The Masked Truth(49)

She glances away, unconvinced.

“Please,” I say. “If you want to do something for me, do this. Promise me that if I tell you to run, you’ll run.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I will. If there’s nothing I can do, I will.”

“Promise?”

I nod. “If either of us says to run, the other will run. We’ll get out. We’ll get help. We’ll tell our story.”

“Okay.”

She takes a look at my leg, saying she’s taken first aid, and I tell her how I skipped it for a concert, and she laughs and says, “You really are a rebel,” and I know she’s teasing me, but I swear, if I get out of this, I’m taking that damned course, and maybe a few more. Which should ensure that I’ll never need to use them, and if that’s true, I’ll never complain about wasting my time, not once.

My leg has stopped bleeding. I don’t know if that’s because of the belt, but I’m leaving it on to be sure. Brienne says the bullet gouged its way through, hitting muscle but nothing vital. Exactly as I expected. We plug it up with the socks while she jokes about the sanitariness of that, and I say at least it’s not the guys’ socks, and we both laugh, but it’s a reminder, too, that the guys are out there, and they don’t know where we are, and we need to get to them.

Until now it’s been so easy, so damned easy. Like playing a video game where you start off winning every battle with barely a health drop, and then all of a sudden, you’re hit with waves of enemies and you’re dying constantly. Which is fine in games, where you don’t actually die.

We’ve been sneaking around for hours, and every time we hear our enemy, we just need to duck into a room and wait for him to pass. This time, he’s not passing.

Gray and Predator tricked us back there. They’ve upped their game, and my fake-out with the blood trail doesn’t have them continuing along in the other direction. They’re searching every room in the area, knowing we haven’t gone far, and when I lean against the door, I hear them right there. The handle moves, and I’m holding it, and I frantically jerk my chin to Brienne. She grabs the knob with me, and whoever is on the other side jiggles it a little and moves on, presuming it’s another locked door.

We’re safe here for a few minutes. It seems best to wait and take off after they get farther away. I’m about to tell Brienne that when the door flies open. It’s Predator … in his stockinged feet.

I lash out. Again, I don’t think, I just hit. All I have are my fists, but as I’m swinging I see blood on his shirt and aim right for it. Right for the spot I stabbed him.

As my fist makes contact, Brienne slams the door on him. It hits his arm and the gun falls. She dives after it as Predator grabs for me, and I hear Gray’s booted footsteps, running from some other hall. I manage to elbow Predator in the injured spot again, and he falls back. Then Brienne fires.

I don’t see where the bullet hits him. It does hit. I know that. I see him fall back. But we’re both stumbling over him, getting into the hall as fast as we can.

We hear Gray coming, footsteps thundering along the hall. Brienne turns to me and says, “Run.”

I shake my head and grab her arm and say, “No, come on,” and she waves the gun and says, “I’ll slow him down. Run.”

“No, we—”

“You promised.”

“This isn’t—”

“Yes, it is.” She meets my gaze. “Let me be brave, Riley. It’s my turn.”

I don’t know if I would have run. I don’t know if I could have. But she gives me a shove, and my wounded leg throws me off balance, and when I recover she’s running the opposite way, toward the hall Gray is coming out of, and she fires and he lets out a curse, his boots squeaking as he stops short, and then she takes off, racing down the adjoining hall, and there’s nothing I can do except go the other way, the way she wanted me to go, because if I follow her, then her distraction was for nothing. She has the lead. She fires again, so he’ll know which way she went.

If I follow, she might shoot me by accident. If I follow, he might shoot me on purpose. If I follow, my leg won’t let me keep up, and I’ll ruin everything. I’ll get her killed.

So I run. I run the other way, and I barely make it around the corner when Gray appears. I peer past the edge just enough to see him going after Brienne. And there’s nothing I can do except pray, and it’s not enough. I know it’s not enough, because God isn’t there to solve my problems for me—He gave me the tools I need to do it myself, and right now those tools fail me. I can think of no solution to help Brienne. I can only run.

I get around the next corner when I hear that now-familiar pfft from a suppressed shot.

I catch the sound, and I hear a thump. The thump of a falling body. I swing my back to the wall, and I squeeze my eyes shut, and I pray like I’ve never prayed before.

Let that be Brienne’s shot. Let her have killed Gray, and maybe I shouldn’t think that—for her sake, because I don’t want her to be responsible for a man’s death, however terrible he was. Then I hear Gray mutter, “Stupid little bitch,” and his boots clomp off down the hall, and I fall to the floor and cry.





CHAPTER 19


I sit on the floor, my back against the wall, and I let the tears fall.