Next to me, Cate shifted nervously, clutching the gun with both hands.
I thought Isabelle would head to Orange Shirt, who took a step forward, his hand held out, impatient and authoritative. But at the last second, Isabelle veered away from him and moved to the man with the gun. She stood right in front of him—too close, I thought, too close—and held out the diary. Her posture was obedient, a child with an adult.
The man glanced at Orange Shirt, who shrugged and gave a barely perceptible nod. It was hard to read his expression with his eyes shielded. The man reached out one hand to accept the diary, and Isabelle hesitated. My stomach squeezed. They’d destroy Delilah’s words too.
Isabelle dropped the diary to the ground. In one neat, almost casual motion, she grabbed the man by his arm. Both of her hands wrapped around his bare skin. He startled, then laughed, and I understood why. It looked like such a tiny, pointless gesture. She was so small next to him. The sun was starting its descent now, warmer and deeper, slanting into Isabelle’s black hair. The insects screamed and shrilled around us.
Then the man dropped his gun.
Orange Shirt said the man’s name. Isabelle was bearing down now: even from this distance, I could see the way his flesh blanched white where her fingertips pressed down. She was clutching him, clawing at him with an intensity I hadn’t seen when she’d touched the cashier or Junior. The effects were immediate, a small bomb going off in our midst. The man fell to his knees, coughing out an arc of blood that landed on the grass. His skin was glassy white. Isabelle was unraveling him, pulling him apart piece by piece, so quickly that he’d be gone soon. His eyes rolled back in his head.
We were frozen for a moment, watching it happen, and then everything sped up, a blur of movement, everyone driven by instinct. Orange Shirt lunged for the dropped gun. Cate trained her gun on the men, face stoic and ghostly, sweat at her temples. She took a faltering step back and I realized that the third man was charging at us, a bull, head lowered. “Stop!” I shouted, ineffectually, meaninglessly. Cate fired once, a sharp crack through the silence, birds fluttering into the air from across the river.
She’d missed. Suddenly he was right there. He caught her jaw: it was a blunt and dirty attack, sloppy with rage. Her head snapped back on her neck, blood darkening her face so swiftly that it felt like black magic. Her eyes, agonized, caught against mine, and then he’d shoved her down into the grass, his knee braced against her. I watched him hit her again, saw the way he shook his fist, as if clearing away the muscle memory of what had happened.
In the background, yelling. Orange Shirt. Isabelle. I couldn’t focus.
I darted forward, not caring about myself. I reached for the man who was straddling Cate. He lifted an arm to block me, but I’d snatched his sunglasses off his face, revealing his startled-looking eyes, pale and blinking and human. Those wide-open pupils. Relief washed through me. I was back on solid ground, I was surging with power.
I locked eyes with him. “Let her—”
Pain exploded in my lower back. The ground rose toward me, a sick rush. I’d been kicked to the dirt, my skull ringing and ringing, the pain an expanding continent across my body. How? Orange Shirt was yards away from me, fighting with Isabelle, and the third man was dead already—we were evenly matched—
No. When they’d first arrived, Orange Shirt had asked after Junior. They’d brought a fourth man, expecting four of us. He had outflanked us from the trees. We were outnumbered.
Gathering all the strength I had, I fought, I screamed, I spat. The man twisted my wrist, wrenched my arm, and bound my hands.
“And her eyes,” someone said.
Then the world blacked out. Everything vanished. For a wild moment I thought I’d lost my vision, or dropped into some other reality. I felt the agonizing, tugging pressure at the back of my head. A blindfold. I was being blindfolded. A thick fabric, scratchy, sweaty. I could barely blink, my eyelids pinned by its weight. I screamed, kicked backward, tried to squirm away. The world spun. I didn’t know which way was up.
Dimly, I heard the click of a revolver. Nearby. Too close. I was back in that motel room in Pennsylvania, my heart draining out onto the bed, my lungs giving way.
“Cate,” I cried. “Are you okay?”
“I’m here,” she said. Still close. Her voice faint, breathing labored.
“What’s happening? Can you see?”
“Yes,” she said. The blindfold was just for me. “There was a fourth, and he ambushed you—” A second later, the crunch of sole against bone. She gave a strangled cry.