Friends Like These(45)

“Come on, he’s fine,” Finch said. “Trust me. Derrick can take care of himself.”

Unless that hadn’t been Derrick firing the gun. What if it was Frank’s men, just seizing the opportunity? Who said they had to keep their word on Maeve being first?

“Where are you going?” Stephanie called after me as I walked toward the door.

“To check on Derrick.”

“Hold on,” Jonathan said reluctantly. “I’ll go with you.”

Outside, there was just the quiet and the dark. No crumpled body on the porch, no pool of blood.

“What the fuck?” I said quietly. “Where is he?”

I listened for Derrick, for something, anything— but all I could hear was the distant sound of that fucking river.

“Derrick!” Jonathan called as he headed toward the far end of the porch. He turned back and shook his head. “Nothing down there.”

“Shit,” I said, on my way down the steps to the driveway, looking right and then left. Adrenaline had cleared my head a little, but the world still looked tilted and frayed.

“Do you think the contractors came back?” Jonathan was standing next to me now. “That Luke guy saw us at the Falls.”

“I doubt it,” I managed. There was no point in both of us feeling guilty. “Come on, let’s go around back.”

Derrick wasn’t behind the house either. There was nothing, no one, anywhere in sight.

“Derrick!” Jonathan shouted again. “Derrick!”

Silence. But then, suddenly, another loud crack, like the others, but this one in the distance beyond the trees at the edge of the property. We started toward the sound. Jonathan was next to me as we crashed into the woods, branches slashing at our faces. We slowed as we got deeper in, the trees thicker, the ground more uneven. No more gunshots, though. Only the sound of snapping sticks and the crunching leaves as we ran on, the light from Jonathan’s phone glowing white against the trees.

We were hit with a cool breeze when we finally burst through the other side, the sudden emptiness giving me vertigo. We slid to a stop on the damp ground to avoid the sharp cliff not more than fifteen feet ahead.

“Holy shit,” Jonathan gasped, grabbing my arm to keep me from falling.

In the glow of the moon, the Hudson River was visible thirty, maybe forty feet below. The sound echoed up, the river a quiet roar. As we inched closer to the cliff’s edge and peered over, I felt a sick split-second urge to take a running leap. Just to be done with it. Alice— it was like she was tugging me, telling me to come along. Head first. Feet first. What difference did it make anymore?

Like that guy falling off the edge of Main Building. Some poor random guy who would still just be living his life if it wasn’t for us— for me. That wasn’t guilt talking, either. Alice had told me straight out that night on the roof: it was my fault.

“Are you happy now?” she’d asked.

“Happy about what?” I kept my eyes on the stars.

She’d been yelling at me on and off for at least two hours. Ever since we left the party. The only respite had been when she was talking to the guy in the Dutch Cabin— that guy who was still with us.

“Happy that I’m going to fuck this random guy tonight? All because you had to dance with that— ”

Somebody had screamed. “Oh my God! He just— ”

Everyone was shouting then. And rushing. The guy was gone. Over the edge. He was all the way down on the ground with his neck all wrong.

And now here we were, all these years later, along the same river where Alice had killed herself a few days later. If I jumped, too, at least Frank and his friends would disappear. There’d be no point in going after anyone else without me around— blameless themselves, my friends would just go straight to the police. I took a step closer to the edge.

“Derrick!” Jonathan shouted.

When I looked up, Jonathan was already running toward Derrick, who was standing some distance away, also alongside the cliff.

“It’s fine,” Derrick shouted back, raising a hand. “I’m fine.”

But he did not seem fine. And then, just like that, I was away from the water’s edge, running toward Derrick, too.

“What happened?” Jonathan asked when we’d reached him.

“I tossed the gun,” Derrick said, pointing toward the river, a confused look on his face. “But I only shot off four rounds in the air. A gun like that— you don’t need to cock the hammer back for the fifth round to discharge. I should have known better than to throw it. Knocking against the side of the cliff did the trick.”

“Well, as long as you’re okay,” Jonathan said. “You are okay, right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. But hopefully that stray bullet didn’t hit some random person around here.”

“That seems unlikely,” Jonathan said, putting a hand on Derrick’s shoulder. “There’s never anyone around here.”

“Who does something that fucking stupid, though?” Derrick asked.

All three of us stayed quiet then, staring down at the dark water rushing below.

“Me,” I said finally. “I do things that are that fucking stupid, constantly.”

“Good point,” Derrick said.

“Agreed,” Jonathan added.