No, it doesn’t feel like that.

But it still feels pretty good.

We drift in silence down the hall, Samuel watching his phone where he can spot any movement on the hacked security cameras. Nothing comes. We stop outside the closed door of room eighteen and Samuel checks the camera hidden within, confirming that Dick Piston is still asleep with one decisive nod.

I pull on my gloves and turn the handle, sweeping the silent door into the room.

The old man is sleeping on his back, his mouth gaping, a gentle snore rumbling in his throat. He’s tall and lean. He looks strong for his advanced age. I dart a glance down at Samuel as I halt his wheelchair next to the head of the bed. He seems unconcerned that his rival could be capable of self-defense. His focus is consumed by his prey.

Samuel reaches beneath his leg and withdraws the syringe, uncapping it as I walk to the other side of the bed and prepare to hold Richard down. I meet Samuel’s gaze and dart my eyes to the phone. He gives the cameras a final check and nods.

Then he slips the needle into Richard’s jugular and depresses the plunger.

Dick Piston doesn’t move. The cadence of his snore remains uninterrupted. He doesn’t even twitch.

I look up at Samuel and he at me. He shrugs.

“What the—”

I never finish my sentence.

Richard erupts from the bed with a right hook as I’m distracted with Samuel. I twist away but he still connects, catching my cheekbone. The old fucker is strong. It’s like being hit with a brick. My cheek burns. The punch hurtles me through time and into memory. Into a red mist. Into the unforgiving desert sun.

I fall back, then launch with a rebound of rage. I jump onto the mattress and wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze. I feel the pulse in my palms. Mine or his, I don’t know. It hammers at my skin. I grip tighter and the old man gasps and flails with rapidly waning strength as the drug starts to take effect.

“Bria, no,” Samuel hisses with a note of desperation. “You’ll break it.”

The hyoid.

I’ll break the wings of the fragile bone in his throat. A telltale sign of murder.

I force my fingers open. The old man takes a heaving breath in and I clamp my hand to his mouth before he can scream. My teeth are gritted so tight they could break. I stare into his eyes, ready to pinch his nose shut as his weakening hits pummel my shoulders. My cheek pulses with a steady beat.

“You,” Samuel growls next to Richard’s face. The old man’s eyes are wide as they shift to meet Samuel’s. His body is going slack as the SUX courses through his bloodstream. His arms quake and drop to his sides, his muscles shuddering. “First you steal my possessions. Then you insult me. And now,” he says as he pinches Richard’s nose shut, tears leaking from the corners of the old man’s eyes, “now you dare to strike my Sombria? If only I had given you less succinylcholine. I would take my time. I would make you suffer.”

The old man struggles to take a breath that will not come. My hand stays pressed across his mouth. Samuel’s fingers grip tight to his nostrils. And the drug ensures that no strength is left to lend to the fight.

Richard’s chest convulses. It becomes a rhythmic pulse of spasming muscle. His eyes drift away from us, the fear within spiriting away like a gas. The convulsions continue as his gaze becomes glassy, as his heart slows. Death unravels like a spectrum. This is my favorite part, the mystery of possibility. If I move my hand away now, will he take a breath and live? Will his body continue to shut each door to life? So many options are at my fingertips. The choice belongs to me.

And I choose death.

Samuel and I wait, locked in our joint effort to hold Richard still until the convulsions stop and there is no coming back to tell tales and spill secrets.

When Richard is gone, we look across his body at one another. My heart drums a slowing percussion through my chest and up my neck and beneath my skull, settling in my cheekbone. I let my hand slip away from the old man’s slack mandible as his final, saturated exhalation drifts into the room.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

Samuel gives a single nod. He looks down at the body and then to the phone in his lap, checking the cameras. “Come.”

I walk around the edge of the bed and grip the handles of Samuel’s wheelchair, pushing him toward the door. He gives a final glance to the video feed and then we exit the room, closing the door behind us.

We don’t speak as we pass down the hall like wraiths. I push Samuel into his room, wheeling him to his desk before backing away to sit on the edge of the bed, my cheekbone hot and throbbing against the weight of the tense air between us. I resist the urge to touch it, keeping my hands folded in my lap as I wait for Samuel to switch the security system back to the primary feed. He locks the screen and wheels himself away from the desk, pivoting to face me.

These are the moments with Samuel that I enjoy the most. The acceptance of his wisdom, coding it into my memory. He helps me to sculpt my skill. He hones my expertise, like cutting the facets of a diamond. Even on nights like tonight, when I have fallen short of flawless, I feel one step closer to indestructible.

Samuel looks at me for a long moment. I say nothing. I know to wait, to remain still and polite. “Your rage, Bria. Your inability to separate the traumas of your past from the needs of your present. You react quickly to protect yourself, but you don’t stop on your own. It is your greatest weakness. If you can listen to me enough to stand down, you can find it within yourself to do so. You must.”

I give him a single bow of my head. “Yes. How do I conquer this?”

Samuel wheels a little closer. His eyes scour my face like steel wool, narrowing when they land on my throbbing cheek. “You have been killing your past. Perhaps you must embrace the memories that won’t die.”

My heart shrivels behind my bones. He’s probably right. He’s always right. Even when I hate the sound of it.

I don’t know how to do that. Maybe it’s because I don’t really want to. Killing anything that reminds me of my past has felt therapeutic, even if the lives I took weren’t directly related to DOX. Finding individuals connected with cults like the one I was raised in? That has been enough to keep my past where it belongs, in the desert sands behind my memory palace, trapped beyond the walls I’ve built in my mind. Most of the time, anyway.

“I will find a way,” I say to Samuel. We remain unmoving as we watch one another, and then he finally nods. I stand before him. “I’d better get you to the lasagna line.”

“Stay.”

“Of course.”

I wheel Samuel from his room and into the dining hall where we wait in line for lasagna and salad, then sit apart from the other residents at a table for two next to the window. After a while, the ambulance shows up, no siren to fill the silence between us. But the lights flash their metronomic beat across Samuel’s face. He watches as they load Richard’s covered body into the vehicle.

“One day soon enough, that will be me,” Samuel says, his eyes fixed to the ambulance. “You must learn to do this on your own.”

I watch Samuel’s face, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking into the future as it rolls away into the shadows of cedars and pines.

“I know,” I say.

I just don’t know how.

OceanofPDF.com

12

OceanofPDF.com

ELI

The weekend has been a waste.

The problem?

If you’d asked me on Saturday, I would have said Bria Brooks. Emphatically. But I’ve come to realize the problem is me.