I smile and she locks herself in. I stand there, letting the information filter through my consciousness: that was a wig she was wearing, and her skin had a yellow tinge to it. She’s ill—cancer, most likely. And then, I can’t help it, I picture myself waiting until she unlocks the door, then pushing my way into the bathroom with her before she realizes what’s happening. In my mind, I snatch the wig, the tracksuit, and her purse. Disguise myself and walk out right under Heath’s nose like something out of a bad spy movie.
But no. I close my eyes and turn away from the door. I’m going to have to find another way. Assaulting ill old ladies isn’t an option. I haven’t sunk that far yet.
I head toward the doors of the convenience store, and I’m just about to push through when something stops me. Outside, parked a couple of pumps down from Cerny’s Mercedes, a green pickup truck. The driver’s-side door is ajar. It has a long white unbroken scratch down the side of it. I inhale sharply.
A young man, medium, compact build, wearing a gray hoodie, jeans, and a black knit cap, stands on the other side of the truck at the pump, hand on the nozzle. His cap is pushed far back enough to see the brush of close-cropped light-brown hair. He is scanning the pumps.
I start to move forward again, but something yanks me back by my coat collar.
“Hold up,” a voice behind me says. It’s Heath. I can smell him—the stink of Cerny’s blood on his clothes or skin—but surely I’m imagining that. “He must’ve followed us here. Did you see him at Baskens? Did you tell him what we did?” Heath twists the collar tight and pulls me back against a rack of Grandma’s cookies and beef jerky.
“No,” I say.
He nudges me. “He sees the car. Look.”
He’s right. Luca’s edged past the pump and is staring at Cerny’s Mercedes.
“He knows,” Heath says.
“’Scuse me, sugar.”
It’s the elderly woman in the purple tracksuit. As she passes, she smiles at us both—a warm, grandmotherly smile. Then, in an instant, she’s out the door, and I realize I have a plan. Or, at least, the beginning of a plan. I face Heath, inch closer to him.
“We can put it all on him. Cerny, Glenys, all of it.”
“What?”
“He knows I’m in danger, and he’s trying to be a hero. We can use that.”
There’s a beat, then Heath lets out a soft sound of disbelief.
I meet his gaze. “We lead him somewhere, maybe to the woods where you left Holly. Make it look like he was threatening me. Then kill him.”
My heart is racing. I’m not sure if anything I’m saying is making sense, but I can see his gears grinding.
“If we don’t do it now,” I add, “we’re going to have to do it later. You said it yourself. He knows.”
Heath clears his throat. Runs a finger down my cheek all the way to my lips.
“We should go back to the car,” I say. “Get him to follow us.”
His eyes are locked on mine, their intensity dizzying. “Let’s do it,” he says.
We push out the door. I don’t look in Luca’s direction, but every nerve in my body tells me we have his attention. I’m right, because as soon as we step off the curb and head in the direction of the Mercedes, something whizzes past me, hitting Heath square in the center of his back. He whips around.
“The fuck—”
I look down. A set of car keys at our feet. A gift.
A gift meant for me.
It only takes me half a second to scoop up the keys, pivot, and run like hell for Luca’s green Tacoma. At the same time, I can see Luca take off, jogging away from the gas station toward the highway. It takes Heath a second or two longer to figure out what’s happened—and to figure out who to chase, me or Luca—but by the time he reaches the truck, I’m locked safely inside, jamming the key in the ignition. Heath yanks at the handle and blazes at me.
We lock eyes, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much hatred condensed in one human’s face. But he can’t make too much of a racket because there are people everywhere. I put my foot on the brake and grip the key. My body is practically vibrating.
I look up the highway and see Luca, about a dozen or so yards up the northbound side, pounding the gravel on the shoulder, all stops out. He’s heading in the direction of Dunfree. Run, run, run, I think. Straight to the police.
Heath follows my gaze, then turns back to me. He runs his finger across his throat. I feel sick, but I crank the truck anyway.
The next thing I know, he’s darting through the pumps, sprinting in Luca’s direction. Heart punching in my chest, I maneuver around the other cars and roll out onto the highway. Ahead, Luca veers from the shoulder onto the highway too, directly into the oncoming traffic. Heath follows him, and I gasp. A couple of cars screech and skid to avoid hitting them, as Luca tears up the center of the highway, adjacent to the median. Heath is only a couple of yards behind him now, narrowing the distance.
I’m closing the distance too, between them and me, white-knuckling the wheel, weaving around traffic. Maybe cars are honking. If they are, I don’t register them. I’ve become my heartbeat. My pulsing blood and gulping breath. Every function of my body transformed into a laser aimed at stopping Heath.
I will hit him with the truck. Crush him under the wheels. I won’t stop until there are smashing lungs, spurting blood, crunching bones.
We’re the same . . .
I shake his voice out of my head. It’s not true, it never was. And yet here I am, foot on the accelerator, calculating the shrinking distance between the nose of the truck and his body. I’m about to do this monstrous thing. But it has to be done, I know it. And I am the only one who can do it.
Not because I’m a monster, but because I am not.
I pull up behind Heath—there’s only a few feet between us, a few yards between him and Luca—and hold steady. This is it. I have to do this now or I’m going to lose my nerve. I inhale, squeeze the wheel, and gun it, the truck leaping forward. But at the same time, Luca swerves up onto the median and onto the other side of the highway, and Heath does the same.
The next instant, I’m thunking up onto the median too, slowing between the clipped crepe myrtles, then grinding to a stop. Cars whiz past me and I catch my breath, scanning the southbound lanes. Where did Heath go? And where’s Luca? A few seconds pass, and I spot them at last, Luca scrambling up the embankment toward the woods. Heath sprinting across the road in pursuit.
And then what happens, happens so quickly, I almost can’t believe it.
A maroon SUV appears out of the dark, slams into Heath, flips him up and over the hood. I watch him slide onto the top of the SUV, then tumble to the asphalt, and a pale-yellow Cadillac runs over him. Front and back wheels. When the Cadillac is past, I can see Heath’s body, a shapeless, motionless lump on the highway. He looks like a stray dog, I think. Roadkill.
Do I scream? I don’t even know; I don’t hear a thing, not even the sound of my own voice. I only see Heath, motionless on the pavement.
The SUV and Cadillac screech to a stop, and both drivers jump out. I don’t move because I can’t. A wave of nausea, so intense I’m paralyzed, is slicing through me. I grit my teeth so hard I can feel my temples pulse, and I pray for the sensation to pass. It doesn’t. I lean over and vomit onto the passenger’s-side floor mat.
When I look up again, I see Luca’s made it all the way up to the top of the embankment. He stands for a minute, surveying the situation below. Back on the road, one of the motorists, the guy from the SUV, is already on his phone. The Cadillac guy is pacing up and down in front of him and yelling. Nobody has approached Heath, not yet. I wonder if it’s because it’s obvious that he’s dead. In an instant, I see Luca turn and disappear into the woods.
I grip the steering wheel and try to remember how to breathe. The police will be here soon. They’ll figure out that the Mercedes abandoned at the pump is Dr. Cerny’s. They’ll find the iPad inside—the files and Heath’s confession. They may not know how I fit into the equation, but before long, they’ll be looking for me, even if I wasn’t the one who hit him.