The strange thing was, I could see it. I could see me making the decision to save myself. No one is a hero in situations like this. The brain is trained to preserve the body, and as I sat there it was flooded with all the rage I needed to resist the temptation to take my own life in place of theirs. These were people who ignored the helpless in their midst, the man on the edge of their town who lived as though in exile. These were people who refused to believe that a predator walked among them, who ignored or misunderstood a desperate girl when she tried to confide in them. Nothing stays secret in places like these. In small towns, secrets are shared about, held close to hearts. This was a family. They protected their own, no matter how bad the blood.
Bella wanted to make a mark. To be remembered, the way Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were remembered after the Columbine shooting, monsters on a rampage, cutting through young lives like butter. The way Seung-Hui Cho was remembered by every student who walked onto the Virginia Tech campus. If only one person ever remembered what Elliot Rodger did and altered their behaviour because of it, he’d have been happy with that. Bella had said that the time for talking was over. I would be her manifesto.
‘I can’t do it,’ I said. Kash was at the edge of the stage now, mere metres from me. If he came any closer, he’d be in my blast zone. ‘I have to push the button, Elliott. I have to.’
‘Really?’ Bella sneered. ‘You’re really going to die for these idiots?’ She looked at Kash, incredulous. ‘She can’t be serious.’
‘Harry,’ Kash said. ‘Just wait. Wait.’
‘The bomb might be anywhere,’ I told him. ‘It might be under Mary Skinner’s house. She’s in there now with those kids. It might be out there,’ I looked at the people beyond the windows, huddled together, just as Bella had known they would. ‘I can’t. I can’t risk it.’
‘You don’t even know these people,’ Bella murmured, her eyes pleading with me. Begging me to prove her right. To prove that, like the people of Last Chance, I was only out to protect myself. ‘Think about everything you have to lose. Think about your brother.’ There was a smile dancing at the corners of her mouth. This was what she had wanted. A hero laid bare before the undeserving mob. Surely I’d save myself. Surely I was selfish, just like the rest of them.
‘I have a lot to lose.’ I nodded at the girl who would be my killer. I thought about Sam and the tears threatened. ‘But I didn’t take this job to protect myself.’
It was the only way I could think to say it. That being a police officer was the one thing about myself that I thought was worthy. From the moment I’d been born, I’d been a problem. An inconvenience. A failure. A burden to be shifted from place to place, only for as long as I avoided causing unacceptable levels of trouble. When I became a cop that feeling went away. Being a cop was my purpose, my penance.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told Kash.
I pushed the button a second time and heard the phone beep.
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‘YOU … YOU’RE NOT partners?’ Whitt said. He could hardly talk. The words seemed stuck on the tip of his tongue. The gun in his hand was trembling as excitement coursed through him. A strange, electric joy he knew he had to contain. ‘You framed him. You framed Sam Blue.’
‘Yes.’ Regan nodded, his hands out by his sides, bracing. It seemed he was ready to take the bullet Whitt was threatening him with. ‘I framed him. Sam is innocent.’
Why? Whitt wanted to cry out. But no, he could get the story later. ‘Put your hands on your head. You’re coming with me.’ Right now, Whitt needed to take this man into custody.
He couldn’t believe he’d finally stumbled onto the solution to it all. Here, right before him, stood Sam’s freedom. Harry’s redemption. Justice for Tox. Whitt felt giddy, off balance. He steeled himself. This was it. He was going to end it all. Save everyone.
‘Put your hands on your head,’ he repeated, stepping forwards.
Regan had been waiting for the approach. He reached up, and in a movement so fast that Whitt barely followed it, he lifted the loop of the rope hanging by his side off of a hook on the wall.
Whitt heard a whizzing noise above him. The clunk of the kayak smashing the top of his skull was almost drowned out by the sound of the gun going off in his hand.
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THE SOUND OF the beep seemed to echo, to stretch on forever. I found my eyes were squeezed shut, my lips drawn back and teeth bared. I listened for the whump sound, expecting pain. But all I heard was the thumping of my heartbeat in my ears, the cracking of my teeth as they ground together. I opened my eyes. A long, low howl escaped my lips as the air rushed out of my lungs. Relief and terror intermingled in one hard, hot knot in my stomach.
By sheer automation, my limbs working at a will of their own, I pushed the button again. And again. The people around me were realising what was happening, but I wasn’t. All I knew was that I should have been dead and was not. No further thoughts would come. My thumb kept plunging down and the phone kept beeping, even as everyone in the room leapt into action.
The people rose to their feet all at once, as though spurred by a starter’s gun, making for the doors. Kash threw himself at Bella, who was staggering backwards, knowing he was coming, lifting her phone, the one connected to a bomb somewhere nearby. Her thumb coming down.
Kash grabbed her ankle with one hand and yanked her off her feet. The phone crashed and slid on the boards of the stage away from me. I dropped onto the floor, trying to shift forwards on my knees towards it. I had to get it before she did.
I heard Kash and Bella struggling on the ground before the stage, her squeal of rage.
‘Get off me!’ she roared. ‘Get off me!’
I lost my balance. Fell on my chest. The duct tape around my wrists seemed impossibly tighter. My phone had failed. There was no way we would be so lucky with Bella’s. If she got a hold of it, she would detonate the bomb hidden in the town. I was only an arm’s length away from the device lying on its side near the back of the stage. I heard Kash cry out. He’d lost his grip on her. The stage shuddered as Bella ran over the top of me, her hands reaching for the phone.
I saw, as if in slow motion, her fingers lifting it from the ground.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the sound of the blast rang through my skull.
Chapter 126
THE GUN SLID out of Whitt’s hands as he hit the floor of the boatshed, the weight of the kayak that had been slung across the ceiling knocking him into the ground like a nail bent beneath an enormous hammer. The gunshot took Regan in the shoulder, spinning him backwards. Whitt looked up in time to see the man fall, his boots slipping on the wet pier.
Whitt shook off the temptation of unconsciousness and scrambled forwards, ignoring the dark shadows at the corners of his vision. He threw himself through the doorway and off the pier, into the cold, rushing water.
Regan was there, an impossibly heavy, impossibly strong monster, reaching up and encircling him in an embrace. They struggled in the thigh-high waves, Whitt’s arms and hands seeming sluggish, the blow to the head making him an easy opponent.
Regan’s hands came around his throat, and before he could utter a cry Whitt was under the water. The muddy, salty taste of it was at the back of his throat, in his lungs. He bucked and twisted, but in seconds the man had him pinned against the silty bottom. He scratched at the iron hands that held him, grabbed desperately for a rock, a branch, anything to hit him with. Whitt reached for the gunshot wound in the man’s shoulder just as the darkness began to close in again.
‘Fuck!’ Regan cried. Whitt had stuck his thumb into the hole, pushed upwards. Whitt rose out of the waves, vomited water. There were lights on the sand. He hadn’t realised how far into the water they’d been dragged. The river was sucking at them both, the water waist-high now, pulling on his tired limbs.
‘Put your hands up!’ someone screamed from the shore. ‘Put your hands up!’
‘No!’ Whitt turned, heard Regan’s gasp of surprise beside him. He put his arms out. ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’
The shore lit up with white flashes as they fired. Regan’s body jolted once, twice. He sank into the water.
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