The Masked Truth(27)

Cantina isn’t just alive—he’s up and around. Maybe not exactly ready for a triathlon, but he’s sitting in a chair, his shirt and mask off, chest sloppily bound with what looks like his shirt. It’s bloody and he’s pale, leaning on the desk for support, but he’s alive and he’s conscious and he’s up.

Shit.

All of our plans had presumed that at least the last variable would be false. That even if he was conscious, he’d be lying on the floor in so much pain that Max could sneak up and gag him while I searched.

We peek inside the room. My gaze travels over it, looking for dropped weapons or anything we can use to bang on the door. I know where Maria lies and I don’t look there. I can’t. But as I’m scanning the rest of the room, I see Gideon and my knees wobble.

Max steadies me and then tugs me back down the hall muttering, “Prat,” and I have no idea what that means, but I can tell it’s not a compliment and I stiffen, because Gideon is dead. Dead. I can still see him. His open eyes fixed on the ceiling, his blood-covered hands pressed against his wound. The look on his face …

I reach for my crucifix. It’s not there. Hasn’t been there in four months. They’d taken it off in the hospital.

No! I don’t need a hospital. I’m fine. It’s them. The Porters. You need to help them.

A whispered voice, one paramedic to the other. She’s in shock, poor kid.

I did know the Porters were dead, but I still wanted the paramedics to take care of them, to do … something? They were shot. They were covered in blood. I was fine. Because I’d hidden under the bed.

They took off my crucifix in the hospital, and I never put it back on. That wasn’t an oversight. I’d worn it since my parents gave it to me at my first Communion. The only other time I’d removed it was after my dad died, when I flung it across the room and cursed God in every way I knew. I had it back on for the funeral, but only because it made my mother anxious to see me without it, to know that in a moment of crisis I had abandoned my faith.

But I didn’t put it back on after the Porters. It isn’t a crisis of faith. I’m not sure I ever had faith, not the way Mom does. Mine is more like Dad’s—I believe there is a God, and I believe in honoring Him, but I’m not sure how much of a role He plays in our lives, and I don’t blame Him for that, because it’s up to us, isn’t it? It’s up to us to say we’ll be a good person because that’s what we believe is right, not because it’ll earn us a better place in the next life.

I still reach for my crucifix, remembering the look on Gideon’s face, the horror, as if he saw the Grim Reaper coming for him, scythe raised, and he could do nothing to save himself.

So yes, I stiffen at Max’s insult, but when I look over, there’s no hardness in his eyes, no He brought this on himself. He’s shaking his head, his gaze downcast, and it’s like when Travis broke his arm doing a stunt on his dirt bike, and Lucia and I rolled our eyes and called him an idiot, not because we blamed him, just, well, just because, and maybe, a little, acknowledging that it was kinda his fault.

Gideon didn’t deserve to die. Gideon was afraid, maybe more than any of us. I saw that in the lineup, when he panicked at being touched. Afraid and lashing out to hide it. But despite that excuse, he still did—stupidly and senselessly and thoughtlessly—begin and perpetuate the chain of events that led to his death. His actions led to the death of Maria, lying fifteen feet away in her Happy Bunny tee, and of Aimee, in the hall—brains splattered on the wall—and maybe of Lorenzo, if we didn’t get help soon.

Lorenzo. Don’t forget Lorenzo. That’s my new crucifix, my new talisman, the shining object I must keep in front of me at all times.

“You need to take him out,” I whisper as we move farther down the hall to talk.

“Take him out?”

“Cantina. Subdue him. Without causing a commotion. If he’s too alert, I’ll distract him while you sneak up. You take him down, and we’ll gag him.”

He stares at me. Then he says, “I can’t do that.”

“You need to, and yes, I’m saying that because you’re a guy. He’s bigger than me. A lot bigger.”

“I understand what you mean, Riley, but …” He shakes his head, and there’s a look in his eyes, that same flinch as when I’d raised my hand, the same as when he’d avoided getting into it with Gideon.

I remember reading that the chance of abusing your spouse or child is higher if you were a victim of abuse. Is that it, then? It must be. He’s heard that, in therapy, and he shies in the other direction, avoiding violence, avoiding fights, and I want to say, But this is important! You can break your rule for this, except that’s not right. It isn’t like going vegetarian and then your life depends on eating a steak. This would be a line he didn’t dare cross, the proverbial slippery slope, like me making sure I’m out of bed by eight every day because I don’t ever want to get out of bed these days, and if I give in, just once, because I’m really tired, I’ll never get up again.

“It’s my condition,” he says. “My heart. Undue exertion and all that.”

I nod, absently. “We need to disable him. There’s no way to sneak in and grab the meds. We don’t know where they are. Aimee didn’t tell us …” Because she didn’t think she needed to. She expected to be here, with us. “We need to hunt for the meds and the counselors’ phones.”