“The—the slasher?” Letha’s lips are pressed together in a way that feels one hundred percent patronizing. “So from…
from Camp Blood,” she says, changing direction for them now that they’re up on the pier, “from over there could you see…
out onto the lake?”
The way she’s picking through her words, Jade can hear what she’s trying not to say, as she doesn’t want to say it if Jade doesn’t already know: “Mr. Holmes.”
Letha looks over, her eyes blinking fast and tragic.
“It’s funny,” Letha says, then takes Jade’s forearm in both of her hands, draws best-friend close, whispers, “not funny-funny, but… ironic, I guess?”
“What’s ironic?” Jade asks, not sure she wants to know.
“My dad was always saying he wished he had a BB gun for him,” Letha says, letting Jade assemble the rest in her head.
But Jade has pieces Letha doesn’t know she has: Mars Baker tracking that duck across the water for Theo Mondragon, saying he should have used a shotgun; Mars Baker saying that to a guy who just had a nail gun.
Jade looks back to the woods.
“The bear?” Letha asks, pulling Jade closer.
Jade shakes her head no. Well. The “bear” that killed Deacon Samuels, yeah. The one that, say, was out turning their handy-dandy jammer on when a certain history teacher buzzed over for the hundred and first time. No, Theo Mondragon didn’t have a BB gun or a shotgun handy, but he could pick up the only gun handy: the one that spits nails.
Why not fling a golden nail up into the sky at the annoyance Mr. Holmes most certainly was? It’s just a gesture. It’s not like the nails are arrows, it’s not like they’re made for flying. It’s not like they’re meant to rip through a Dacron wing.
But what if one did, right? A one-in-a-million shot? Isn’t that exactly the kind of shot someone like Theo Mondragon’s been making his whole life already?
And what if, for sixty seconds after that, Theo Mondragon stood alongside three construction grunts and watched the little kit plane he’d just shot founder in the air, finally nosedive into the lake, launching its old pilot out into the water?
What if Theo Mondragon had just accidentally killed someone in broad daylight, and done it in front of three witnesses? Probably what he’d do then was what Deacon Samuels had already done: stuff those grunts’ hands with cash, assure them it was an accident, it was just a joke that got out of hand, but someone of his station didn’t need the kind of media attention this could bring, surely they could understand, couldn’t they? And then… he probably didn’t sleep on it, probably didn’t sleep at all. Who would?
What he would do, though, what would make sense at two in the morning, would be to involve himself with the construction the next day, and maybe send everyone but those three back across the lake. So he, the quintessential businessman, taking risk analysis and cost-benefit margins into severe account, could take care of business. Nobody on the yacht would think twice about a nailgun going off in Terra Nova. Nailguns were always going off in the houses.
And—and from his angle, he’d have to do it, wouldn’t he?
If he didn’t, Shooting Glasses and Mismatched Gloves and Cody could pull this whole enterprise down. Pull his whole life down.
“What is it?” Letha says, peering over into Jade’s eyes.
“Just… thinking about that BB gun,” Jade says back.
“He would never get one, though,” Letha says. “He hates guns.”
Of course he does, Jade answers inside. All slashers do.
She stands up fast when a light’s bobbing through the trees.
When Letha starts to look back to see what’s got Jade’s attention, Jade hustles them ahead.
“Hungry,” she says. “Haven’t eaten since, since…”
As if she could.
Except then she does, two plates’ worth of smoked salmon and crackers and leftover potato skins warmed in the microwave, delivered back to Letha’s room because Jade says she doesn’t want to startle anybody in the tight halls, meaning: there are no other girls on this yacht in coveralls, with hair like all the crayons melted together at the bottom of the box.
The salmon is so good, too, and the potato skins themselves, being left over, have a sort of skin over them that’s the most wonderful rubbery sensation to bite through. Each time it scrapes against Jade’s gums, she almost has to wince in a delight so pure she feels guilty for it.