The other best option was one of the bricked-in windows. Having read Optime’s manifesto, Ophelia knew the freak was a graduate of two big universities, a doctor of medicine who never practiced, who went to live in that spooky commune run by Xanthus Toller, the loon who was in the news now and then, taken seriously by some of the media. Knowing what Optime was also told them what he wasn’t, and for sure he wasn’t a bricklayer. Colson’s grandfather, his mom’s father, was a contractor who built houses. Colson had been on enough construction sites to know what a well-made brick or concrete-block wall looked like. Optime’s mortar was sloppily applied and crumbling in places. He probably hadn’t known enough to use metal ties or anchors when he filled in the windows, which were about six feet wide and eight feet tall. When Colson used the spear blade of his Swiss Army knife, he was able to dig out the mortar more easily than he had expected, maybe because Optime had used an unsuitable natural sand with too many fine grains to ensure a strong bond.
Among the knife’s many tools were the sturdy spear blade and a pen blade. If those broke or became dull, there were the blades of a miniature pair of scissors, a corkscrew, a regular screwdriver and a Phillips-head screwdriver, a wood saw, a metal saw, and an awl that should be of use. While Ophelia told him what was in the manifesto, he worked until his fingers cramped, and then passed the knife to her and took the flashlight, which he switched on only long enough for her to see where she needed to continue digging out the mortar.
“Can this really work?” she wondered as, in the dusty dark, she continued what he had begun.
“The first brick ought to be the hardest to get out,” he said. “After that, it should be easier and easier. If we can pull out the entire bottom course, and if he didn’t use any metal ties or other joint reinforcements, then I think maybe everything above could be made to collapse.”
By the time her fingers began to cramp and the work reverted to Colson, she had told him about her sister, Octavia, dying in the car crash that Ophelia had escaped almost unscathed. “I’ve been waiting to learn why I was spared. Now I know. I’m here to take him out.”
“Take him out? Shouldn’t we try to get our hands on the GPS messenger in Dad’s backpack, call the Emergency Response Center in Texas, get them in here?”
Her voice in the dark was more intense than in the light, with a sharp edge that might have spooked Colson if he’d met her in other circumstances. “Are you shitting me? You smell what’s coming through the floorboards, kid?”
“Yeah. I smell it.”
“His damn necropolis, rotting under us. A testament to his greatness. We’ll have one chance to surprise the asshole, just one, if we have any chance at all. You understand that?”
“I guess maybe.”
“You guess maybe?”
“Yeah. Okay. I understand. I hate him, too.”
“We get out of here,” she said, “I’m going to kill the fucker. Then we can call the Emergency Response Center in Texas.”
“Kill him how?”
The scratching blade. The dry dribbling sound as bits of mortar fell to the floor.
At last, she said, “Supposing we get out of here, it’ll be dark by then. You go into the woods nearby and hide. I’ll take the knife, if there’s still anything left of it by then. Maybe I can get him while he’s sleeping.”
“It’s not a knife for killing anyone,” Colson said. “Even in perfect condition, the blades are too short.”
“It’ll work if I cut a carotid artery. Or he’s sleeping, so I stab him in the eye, take his gun from him, put him down with it.”
“What’re you—Jane Hawk?”
“Who’s Jane Hawk?”
“This kick-ass rogue FBI agent in these novels my mom likes. Even if you were Jane Hawk, it won’t work the way you say. It never will.”
“Then I’ll find another way. You just hide in the woods, and I’ll find another way.”
Their excavations seemed to have loosened the brick. As he worked harder at it, he said, “I never knew a girl like you.”
“I’m not just a girl anymore, Colson. I can almost believe I never was.”
“Yeah, you’re a grown-up. I get it. But I can’t just hide in the woods and let everything to you.”
“I won’t let you do anything else.”
“You called me ‘kid.’ I saw him . . . saw him kill my dad. I’m not a kid anymore.”