Infinite(60)

“Tai? I’m sorry—I know you told me to go, but I really need to explain. It’s important.”

Still she ignored me.

I listened at the door, expecting to hear quiet tears, but all I heard from the other side was the noise of water running. When I looked down at my feet, I saw a stream of water creeping under the crack beneath the door, growing and spreading across the bedroom floor. My heartbeat took off with fear. I pushed the door open and went inside. Water flooded around my feet. When I glanced to my left, I saw the tub overflowing, cold water running down the fiberglass wall like a river overflowing its banks.

I took two steps and looked into the tub, and I wailed in disbelief. From under the crystal-clear water, Tai stared back at me, eyes wide open, mouth wide open. She wore the yellow dress she’d been wearing a few minutes ago, its sunny fabric now pasted to her skin. I knew she was dead, but I turned off the water and grabbed her torso and pulled it toward me. Her body was a limp weight, unmoving, her skin already frigid. Her face never changed; her fixed eyes stared at me with the same terrified expression.

“Tai,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Oh, my God, Tai.”

I knelt on the wet floor and held her. Water dripped and sloshed around me. I shook her and kissed her forehead, and I gently closed her mouth with my hand and used my fingers to shut her eyes. She looked peaceful that way, but I was caught in a storm. My mind struggled to catch up to what had happened. It took me until that moment to realize that someone had killed her.

Someone had grabbed her and overpowered her and run the water and held her down where she couldn’t breathe.

Someone. Me.

I heard a footstep behind me. Tai’s body slipped from my arms, and I spun around. I tried to get up quickly on the wet floor, but I was too late.

He was there, looming over me. I was there.

Dylan Moran stared down at me, his mouth bent into a hard frown, his blue eyes as implacable as a stormy ocean. The leather jacket he wore was wet, where Tai had soaked him as she fought for her life. He had a dirty red brick from the back patio in his hand. Before I could get to my feet and put my hands around his neck, he swung the brick toward the side of my head. I saw it coming, heard the rush of air. I tried to duck, but I wasn’t fast enough.

A white-hot eruption of pain went off inside my skull like fireworks, and then I was gone.





CHAPTER 24

I awoke to a raging headache and the coppery taste of blood. My eyes blinked open. At first, I saw only the ceiling fan rotating slowly above me, making a low rattle. Then I shifted my head and saw that I lay in bed. When I tried to move, I found that I was tied down, spread-eagled, my wrists and ankles tightly bound with silk neckties to the four corners of the bed frame.

Night hadn’t fallen yet, but the room around me was dark. The heavy curtains were closed. In the dense shadows, I could barely distinguish a kitchen chair that had been pulled into the corner of the bedroom. Someone was sitting in it. A dark shape watched me. I could hear his breathing and the rustle of his clothes as he moved. He knew I was awake now. With the scrape of a match, I saw a tiny flame illuminating the skin of his hands. Then the sting of cigarette smoke made its way to me.

“Hello, Dylan,” my doppelg?nger said.

He pushed himself off the chair and came and stood over the bed. I stared into a black mirror, his face identical to mine. He had the collar of my father’s leather jacket pulled up, framing his neck like the wings of a crow. Under it, he wore a collarless olive-colored shirt, untucked and misbuttoned. He had wild, messy dark hair, and he hadn’t shaved in days. The bones of his face jutted out in angles that looked sharp enough to make you bleed. He was the same as me in every physical way, but we were two different people. His mouth had no expression, whereas Karly had always told me she could read my mood by my lips. Given the things he’d done, I expected to see cruelty shining in his blue eyes, but his fixed gaze offered no evidence of his sadism. The bubbling cauldron inside him had to be at the bottom of a deep well.

“You didn’t have to kill Tai,” I said.

He didn’t answer right away. He examined me with the same intensity I’d given him. With two fingers, he freed the cigarette from his mouth, tilted his chin, and exhaled gray smoke. Then he said with a shrug, “I do what I want.”

The other Dylan retrieved the wooden chair. He put it next to the bed and sat down, folding his legs with the black heel of his dress shoe balanced on his other knee. He took the cigarette and offered me a drag with a flick of his eyebrows. I shook my head.

“I’m glad to finally see you up close,” he said.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Most of the Dylan Morans out there are dull little people. Frigid, depressed, beaten down. Look at this one, letting his wife dress him up like a Ken doll. It’s hard for me to respect someone like that. But you fought back. You came after me. It makes me think you’re more like me than the others.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

He gave me a quick, cynical laugh. “Oh, come on. You want to kill me, don’t you? That’s why you’re here. That was your plan. If I let you, you’d wrap your hands around my throat and choke the life out of me. Admit it. We’re not so different.”

“I’m trying to stop you from killing anyone else. That’s the difference.”

“Yeah, you’re a hero, and I’m the devil. You have no innocent blood on your hands.” He leaned close, engulfing me in the smoke of his cigarette, and whispered in my ear. “But then why is Roscoe dead in your world? Why is Karly dead? You killed them, not me.”