I sank down the wall and drew my knees to my chest, ducked my head, and covered it up with my arms. I stopped my ears. I closed my eyes. And there was Vosch’s finger slamming down on the button, Ben’s hands holding the pillow, my finger on the trigger. Sam, Megan. The Crucifix Soldier. And Ringer’s voice, speaking out of the silent dark: Sometimes you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and what happens is nobody’s fault.
And when Ben came out, all torn up and empty, I would get up and I would go to him and I would comfort him. I would take the hand that murdered a child and we would grieve for ourselves and the choices we made that weren’t choices at all.
Ben came out. He sat against the wall ten doors down. After a minute, I got up and went to him. He didn’t look up. He rested his forearms on his upraised knees and bowed his head. I sat next to him.
“You’re wrong,” I said. He twirled his hand: Whatever. “She did belong to us. They all belong to us.”
His head fell back against the wall. “Hear them? Those mother-effing rats.”
“Ben, I think you need to go. Now. Don’t wait till morning. Take Dumbo and Poundcake and get to the caverns as fast as you can.” Maybe Ringer could help him. He listened to her, always seemed a little intimidated by her, even awed.
He laughed from a spot deep in his gut. “I’m kind of busted up right now. Broke. I’m broke, Sullivan.” He looked at me. “And Walker is in no shape to do it.”
“No shape to do what?”
“Cut the damn thing out. You’re the only one here who has half a chance.”
“You didn’t . . . ?”
“I couldn’t.”
He laughed again. His head broke the surface and he took a deep, life-giving breath.
“I couldn’t.”
40
THE ROOM WHERE she lay was colder than a walk-in freezer, and Evan was sitting up now, watching me as I walked in. A pillow on the floor where Ben had dropped it, and me picking it up and sitting at the foot of Evan’s bed. Our breaths congealing and our hearts beating and the silence thickening between us.
Until I said, “Why?”
And he said, “To blow apart what remains. To break the final, unbreakable bond.”
I hugged the pillow to my chest and rocked slowly back and forth. Cold. So cold.
“No one can be trusted,” I said. “Not even a child.” The cold bored down to my bones and curled inside the marrow. “What are you, Evan Walker? What are you?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “I told you.”
I nodded. “Yes, you did. Mr. Great White Shark. I’m not, though. Not yet. We’re not going to kill her, Evan. I’m going to pull it out, and you’re going to help me.”
He didn’t argue. He knew better.
Ben helped me gather the supplies before he left to join the others in the diner across the parking lot. Washcloth. Towels. A can of air freshener. Dumbo’s field kit. We said good-bye at the stairway door. I told him to be careful, there were some slippery rat guts on the way down.
“I lost it back there,” he said, lowering his eyes and scrubbing his foot across the carpet like an embarrassed little boy caught in a lie. “That wasn’t cool.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
He smiled. “Sullivan . . . Cassie . . . in case you don’t . . . I wanted to tell you . . .”