From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(100)
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
She could smell rust and rubber, dust and dirt, hear every breath he took from feet away, see his smug smile. Even in the end, he still didn’t believe he’d be caught, that he would pay.
“No, this is too messy for you, isn’t it? You like it nice and clean. No strings, no loose ends. Not until Hannah. And then Anne.”
“I’m not afraid of a little mess. And if it takes care of you, all the better. I should have killed you sooner. I considered it, did you know?”
“Oh?” Her voice was shockingly brave.
“I’ve been to your place so many times, looking for her necklace. It would have only taken climbing in your window once, and I could have ended you. Then we wouldn’t be here, would we?”
“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. And you could have gone on murdering hookers and teenagers and dumping them in the Hudson. Does it make you feel big and strong to kill them like you do?”
Keep him talking. Wait for Jon. Where is Jon?
“There’s power in holding someone’s life in your hands and squeezing until that life is gone. It’s over so fast, but it’s infinite. I remember each girl, every face. I see them in my dreams.” A perverted, evil smile stretched across his face.
“How did you kill Hannah?” she asked, knowing he would enjoy enlightening her, wondering if he’d ever spoken about it aloud, needing to distract him for both their sakes.
“She didn’t suspect me, not until I was dragging her inside. She fought almost as much as your friend Anne.”
She stopped breathing. Her finger twitched against the trigger.
“Oh, Anne. She was really pretty, you know? Really. Her being home was an unexpected surprise. Cleanup was a little…undesirable, but you know what they say. Do what you have to do, right?” He was so cool, like he was recalling changing a flat tire instead of murdering her best friend. “I’m sad to kill you this way. I’d much rather it was under different circumstances.”
She swallowed hard. “Who said I’d be the one dying today? Maybe it’ll be you.”
“No,” he said flatly, “I don’t think it will.”
Everything happened at once, but each event was separate in her mind, stretching out, splitting, and coming back together. She heard Rhodes’s gunfire, saw the flash just as she pulled her own trigger. Jon slammed into her, knocking her to the ground, and as the world tilted, she saw her bullet pass through Rhodes’s left eye, watched him crumple to the ground, his blood spilling out around his head in a halo of gore.
She lay stunned on the ground for a moment before she looked down, patting herself for an injury. But then her eyes found Jon, and nothing else mattered.
He had rolled off of her, the crimson bloom on his chest spreading with each heartbeat.
“Oh my God. Oh my God, Jon.” She pulled him into her lap, cradling his head in her arm.
She pressed her hand to his chest, and he laid his on top of hers just as she heard sirens in the distance.
“Sorry I took so long,” he whispered. He broke out coughing.
“Jesus, Jon. Look at me. Look at me.”
His eyes listed, moving slowly to meet hers. “Josie…Jo…I…I love you. I only ever…wanted you. S-sorry. I’m so sorry. So…” His lids fluttered.
“Stay with me, Jon.” Her voice broke, the fire in her throat burning out of control, stinging her nose and eyes. “Stay with me. I love you,” she pleaded, as if the words would save him. “I’ve always loved you. Please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She brushed his hair back from his gray face, laying her hand on his cheek. “Please, don’t leave me.”
She bent, holding him, rocking him as clarity washed over her. He was all she’d ever wanted, and she’d denied it, denied him for reasons that didn’t matter. Reasons that wouldn’t save him. Reasons that wouldn’t save her. She’d lost countless minutes and hours and weeks of his love, lost time that was finite and fleeting.
The chains and ropes that had bound her snapped and unraveled. She turned her back on her past and looked down into his eyes, touched his ashen skin, and realized too late that there was only one thing that mattered in her life, in the universe. She loved him. She would always love him.
Josie looked like an angel, a fiery angel with eyes that could stop the world from turning, her cheeks pink and wet with her tears.
Don’t cry. He thought he’d said it out loud, but his lips hadn’t moved, wouldn’t move. He wanted to touch her face, but his hands lay still. I love you, he tried to say as she shrank in his vision.
She turned and yelled to someone behind her. Then, she looked back down at him.
And, as she faded away, he said goodbye.
The silence in the theater room was broken by a small sob. Artemis stood, staring at the screen, motionless, as paramedics ran to Jon, pumping his dead heart, laying electric pads on his chest to shock him with a jolt that snapped his back in an arch. Josie stood and backed away with her hands on her mouth, her eyes full of horror, jumping when they shocked him again, and his body thumped against the ground. A gasping sob escaped her.
As the seconds stretched on, Artemis knew what she must do. Winning was irrelevant, the competition irrelevant. She saw Orion as he lay dying in her arms, felt the loss rip through her. And in that moment, her life connected with Josie’s in a way she hadn’t been able to grasp.