Cate stared at me. Her lips moved, a whisper: a prayer, an encouragement, the syllables of my name.
“You’ll have your turn,” Orange Shirt said in her ear, voice humid with a leer.
Orange Shirt was looking at me. Openly, brazenly. His gaze flickered, up and down my body, but when I caught his eyes again I held them, snagged them, thinking Don’t look away, don’t look away. Burrowing deep. “Let her go,” I said.
His facial muscles slackened instantly, his arm around Cate faltering and then dropping, distracted. She didn’t move, face tense, like she didn’t trust that she was safe to go. Still clutching me close, the third man watched, and I sensed his surprise, the way he was more bemused than scared.
“I know your voice,” I said to Orange Shirt. “You raped Delilah. You killed her.” I recognized his voice from the answering machine message. It was hard to connect those stumbling, earnest words with this cold-eyed young man.
He didn’t answer. I spoke directly to his mind, the deepest, primal parts. “Tell me if you’ve been following us all this time,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t followed you. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Step away from her,” I said.
He didn’t even hesitate. He took a step, creating half a foot of space between his body and Cate’s, and I saw her muscles visibly unfurl in relief.
“What the hell?” the other man said in my ear, looking for the joke. “Get it together, man.” His arm around me was still pinching.
I had to think carefully, quickly. Choose each word to hold as much power as possible. “Shoot him,” I said to Orange Shirt. Clear and calm. “Shoot him in the leg.”
It was a gamble. I wasn’t even sure Orange Shirt had a gun. But he was reaching into his waistband, pulling out a revolver. Pressed against me, the third man stiffened. His breath against me, that tangy smell of his sudden fear. He began a syllable in his throat, a protest. In that second, he let go of me, stepping toward Orange Shirt, reaching out—
Orange Shirt, his gaze emotionless, like a dreamer’s, angled the gun downward and fired. The sound was so loud, in that still and quiet room, that for a moment I was sure he’d hit me instead.
But I was still standing. I was free. The man who’d held me crumpled to the floor, his body strangely graceful in that split second. He screamed in pain. “Goddammit,” he said through gritted teeth. “Are you fucking her too? Why are you listening to this—”
I spoke over him, addressing Orange Shirt. “Put the gun to your head,” I said.
Orange Shirt convulsed once, his hand holding the gun trembling. I watched him, fascinated in a cool corner of my mind. The way he tried to fight against it. The trapped look in his washed-out blue eyes. The man who’d been shot in the leg was clutching his thigh, his fingers slicked with blood, his jeans stained with a rapidly spreading blackness. When I looked into Orange Shirt’s eyes, I saw that same disbelief that I’d seen with the man at the motel. He didn’t think this was really happening: a girl was forcing his body and brain to bend to her own. I was inside a childhood dream, bounding unharmed off a cliff, wondering what I’d ever been afraid of.
Cate moved across the room, carefully, finding her way to my side.
Orange Shirt held the gun against his temple. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked, his face greasy with sweat.
“Am I going to do what you’d do if you were in my place, you mean? That’s what you’re all afraid of.” He blinked rapidly. “Keep your eyes on me,” I said, and he stopped blinking, eyes collecting a glossy scrim of unshed tears.
In the paralysis I’d created, Cate whispered in my ear: “We need to find Isabelle. We have to get out of here, Morrow. Please.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t want to step outside of this current of power I’d created. I had no idea how long it would hold. If I told Orange Shirt to press the trigger, his finger, obeying my words instead of his own brain, would make the one tiny movement that would end him.
For a moment I wanted to. I wanted to so totally and completely that I couldn’t even imagine feeling guilt afterward. Was this what my mother had felt, holding the match? When I’d seen that joy in her face, was it because she’d just murdered a man who’d deserved it? Maybe it had been the purest thrill of her life, blazing so brightly that the rest of her life could only ever be pale and ordinary in contrast. Maybe she’d played it safe, my whole childhood, just to save us both from that hot, dark impulse always tugging at the back of her brain.