Hide(71)

“I never had a choice.” Mack stares at the wood grain of the table, the tiny scratches Ava made. Wonders if they can be buffed right out, erasing the fact that they were ever here. “No. That’s not right. I had a choice, and I made it, and I let my sister die in my place. I took her spot, and for what? What have I ever done with my stolen life?”

At last, Mack looks up, but not at Ava. At her ghost of a reflection in the glass of the hutch. The glass over the Nicely family china, china that Mack could never touch, could never use, could never have. “This time I know what the stakes are, and I get to choose the sacrifice. And I’m not going to make the same mistake.” Mack glances over at LeGrand. She’s making this deal for him, too.

He nods. Whatever it takes for Almera.

“Okay,” she says. “We’ll go back in.”

“Fuck!” Ava screams, slamming her fist into the wall. “No! I won’t let you.”

LeGrand calmly points the rifle at her. “Ava. Get in the car and leave. Go. This isn’t your problem, not anymore.”

“You can’t—this isn’t—god, no. No.” Ava’s voice breaks, tears pooling in her dark eyes.

“You can go back in with them,” Linda offers. “Stay with them. Be their witness.” Linda smiles, and the red of her blood dripping down her cheek clashes with the pink of her lipstick, a garish mess of colors. “You’ll be perfectly safe, and you can make sure I keep my word. That’ll make LeGrand and Mack feel better, right? Ava will keep me accountable.”

LeGrand nods, quick, small movements. “Please,” he says, still pointing the rifle at Ava.

“You really think they’ll let me live, after?” Ava’s voice is strangled with the strain of holding back tears, with the terrible weight of despair.

Linda’s tone is back to the chipper one of the woman who greeted them on the bus a lifetime ago. She absolutely will not let Ava live, but there’s no reason not to play along. “We’ve done it before. Doreen, a maid. The second sacrifice season. Back when we still thought we could offer the beast lesser prey. It rejected her, of course, and we let her go. Because who would believe a—” Linda stumbles, making it clear she was about to use a different, more familiar-to-her-tongue word before she course-corrects. “A poor Black uneducated maid over us?”

“And who would believe me over you?” Ava laughs, shaking her head. “God, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I can’t tell anyone about this.”

Linda settles on what she believes is a warm, motherly smile. Ava would try to tell. It wouldn’t get her anywhere, but it would bring more attention than is worth dealing with. She’ll be easy enough to kill once Mack and LeGrand are gone. “You’re welcome to leave. I won’t stop you. Or you can keep vigil with your friends and then leave after. It’s your choice.”

“Give her the money, too,” Mack says.

“What?” Ava and Linda both say at once.

“The prize money.”

Linda’s eyes go wide and she looks at Ava as though to confirm that at least someone here is smart enough to realize there was never any prize money. No one was ever getting out alive. “Yes, of course,” Linda says, her tone placating. “We’ll give her the fifty thousand dollars.”

“Okay.” Mack feels peaceful. Truly peaceful. She’s not hiding anymore. She’s in control for the first time in her life. “Right now, though. Give her the money right now.”

“I don’t have fifty thousand dollars on me!”

“Whatever you have in the house.” Mack shrugs. She can wait. The night is long, the dawn and its approaching death far enough away still.

“Oh god.” Linda closes her eyes, but her tone is less worried and more annoyed. “In my bedroom, in the closet, there’s a safe. The code is seven-fourteen-seven. You’ll find cash in there. Don’t touch the jewelry. It was my mother’s.”

“Mack,” Ava pleads.

“Go get it,” Mack says. “I’m gonna untape her, and then we’ll drive back to the park. No one else needs to know what’s happened, right, Linda? You tell them the monster rejected Ava and Brandon died in an accident, so you need two more.”

“That’s acceptable. How did you kill Ray? I’ll need to do damage control.”

“Bashed his head in.” Ava walks away to find Linda’s bedroom. She doesn’t know why she’s doing it. Why any of this. She’s lost control. She’s not in the lead. It’s all impossibly fucked. She can’t drag Mack away, can’t force LeGrand into the car. What is happening? What did they see that she didn’t? She thought she was too late to save Brandon. It turns out she was too late to save them all.

Linda nods, organizing her thoughts. “Bashed in the head. That’s easy enough. He fell off his tower. Too old to be doing that, anyway.” She puts on her best let’s-get-to-work smile as Mack carefully peels back the tape one limb at a time. She rubs her wrists and stands. “Let me get cleaned up and then we’ll get you kids back where you belong.”

Mack nods, sweeping Linda’s things back into her purse, bending down to retrieve several of the lipstick tubes where Linda can’t see. Mack keeps the car keys out. She’s ready. She knows Ava is hurt—wishes she could make it better—but she’s so glad Ava decided to come with them rather than leaving right now.