White Rabbit(90)
“Race is having a lot of problems, you know, dealing with his guilt over killing Fox and Arlo?” Peyton explains conversationally as we maneuver the limp body past some misshapen statue, a freakish homunculus of cast bronze that had evidently been placed in memory of one Wilfred Stanhope—a backhanded tribute, if I’ve ever seen one. “There’s a whole lot of stuff about remorse in the note he left on his computer. He’s starting to think maybe he just doesn’t deserve to live after everything he’s done. He hasn’t made up his mind about whether Lia’s going to live or die, and he’s not sure if he’ll be making it home from the park tonight. He’s real fifty-fifty on the whole thing. Poor guy is really losing it.”
“Sounds like you thought this through,” I comment sourly.
“The rifle was sort of a happy accident,” she admits, sounding pleased with herself. “I didn’t know Arlo would be armed—not for sure—and there were a million ways that little scenario could’ve gone sideways on me. But it didn’t. And when he was dead, I figured he didn’t need a gun anymore, so I took it. Now, when Race uses it to whack you guys, and then himself, it’ll prove he was at Arlo’s.”
I look down at poor Race—a guy I never thought I’d ever think of as “poor Race”—and feel a little sick to my stomach. His skin is sweaty and pale, dark veins showing across his eyelids in spidery lines, and I wonder what she did to make sure he’d stay unconscious for this long. Somewhere, she has to have screwed up—left evidence connecting her to these murders. She’s wearing gloves to keep her prints off the rifle, but her hair tumbles loosely over her shoulders; she might easily have shed long, telltale strands of it on Arlo’s body, or Fox’s. Not that it would exactly be damning, since she spent half the night partying with the pair of them.
In any event, it’ll be pretty useless to Sebastian and me, whatever might or might not turn up in a police lab, months or even years after they find us dead in a grove of pine trees with Arlo’s bullets clanking around in our skulls.
“We need to stop,” Sebastian says gruffly, as Race begins to slip out of his hold again, sagging lower and lower to the ground. My boyfriend is walking backward with his fingers hooked beneath the unconscious guy’s armpits, and the awkward task makes his steps short and difficult. “My hands are starting to cramp.”
“So the fuck what?” Peyton fixes him with a peevish look. “You won’t have to worry about it much longer. Suck it up.”
Sebastian comes to an immediate halt, glaring daggers of flame at her, his jaw clenched so tightly I can see his pulse throbbing in his neck. “I’m about to drop him, so we’d have to stop anyway.”
For once, I’m not the one about to rage out; powerlessness in the face of impending death is causing Sebastian’s anger to metastasize, and I realize as I look at him that if a “clearer opportunity” doesn’t present itself soon, he’s going to try something to turn the tables. Or maybe he already is. I watch Peyton reposition the rifle, running her fingers impatiently along the stock, and I speak up. “We should switch places again.”
“You’re stalling,” Peyton snaps, “and I’m sick of it. Keep moving.”
“I’m not stalling.” Sebastian growls through his teeth, eyes blazing. Race is drooping lower and lower, the fabric of his sweatshirt twisting and bunching under his arms as my boyfriend struggles to hold on. “This isn’t fucking easy, okay!”
“I got him in the trunk all by myself, and you two pussies can’t even carry him a hundred yards together?”
I glance around, wondering if that’s really how far we’ve come. Clearly intimate with the terrain, she’s been guiding us nonchalantly through the park—presumably back to the Tidwell Pavilion, where she initially intended to confront Lia—but we’re taking a different route than before, and I have no real clue where we are. Across from me, Sebastian bends down and drops Race defiantly to the ground at his feet. “If you wanna take over, be my guest.”
“Are you fucking for real?” Peyton gives him an incredulous stare and then lifts the rifle. “Pick him up!”
“Why don’t you go to hell, Peyton?”
I’m still holding on to Race’s bound ankles, scrambling to figure out if I need to defuse the situation or help Sebastian provoke Peyton even more—when I feel the unconscious boy’s feet twitch. Then they jerk, violently, kicking out of my grasp and smacking down onto the ground as Race’s entire body begins to shake and jolt. A wet stain blooms in the crotch of his track pants, spreading quickly down his leg; his back arches, his neck goes stiff, and his eyelids flutter, exposing nothing but ghastly white.
Peyton recoils, staring down in shock as Race writhes and flexes in the grass, the sharp smell of urine filling the close air. “What the hell?”
“What did you do to him?” I ask. The boy’s skin is the color of congealed fat, and a gurgling noise sounds in his throat. To Sebastian, I say, “Quick—get the tape off his mouth!”
“Stop!” Peyton jerks the rifle up again, but her expression betrays fear and growing insecurity. “Leave it where it is.”
“He’s having a seizure, Peyton,” I shout with mounting impatience. “He could swallow his tongue, or choke to death on his own barf! How’re you gonna work that into your handy suicide narrative?” She doesn’t respond, but the rifle drops a few inches, and Sebastian immediately leans down to remove Race’s gag. “What the hell did you do, anyway? How much voltage does that stun gun pack?”