The Countdown (The Taking #3)(30)

She continued to watch me, and I wanted to tell her to look away, even as the thought struck me: my obsession with time. My preoccupation with the passage of days, hours, minutes, and seconds . . . ever since I’d returned.

Was it possible . . . could that have been why all along? Had my body been somehow programmed to sense their arrival?

“So what . . . I’m some sort of . . . clock? Like a countdown—”

Blood sprayed across my face, almost before the sound of the gunshot split the air.

I blinked blood out of my eyes, and tasted it between my teeth. It had splattered all over my arms and on the blue-green of the gown I was wearing. No wonder it took me so long to register what had happened.

Blondie never had that luxury—that moment of clarity—before her eyes, which had been clear blue and laser-focused on me just a second earlier, had gone suddenly and absolutely blank.

Then every muscle in her body wilted as she’d collapsed to the floor. On her way down, her forehead banged solidly against the side of the metal gurney I was strapped to. It was the only sound I’d heard, other than the bullet that disappeared inside her brain.

I was still gaping. Trying to comprehend what . . . and . . . why, when I saw Eddie Ray standing in the doorway, holding a gun.

“Oh my god . . .” I gasped at him. “What . . . ? Why did you do that?” Chunks of bone and flesh clung to my skin. Blondie’s bone and skin.

“She’s a talker.”

I shuddered at his icy explanation, the realization that the head shot wasn’t the kind of wound Blondie could heal from finally sinking in.

“About . . . me? Y-you . . . you didn’t have to . . . kill her.” I’d never stuttered before, not the old me, but my teeth were chattering and my words tripped over my tongue. “Sh-she . . .” My throat stung. “Said it d-didn’t matter if I knew. She s-said I w-was never getting away.”

“Not her place to decide.” Eddie Ray set the gun down next to one of the monitors. I had no idea how he could be so cavalier, so whatever about what he’d just done.

This time, drugs had nothing to do with the spinning of the room. I needed to get a grip. To be as collected as Eddie Ray was. “Was she right? About what she said? Am I some sort of countdown clock?”

Eddie Ray reached for a stool, one that didn’t look as ancient as everything else in this place—this asylum. He avoided Blondie’s body, parking it instead on the other side of the table. Straddling the seat, he cocked his head to look at me.

Then he reached down and brushed at something near the corner of my eye, and I felt it . . . like he’d picked a wound that hadn’t quite scabbed over all the way. I knew what it was: a piece of Blondie.

I was wearing a dead girl all over me.

He chuckled. Chuckled. Like this was somehow funny. Like there was even the remotest humor to be found in any of this. He leaned close and the urge to flee kicked in.

I’d heard of animals that had literally chewed off their own limbs just to escape the jaws of a bear trap, and that’s how I felt. Like I would be willing to chew off one of my own arms or legs if it meant getting away from Eddie Ray.

“According to our buyers, those alien f*ckers are already on their way . . .” God, why did everyone have to do that eye tic thing? I knew who he meant. “It’s just a matter of when. Could be days.”

Days.

I concentrated on that rather than the stomach acid eating my throat. Days could mean anything. Days could add up to weeks or months, or even years.

I thought of all the mornings I’d been gripped by pain . . . was that what I’d been sensing? Their approach? Their nearness?

How many days had there been already?

I thought of the way I’d been tracking time, the strange numbers I’d heard in my head and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.

I concentrated, trying to remember what today’s number was. Which number was repeating itself in my head right now, at this very moment?

Thirteen. That was the number.

Was that the countdown to their arrival?

They were coming. But why?

“So?” he asked. “Are they right? Can you feel those little mothers?” Eddie Ray angled his face so our mouths were almost touching and I wished I couldn’t taste the rancidness of his breath.

I refused to answer him. No way would I ever, not in a million years, tell him anything.

He didn’t seem to need my answer. “Are you afraid?” he asked, grinning down at me.

I curled my lip at him. “Aren’t you?”

But Eddie Ray scoffed at the idea. “I won’t be anywhere near you by then. But don’t worry, don’t take it personal. In the end, this is really just about business.”

“Business? You mean all of this just comes down to making a couple of bucks? That girl . . . she was . . . you just shot her, for what? Money? If you really believe they’re coming, then you’re talking about an alien race heading to Earth, and you don’t even know what they want.” My voice rose. “How is this just business?”

I thought of the message—what Tyler had said, what my dad had overheard: The Returned must die. Maybe I shouldn’t even care about any of that when this was the end for me—they’d already beaten me . . . beaten us.

But I did.

“It just is,” he spat, his patience with me reaching its end. His cheeks and neck and forehead went red and splotchy. “And it’s more than just a couple of bucks. It’s enough to buy our freedom if I play my cards right. Freedom from all this. From the No-Suchers. From pretty much everything. We’ll never have to worry again. All we have to do is deliver you in one piece.” He jumped up, knocking the stool out from behind him. “The thing is, though, it’d be even better if we could’ve gotten our hands on the other one too—that Tyler kid. We could make a helluva lot more for two of you. That was the plan, you know? She was supposed to grab both of you. Her mistake.” He moved to where the blond girl was lying and stared down at her. I couldn’t see her body, but I watched as Eddie Ray nudged the dead girl with his foot. His eyes were glittering when he looked up again. “Like I said, it’s just business.”