Where Silence Gathers (Some Quiet Place #2)(82)
“You bitch!” he snarls, leaning away and kicking at me. I hold on like a pit bull, feeling something inside me crack when his heel makes contact. I can’t hold back a scream of my own, but I don’t relent. When it becomes apparent his hold on the gun isn’t going to break, I put all my body weight into the struggle and take the gun in both fists, slowly turning it toward him. Travis fights it—though he’s weakened—and for a minute we’re locked together, straining and trembling and grunting. My middle finger travels from the handle to the trigger, just barely brushing it. Travis’s elbow knocks my jaw and I grit my teeth and push harder. Stretching and reaching … reaching …
The tunnel detonates in a blend of white and soundlessness.
Blood splatters my face, and I’m easing away from Travis. The air around us becomes considerably cooler as something approaches. Travis isn’t moving now, and his eyes are as glassy as Eggs’s were when I found her at the bottom of the stairs. A shadow moves. Death. This time he doesn’t address me. He just leaves, taking Travis’s soul with him.
Some part of me is aware that I’m pressing my back to the far wall, putting distance between me and the dark pool leaking out of the body. The body. Dead body. I killed someone. Travis is dead, dead, dead.
Minutes or hours pass—I’m not sure which—and my brain registers that a voice is coming from a long distance. It’s telling me I can put the gun down, so my hands open and something falls out of them. Hits the earth with a soft sound. A face looms close and I blink. Again and again, until Hope’s blurred features come into focus. Eventually I figure it out—she was the one who broke Travis’s wrist and made it possible for me to claim the life I didn’t realize I wanted.
“Thought you couldn’t interfere?” I rasp.
The Emotion’s eyes take in my dirty hands, my torn clothes, my battered face. “It was worth it,” she says. With that, she vanishes. And I’m alone.
No, wait. I tilt my head and my breathing quickens. Maybe I’m wrong again, because a new sound echoes through the tunnels. Not a footstep or a voice. I don’t know what it is. Is there a chance this still isn’t over? Using the wall for support, I stand on shaky legs. The circle of light goes fuzzy for a moment and it seems like I’ve died and entered a realm made entirely of muted color and sharp sensation. One of my ribs feels broken. All I want to do now is lie down and let the darkness take me for the rest of the night, but I resist the urge. I’ve allowed it to have me for too long. So I pick up the lantern, ignoring the jarring voices of my wounds. After a long hesitation I get the gun, too. Pretend that it’s not wet and cold and sticky. Then I make my way through the mines again. With each step the sound gets louder, human and strangely muffled. “Angus?” I call, wincing.
The sound answers, more frantic and adamant. Up ahead, another light appears. It spills out of a tunnel opening to the right. I falter in surprise, and Emotions join me in the tunnel. I lick my lips and take comfort in their presence; they’re proof that I’ve survived. Cautiously, I round the corner. Their hands slip off my shoulders as I walk toward the brightness. And when I realize who it is making the sounds, his eyes glinting with a sheen of terrified tears, I stop. My grip on the gun, out of habit or pure instinct, tightens.
“You,” I whisper.
He’s tied to a chair, secured by layers and layers of duct tape. Even his mouth is covered, preventing him from shouting for help. I stand there, gaping, and Travis’s words suddenly make sense. We don’t have Saul, he’d said. I thought that meant they had no one, but I hadn’t let him finish. And the note. I have what you want most.
Nate Foster stares up at me.
His gaze begs me to help him. Feeling as though the tunnel has collapsed and I’m walking through rocks and dirt, I slowly approach. Of its own volition, my hand reaches out and peels the tape off his face. The second it’s gone Foster gasps, his chest expanding and contracting violently. “Thank y-you,” he says. Nothing else. It makes my blood run cold, that these are the first words he’s spoken to me. An expression of gratitude.
I study him, noting details I hadn’t been able to see when there was so much distance between us. One of his front teeth is chipped. There’s a splotchy birthmark hovering just above his jawline. His hair is receding to the point that it’s hardly more than fuzz. He’s ugly in every sense, which makes sense; only an ugly person could murder an entire family.
It occurs to me that Foster is completely silent now. He sits in that chair and, though fear still lingers in his countenance, there’s also an eerie calm. Like he recognizes me. My skin prickles and I set the lantern down next to the one already here. “Do you know who I am?” I ask him quietly. The time for silence has passed. The gun has never been steadier in my palm.
“You’re Alexandra Tate,” Foster replies. And then he makes time stop when he says, “Go ahead. End it.”
This can’t be happening. I’m hallucinating or dreaming. “Do you know why—”
“Of course I do. I see their faces in my sleep. Every night. Just like I saw you sitting outside my house. I can never escape it … and I don’t deserve to. So just finish it, please. Now.” His Adam’s apple bobs, and Foster actually leans his head closer to the gun. His eyes flutter shut.
Shock roots me in place, until I’m a tree made of flesh and everything unresolved. “Y-you saw me?” I manage.