbing other people’s toilets as my mother did, or thrusting snot-nosed brats from my body, having to reshape myself, my life, into whatever form they chose. This is a world led by men, dear. Problem is, if you follow them you’ll always be led into some form of destitution.”

“Yet you had a man who would’ve followed you anywhere,” Kit said.

Evie bristled, a shiver moving through her, ruffling her fur. “Fine. In retrospect, I can admit that Grif was different.” She didn’t look at him. “A true gentleman. Astonishingly loyal, a first for me. A man for whom the word ‘lover’ was created. I always thought of him as some sort of love savant. Capable of more of it than most, though that didn’t mean he still wasn’t stupid.”

“That kind of love isn’t stupid,” Kit fumed. “It’s fucking regal.”

Evie shook her head. “Trust me, girl. Time and again I’ve seen a woman grow mightier with age, strengthened by the hours she’s spent forced to her knees by a man. Wash his floor, bear his children, suck his cock. Meanwhile, those same men depend on their physical strength to get by. They think it’ll always be there, and when it finally begins to weaken, when they finally realize how dependent they’ve become on the women who run their worlds, they’re actually surprised . . . and as needy as suckling newborns.”

“You preyed on that,” Kit said.

“I learned early on that a man will give you everything if only you know what he values. You become that thing, an ingénue, a victim, a savior, but always hold a little back. It’s the small dignity you keep for yourself that will let you rise up and, in time, take it all. As I have.”