Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(38)

I sat back, shaking all over.

That was when I realized that the sobbing noise I kept hearing?

I was making it.

*

Silas pried the knife out of my hand. “Leigh? Leigh, are you with me?”

I was still shaking all over. I couldn’t look at him.

“Come on, Leigh, say something for God’s sake.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yeah,” he said. He helped me get to my feet. “Yeah, he is.”

My hair was in my face. I reached up to brush it away. My hands were covered with blood. I whimpered.

Silas’ voice softened. “You’re okay.”

I bit down on my lip. I tasted blood. I shuddered. “I killed him.”

“Why don’t you go back to your room and get cleaned up?” he said.

“Alone?” Terror coursed through me.

He looked around. “I’ll walk you over and lock the door behind you, okay? Don’t open the door to anyone but me.”

“Can’t you stay with me?”

“I need to clean up this room.”

Oh. I guessed there were dead bodies everywhere. I nodded. “Okay.”

“You’re all right. You got him. It was him or us, and you had to take him out. You know that right?”

I nodded. “I know that.” It didn’t make it any easier, though. I’d only used a knife to kill someone once, and I’d been so worried about getting out of Op Wraith with Griffin at the time that I hadn’t had time to let it get to me. This was different somehow.

Silas walked me next door to my room. Together, we made sure I was alone in there. Then he closed the door after me.

I took the hottest shower I could stand. I hugged the smooth, tiled walls. And I sobbed again. Sobbed. And scrubbed.

And still didn’t quite feel clean.

*

It was dark outside when I left my room. My skin was raw from the heat of the shower, from the force of my scrubbing. A cool breeze wafted through the air outside the motel. It felt soothing against my skin. I followed Silas into the darkened parking lot. He was trying the doors on cars, looking for one that was already unlocked.

It was time to steal a new car.

Silas found one that was dark blue. It almost seemed to melt into the darkness. We got inside.

He hotwired the car.

Then we pulled out of the parking lot of the motel. We’d been driving all day, and we’d thought we’d get to sleep there. But we couldn’t stay after what had happened.

“I called Griffin,” said Silas. “He knows everything’s okay, but he wants us to meet up tomorrow morning, so we’re going to have to drive through tonight.”

“Can you manage that?” I said. “You haven’t gotten any sleep since last night. I can take over and drive later if you want.”

He nodded. “That might be good. You should try to sleep now.”

I twisted my hands together in my lap. “I don’t know if I can. I keep thinking about...” Blood.

His knuckles tightened on the wheel. “This is what you gotta do, Leigh. You gotta face that thought head on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why does it frighten you? Is it because you think you’re a bad person or something? Because you’re not.”

“Saying that doesn’t make it go away.”

“That’s why you face it. You say to yourself, ‘So what if I was a bad person? What would that mean?’ And the more you think about it, you realize nothing would change. And then when you feel it again, when you’re afraid again, you tell it f*ck off, because you can’t be scared by that anymore.”

“I don’t want to be a bad person.”

“Well, you aren’t. Know that you aren’t. But accept that you could be.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Doesn’t have to.”

I ran my fingers over the dashboard of the new car we’d taken. It was dusty. I rubbed the dust off on my pants’ leg. “Is that what you do? How you keep cool?”

“Sure,” he said. “I got that girl killed tonight, you know.”

“No,” I said. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I didn’t care about her. I wanted her for my own pleasure, right? Now, she’s dead.” His voice was flat. “And I can handle the implications of that. So what if I am a really bad person? So what if I am.”

We were both quiet.

Eventually, his last words echoing through my head, my eyes closed. I slept. My sleep was deep and dreamless. Guiltless.





Chapter Nine


We met Griffin and Sloane at a rest area the next morning. The sun had wrestled its way into the sky, brilliant and warm. The grass was dew-covered, freshly cut, and fragrant. The sky was blue like a robin’s egg. Cloudless. They were waiting for us at a picnic table, with two big bags of McDonald’s food. And it was surreal how cheery everything seemed.

Griffin caught me in a big hug the minute he saw me, and Sloane threw her arms around her brother, who hugged her back just as tightly.

Griffin murmured into my hair that he was glad I was okay. I clung to him. He was strong and firm, and I could depend on him. I was happy to see him too.