Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(84)

“Can you walk?” he said. “We have to get out of here.”

“Call him and tell him to turn it off,” I said.

“Doesn’t work like that doll. Once he’s started it, he can’t turn it off. We have to go.”

I shook my head, moving it as best as I could. I was having trouble standing, too. “I don’t want us to kill people.”

“What? You want me to drag French out of here? There’s a bomb going off, doll.”

“I...” I bit my lip. I wasn’t sure.

“We have to go.” He looked into my eyes. “French deserves it, doll. And she’s going to come after us again if we don’t stop her. We have to stop her.”

“Griffin...”

“Oh, for f*ck’s sake.” He let go of me and stalked across the room.

I couldn’t keep myself standing without him. I fell in a heap.

Griffin set the key to the handcuffs next to French. He turned to me. “Best I can do, doll.”

I closed my eyes.

I felt his strong arms gather me up. I laid my head on his chest, and he carried me out of the room. Through institutional hallways, up stairs, through doors, until finally, we were outside again, in the woods.

The explosion was like fireworks.

Fireworks that rippled through the air and knocked us down.

Griffin’s body covered mine. His gray eyes searched mine as we lay there, everything flames and sparks behind us.

I looked away.





Chapter Eighteen


“You did what?” said Silas.

“I left her a key,” said Griffin.

We were back in the twins’ house in Morgantown. I’d slept for most of the trip back. Whatever drugs I’d been injected with had really knocked me out. Now I was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, toying with the label on my beer. I hadn’t been talking much since I woke up.

“Why would you do that?” Silas was standing behind a chair, gripping it hard. His knuckles were the color of salt.

“Look, there’s no way she got out,” said Griffin. “Leigh and I barely made it. She was dark, and she was handcuffed to her desk, and there’s no way. She’s dead.”

“She f*cking better be dead.” Silas shook his head. “How could you do something like that?”

“It was me,” I said.

They all turned to look at me.

Griffin sighed. “Doll, you don’t have to explain. I made the decision, not you.”

“I didn’t want to kill anyone else.” I got up from the table. “I’m sick of killing people.” I drained my bottle of beer and slammed it down on the table. Then I left the room.

I could hear Sloane behind me, her voice soft, telling the boys not to go after me.

*

“Doll?”

I was lying on the bed in the room that I’d used at the twins’ house. I didn’t look up when I heard Griffin come in.

He sat down on the bed. My back was to him. He touched me tentatively. “I’m, um, I’m going back to my apartment. Do you want to come with me, or...”

Silence.

He cleared his throat. “Sloane says it’s fine if you stay. But, um, you might want to stay clear of Silas. He’s pretty pissed.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to talk. I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare, one that never ended, and I didn’t know how to deal with it anymore.

“Say something, please,” he said.

“I don’t have anything to say.” I realized that my voice was dull and tired.

He waited.

I didn’t say anything else.

“Okay.” He got up off the bed. Then he hesitated. “Listen, doll, I don’t know if you remember this, but back in Boston last year, when I found you at that club, and I brought you back to the hotel where I was keeping Knox?”

“Of course I remember.”

“Do you remember what I said about the way you were looking at me?”

“Maybe,” I said. I knew that Griffin had stopped torturing Knox because I showed up. I knew that we’d talked later, and we’d decided that we made each other better. But that was obviously bullshit. There wasn’t anything good about either of us.

“It’s why I left the key,” he said. “You were looking at me...”

“She’s dead anyway,” I said. “It’s not like it mattered.”

“Right.” I heard him sigh. His footsteps went out of the room. Then they stopped. He came back. He caught me by the shoulder and turned me, forcing me to face him. “You told me to do it, Leigh. You told me to switch off. In the basement. You gave me permission.”

What was he trying to say? I swallowed. “You were back, though. You were back when you cried in my arms in the dorm. That wasn’t being switched off.”

He ran a hand over the top of his head. “You just can’t understand what I’ve been through, doll. These people need to be dead.”

“I know,” I said. “I know they do. But if we’re the ones who kill them... it’s like, they’ve already destroyed so much. And then by the time we’re done getting rid of them, what’s left of us? We were going to have a baby, and now, I don’t think I want myself around small children.”