“Killing people.”
“You could help me with that. You know how to get away with it. And we could pick the right ones. We could kill the people who deserve to die, we could turn it into something good, and there would be no end to us, there would be no—”
“Stop,” he said. “Please, Jacqueline, I can’t hear it.”
The stream of words came to an abrupt end, and when she spoke again her voice was low and measured.
“I need you to make the right choice,” she said. “Will you do that?”
For a moment he was silent as the snow pattered on the glass of the lighthouse above them and Jacqueline Mathis watched him in the moonlight, and then he nodded.
“Yes,” he said.
“Truly, Kevin?”
“Truly, Jacqueline.” He reached out gently with his right hand and pushed her hair back from her face, used his thumb to clear the last traces of moisture away from beneath her eyes.
She smiled. “I’m so glad,” she said.
“I know,” Kimble said, and dropped his right hand down to the gun as he swung his left out with Wyatt French’s knife in it and buried the blade in her back.
She let out a sound of soft and terrible anguish, a moan that wanted to build into a scream but couldn’t. The knife had entered just under her left shoulder blade. Blood seeped from the wound and flowed hot across his hand. Kimble had been trying to get the gun from her as he swung the knife, or at least get it pointed away from him, but he didn’t succeed at either task. She’d anticipated that attempt; she had not anticipated the knife. She’d cleared the gun from his grasp, though, and it was pointed at his face and her finger was on the trigger and his life was a few pounds of pressure away from an end, but she did not squeeze.
The moan came again, more pain evident now, and she tried to rise. The blade slid free from her body and his hand and fell to the floor as blood streamed down his jacket and ran over the backs of her slim, bare legs. As he watched the pain rise through her he looked at the gun and said, “Go ahead,” and he meant it.
She opened her fingers and let the gun fall, looked him in the eyes with impossible sadness, and whispered, “You know what you’ve done to me.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“You know,” she began again, but she couldn’t get all the words out this time. She shuddered and fell forward, fell against him, her face against his neck, and he reached out and caught her and held her.
“I’m scared of him,” she whispered.
“You don’t belong to him, Jacqueline. You don’t.”
He felt each of her last breaths. She lay against him just as she had before, in the one moment when everything had felt perfect.
“I’m sorry,” he told her again, but there was no point to it now. Her warm breaths against his neck had ceased.
Kimble pressed his face into her hair and wept.
42
NATHAN SHIPLEY DROVE with his left hand and kept the barrel of his gun pressed into Roy’s stomach with his right. Roy looked at the gun and thought of what he could do to escape, the movements he could make. Then he thought of how fast a trigger could be pulled.
He made no movements as Shipley drove them back to his home.
“Get out,” Shipley said. His voice was unsteady. “Get out and walk inside.”
Roy climbed out of the car and went through the yard and up the creaking steps of the porch. The doorknob turned in his hand, unlocked. He pushed it open and went in and Shipley followed.
“Sit down,” Shipley barked, and Roy obeyed, sitting on an ancient and dusty couch. “Who the hell are you?”
“Roy Darmus. I worked for the newspaper.” It was absurdly formal, but one of the things Roy was finding he believed deeply was that you should keep men with guns happy.
“Why are you watching me?”
Roy considered the gain in a lie, and couldn’t find it.
“Kimble asked me to.”
“He doesn’t trust me. He came out here this morning, and it was obvious.” Shipley paced, rubbed a hand across his face, and then said, “Holy shit, what am I doing? What in the hell am I doing?”
Roy was silent. He’d been more focused on the gun than the man, but now that it wasn’t pressed against his stomach, he looked at Nathan Shipley’s face. It was haggard, weary. It was frightened.
“I’m not going to shoot you,” Shipley said.
“That’s good to hear.”
“I just don’t know what’s happening. What I’m doing, what I should be doing. I don’t know anymore. I said that Kimble doesn’t trust me? Well, you know what, man? I don’t trust myself. I don’t. That’s the problem. I’m seeing things, and I can’t get them out my head. My mind isn’t right. People are dying out there, Pete died out there, and then Kimble comes out to my home and it was like he thought I did it, like he thought I was some sort of evil…”