39
BEAU
Voices. Muffled words. A low, irritating buzz. The fridge?
Then a woman’s voice.
I open one eye, just a fraction, trying to see... anything. Trying to make out their words. My head is ringing, my left arm dead. My eyes dart but stop when I see a pair of shoes across the room. I recognize them.
Oh God, no. How could this be?
My poor brain is in no position to compute what is happening. How it’s happened. How I never knew what was right in front of me this whole time. “Beau? Beau, can you hear me?” He sounds fraught, stressed, as he comes closer, and my already racing heart gets faster and faster until I am unable to play dead anymore. I open both eyes, but my vision is far from clear, and my hearing is a whoosh of inaudible words. “Jesus, Beau.” He crouches before me and strokes my hair back, and I look up to see him glancing around, his gun poised, ready to shoot. He’s sweating. Breathless. I hear a noise outside the window. “Fuck,” he curses, returning his eyes to me. I mumble some garbled words. I don’t know if he understands them. “I’m so sorry,” he says, sounding distant. Grainy.
I move fast. I don’t know if it’s fast enough.
Bang.
40
JAMES
I rest my back against the wall, my mind racing, feeding me instruction after instruction. I can’t get them straight. Can’t think clearly. I growl, my teeth gritting.
Think!
I take a deep breath, telling myself I can’t go in there, guns blazing. But then a gunshot sounds, and all rationale is lost, along with my fragile temper. I roar and lift my arm, throwing my elbow back into the window, shattering it, and I’m through it soon after, numb to the sensation of glass ripping through my arm.
I scan the room and nearly fall to my arse when I see Beau on her knees, sobbing.
Burrows’s head is in her lap, his eyes open, blood trickling out the corner of his mouth. His hands cover his neck, blood spilling through the gaps, pouring all over the floor and Beau.
“No,” she sobs, rocking back and forth, crying her fucking eyes out. “No, no, no.”
My heart splinters, my gun lowering, my useless body motionless. Clueless. She looks at me, her eyes welling, and I’m about to go to her, but I hear a noise from another room.
My body hardens again, and I follow the sound to the front. “James, no!” she yells. “Please, come back!” The front door is open, and I rush outside, seeing a woman pulling away in a Ford.
“Hey!” I yell, running out into the road, aiming my gun, trying to read the license plate. The car speeds around the corner. “Fuck!” I yell.
“James!” Beau screams, forcing me back to her. I find Otto at the door, and I reel off the license plate number as I pass him. “Find her.”
“On it,” he says, going straight to his phone.
I find Beau still rocking back and forth, looking down at Burrows in her lap, the noises coming from him unbearable. I should finish the fucker off. Not to put him out of his misery, but to put Beau out of hers. I slowly start to aim, get ready to shoot, my eyes passing between his and the back of Beau’s head, her tears splashing all over his face.
“I’m sorry,” he garbles. “I’m s-orry, I’m sorry, I’m s-sorry.” They’re his last words.
His eyes close and he goes limp, relieving me of the job, and I let my gun drop to my side on an exhale as Beau’s sobs ramp up another notch. I can’t bear to hear her cry. I dip and remove her, carrying her to a chair and sitting her down, checking her over. I see a mark at the top of her arm. A small puncture. “Beau?” I ask, wanting to shake her. She stares blankly forward, her eyes dead. Black pits of nothing. Will she recover from this darkness? I take her cheeks in my palms, desperate for her to see me. “Look at me.”
She does, and I withdraw, her face expressionless. “The woman,” I say.
“His girlfriend,” she says robotically. “She showed up.”
I frown. I thought Burrows said she was practically living here. “And?”
“I don’t know. She screamed. She yelled. She ran.” Her eyes find me, and I hate the infinite emptiness I see. “My dad,” she says on a whisper, her voice wobbly. “My dad’s name was in the box.”
I exhale shakily, looking up when I detect movement by the door. Otto looks as grave as I expect I do.Jesus fucking Christ.Burrows and her father?