Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(68)

A long beat of silence passed.

“If you knew all this, why didn’t you say something before?” Sean’s voice was raised. “I’ve asked you a dozen times if you knew anything else about Rebecca!”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you!” Tucker pleaded. “I didn’t know who to trust.”

There was fire in his petulant green eyes, but Sean didn’t see it. He swore softly, and then his hands unclenched, and he said, “All right. I get it.”

“Sean,” I warned.

Chase’s words from Greeneville echoed in my head: This is what he does. He digs his way in and gets under your skin. And before you know it, he’s ripped your life apart.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Tucker told Sean. “I’ll get you in. From here on out, I’ve got your back. That goes for all of you.”

I was about to tell him to shove it, but Sean had shifted and, to my disgust, held out his hand to help Tucker up.

Chase very deliberately removed his gun from the holster. I held my breath and squeezed the skirt in my fists.

“Chase,” Sean’s voice quaked. “Come on, man. He knows how to get Becca.…”

Chase handed the gun to Sean.

“Talk,” he told Tucker.

With pressured speech, Tucker explained how he and Cara had walked across Greeneville toward her cousin’s. She’d pointed out the house; a small place with a white sedan out front. Tucker had guessed that they were wealthy, and Cara had told him her cousin’s husband worked for Horizons Weapons Manufacturing. As they’d gotten closer, they’d noticed the squad car tracking them a block back.

“It was close to curfew,” he said. “I thought they were going to give us a citation for an Article Four.”

I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest. Chase and I were always careful to portray ourselves as married in order to avoid a citation for indecency, but a couple walking the streets so close to curfew was bound to draw attention. Maybe Tucker was still too impenetrable to anticipate this, but Cara should have known.

In order not to endanger Cara’s cousin, they’d passed the house and ducked into a nearby ditch.

“But the patrol hit the sirens,” said Tucker. “So we ran.”

They’d hidden in a large, tubular cement drain packed with trash and waited for the MM to lose them. Thirty minutes, Tucker said. Until the rats got used to their presence and came to visit.

After a while Cara had ventured out, but Tucker had gotten a cramp in his leg. He’d stayed under cover while shaking it out.

“It happened fast, man. Fast. I heard someone on the road overhead, and I looked over at her and she fell. Just like that. Shot in the shoulder, straight through the heart. Done before she hit the ground. I went out the opposite side of the drain and hit the road running.”

“Coward,” muttered Chase.

“I’m the coward?” said Tucker in disbelief. “It was a code one, Jennings. No arrest, no questioning. They’re killing any girl they think might be Miller. They’re the cowards.”

For a moment Tucker’s words made no sense. It was like he was speaking another language. And then their meaning set in.

Code One, Chase had told me. They can fire on suspicion alone.

It had happened. Someone had been killed in my name. Someone had died as the sniper. A girl I’d known. I didn’t feel relief—my name wouldn’t be cleared once they realized it wasn’t me. I felt like I was going to throw up.

I didn’t kill her, I told myself. But I didn’t believe it. She was dead because I’d escaped those holding cells, because I lived. Because my death was the death the MM wanted. What kind of world was this where people had to die for others to live?

I backed away. I couldn’t listen anymore. Not just because I’d known Cara, because I’d worked beside her in the resistance and now she was gone, but because of the sincere pain in Tucker’s voice. He hadn’t hurt so much when he’d killed my mother, whom he’d shot in cold blood. When he’d been the coward. What was it that made Cara so much better than her? What made him care? Why could he feel remorse now, but not then?

And Billy. We’d left him alone with Marco and Polo, and now he was gone.

I wandered back into the grass, until I came to a wooden fence, glowing silver in the moonlight, cracked and splintered just like me. I tilted my head back and stared at the sky and felt the exhaustion bend me and weaken me and make my knees tremble. I hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours, but I was too afraid to close my eyes.

My hands filled the deep pockets of the uniform skirt Cara had worn, and I felt it. A copper bullet, caught in the wool folds. The one I’d shown her that I’d found. She must have put it in her pocket and forgotten it when we were changing.

I heard Chase before I saw him. I recognized the way his boots rolled on the grass. That tentative step when he thought I might bolt like a rabbit. I released the bullet, but felt it, solid against my leg.

“It’s not your fault,” he said quietly.

“I know.” I grasped the fence hard.

“No, you don’t.”

I punched the fence hard enough to break the rotted wood. My hand stung, but my breath came more steadily. He didn’t crowd me, but stayed close, knowing exactly the kind of comfort I needed.