The Masked Truth (20 page)

“He had the gun. He was trying to get it working. I told him not to. I should have—” He swallows. “I wasn’t paying enough attention. He didn’t listen to me, and I thought,
Sod him
, and I left him to it, and I should have stopped him. Made him stop.”

“The gun went off,” I say.

He nods. “I wasn’t near …” He squeezes his eyes shut. “No. I
was
reaching for it, and I’m certain I didn’t touch it, but maybe I did, maybe I knocked it or brushed it or—”

“You can’t
brush
a gun and make it fire, Max,” I say softly.

“But I
was
reaching. That’s all I remember. I was reaching and he was looking at it, and it went off, and maybe … maybe I wasn’t where I thought I was. Wasn’t doing what I thought I was. It just went off, and I don’t know how— The magazine’s out, so how did it even fire?”

I cut him short with another fierce hug, and whisper,
“Stay here, okay?” and he nods. I back up, and I’m standing in the blood—it’s everywhere. But I carefully back up while trying not to look at Aaron’s body.

Aaron’s body.

Aaron’s dead.

I hear him talking about his father, the frustration in his voice, the hurt too, as much as he tried to hide it, and then I hear Brienne and—

I take a deep breath and hush the memories. I don’t silence them. I can’t. I shouldn’t. But if I keep thinking about them, I’ll go mad. Aaron and Brienne don’t need my help anymore. Max does.

“You cleared a stovepipe jam, right? Cartridge sticking out?” I can see it on the floor.

“Aaron did. Then he removed the magazine.”

“
After
he cleared it.
After
he chambered a live round.”

He nods slowly, as if struggling to process my words. “R-right. Yes.”

That explains the gun firing—and why Aaron would look down the barrel, presuming it was safe, the magazine being out. Now the question of where Max was at the time.

I look at the blood pool. Then I point to a spot just inside the door. “You were standing there.”

“Maybe. I don’t—”

“I’m not asking you, Max. I’m telling you. There’s a void in the blood there, and then your footsteps through the spray, which means you were there when the gun went off.”

“All right.”

“And Aaron was standing where he fell. How tall are you?”

He blinks and I think he’s going to ask why, but after a moment he says, “Six feet.”

“Whew. I thought you were going to tell me in metric, and then I’d be screwed.”

The corners of his lips twitch in something that can’t quite be called a smile, but he relaxes, just a little. “We measure height in imperial, same as you.”

“All right. You’re six feet tall and Aaron was maybe two inches shorter. If arm length is roughly half of height, then the farthest you can reach each other is about six feet away. That”—I motion from the bare spot to Aaron’s body—“is more like eight feet, and I’m sure he didn’t have his arm extended toward yours, either. Meaning you had nothing to do with the gun firing.”

Aaron is dead either way. But I do expect to see Max’s shock and tension fade a little. If anything, though, his face tightens more.

“What if … what if it didn’t happen like that?”

“Didn’t it?”

“I—” He rubs his hands over his face. Aaron’s blood is on them, streaking his cheek. “I don’t know, Riley. Bugger it, I don’t know. The meds … I get confused sometimes … I’m … I’m afraid …”

“That it didn’t happen the way you think it did? That, what, you shot him?”

I’m being a little sarcastic there, maybe. Because of course he can’t think that. How could he “accidentally” do that and forget it? No matter how foggy the meds might make him. For another thing, I’ve seen enough of Max to know there’s no way he got pissed off with Aaron and shot him. But the look on his face says he isn’t sure. It’s shock. It must be, so I say, as carefully as I can, “Where’s the gun, Max?”

“I-I don’t—”

“Look. It’s in Aaron’s hand.”

“All right. All right. All right.” He’s repeating the words fast, as if pushing off panic, trying to reassure himself.

“It’s in his hand, and his fingers are still holding it,
and even if—I don’t know—you had a psychotic break or something and shot him and tried to make it look like an accident, you couldn’t get his fingers to hold it like that. Not after he was dead.”

“Right. Right.”

“Max? I need you to focus. You’re all I have left.”

As I say that, I realize what I’m saying, and his head shoots up, and I curse myself for breaking it to him that way. He says, “Brienne?” and my knees wobble. He’s there in a second, grabbing me before I fall, and I collapse against him, and it’s like I managed to hold it together just long enough to pull him back, and then I lose it, because she’s dead. They’re all dead. I can pretend Lorenzo might have lived, but it’s been hours, and I know he hasn’t. Everyone’s gone, and once again, I’m alive.

Why me? Goddamn it, why
me
?

Survivor’s guilt. That’s what they call it in therapy, and I don’t ever tell anyone that, because it sounds so selfish and ridiculous.
You feel bad because you survived? Think about those who didn’t and stop your damned whining
.

But it’s not whining. It’s guilt. Horrible, suffocating guilt, because I lived and the Porters didn’t. I got to go home to my family, and Darla doesn’t have a family anymore. Now I’m alive in this warehouse and almost everyone else is dead, and all I can think is how unfair that is, because I don’t deserve to live more than they did. If anything, I deserve it less—I already survived a tragedy once, now surely it must be someone else’s turn?

“She wanted to be brave,” I whisper against Max’s shoulder. “She kept telling me I was brave and she wanted to be, and … and … I didn’t do enough. Didn’t say enough.”

“What happened?”

I shake my head and pull back. “Later. We—”

“Tell me what happened, Riley. Get it out and then we’ll go.”

I do. I tell him how we attacked Predator, and Brienne took his gun and lured Gray off so I could escape.

“Then he shot her,” I say. “I heard the shot and I heard someone fall, and then I heard him calling her …”
I can’t say it. Won’t say it
. “He said something and kept going.”

“You’re sure she’s dead?”

“She must be. When he shot Aimee and she didn’t die, he …” I stop. “But Aimee was still talking, so he knew she was alive. Oh my God, what if Brienne—”

I run for the door, but he catches me as my bare feet slip in the blood.

“We need to go back,” I say. “I never checked. I never even saw her body. I just ran. Oh God, I just ran.”

“Which was the right thing to do. We’ll go back together. Carefully.”

I nod and we start for the door. Then I turn and look back at Aaron. At the gun.

I take a deep breath. I don’t want that gun. I really do not. But we don’t get to make those choices here. Not if we’re going to survive this.

I go back for the gun. I look at Aaron’s penlight, still shining on him, but perversely, I can’t take that—it feels like stealing. So I take the gun and then I reach down and brush a piece of hair off his forehead, and close his eyes and whisper, “I’m sorry,” and then we leave.

Max’s doctor says that he’s almost always lucid. Which Max supposes is true, if you consider a lack of lucidity the true descent into madness. He doesn’t spend much time in that realm, but it seems he circles the edges far too often, peeking over the border and judging the distance between it and himself, waiting for a burst of insanity to knock him clear over the line.

He has to think hard to recall the last time he’d trodden as close to the edge as he did a few minutes ago, when Riley came in the room. He didn’t even hear her enter. What he’d heard was his name in her voice, the horrified way she whispered, “Max?” and he looked up to see her crouched beside Aaron’s body, and it was like before, when Ilsa walked in on him with his hands around Justin’s neck.

No, it was not like before. Not exactly. As much as he’d fancied Ilsa, it had been one of his usual fancies, rather like spotting a new pair of boots in the vintage shop and saying, “I wouldn’t mind a pair of those.” He was a young man who had little trouble winning young women, and that was like being a young man with a full wallet. He spent his charm freely, on this girl or that, never promising more than a bit of fun.

And no, not
that
bit of fun, not yet. He’d seen too many blokes fall down that particular rabbit hole, convinced they were just having that fun, until they had it with a girl who expected more and they felt like rubbish. Then there was his friend Harrison, whose bit of fun resulted in a pregnant girlfriend and an early exit from sixth form, because he was a decent bloke and had a sprog to pay for. No, Max spent his charm freely and widely—take in a film or a row down the river, maybe a romantic picnic, because girls seemed to prefer that to an evening in a noisy pub, and it’d win him easy kisses and often more, but before it went far, he’d lose interest and wander off. Next girl, please.

That was Ilsa. A girl he’d had his eye on and planned to invite to a film and perhaps a picnic if the film worked out.

That was not Riley. When he’d seen the horror in her eyes as she crouched beside Aaron’s body, it was worse. So much worse. Because he cared about her. Really cared. And in that moment, he was certain he’d done it. That he’d hallucinated Aaron tinkering with the gun, as he’d hallucinated Justin’s demons, and he’d shot Aaron. Somehow he shot Aaron, and Riley knew it and—

And then she’d hugged him, and he’d realized her horror was for Aaron’s death.
Of course it was, you self-centered prat
. But that hadn’t made him feel any better, because once he got the idea that he might have shot Aaron, he couldn’t shake it, not until she convinced him—with logic and reasoning and proof—that he had not. Which was exactly what he needed, and she’d known it, and that makes him feel …

He waits for his inner voice to mock him for how he feels about Riley. It doesn’t. The shock of Aaron’s death has silenced it. Which was, these days, his version of lucidity. When he steps back from gazing into the realm of madness. When he stops doubting which side he truly stands on. Those
rare moments when he says, “Stuff it,” to the monster that has taken over his life.

Sod off, schizophrenia. We’re taking a little break here, you and me. Ta-ta, old chap. I need to focus. You can come visit later. I’m sure you will. You’re not going anywhere. I know that, and right now I don’t give a toss
.

While he goes to check on Brienne, he leaves Riley safe in a room with the gun. He suspects she’ll be checking the weapon, making sure it won’t jam when they need it most, but she doesn’t say so—she won’t mention it after what happened to Aaron. She doesn’t stay behind willingly, either. But he insists, because he finally realized she was injured.

Injured? No, Riley has been shot.

He takes a deep breath and tries not to think about that. “Injured” is, in this case, if not the technically perfect word, the safest one, the one that won’t get his heart pounding, thinking of how close she came to taking a bullet through the femoral artery.

But she hadn’t. The injury is … he hesitates to say minor, because no gunshot wound is minor. She calls it a scrape. It is not a scrape. It is small enough to be manageable, for now, and also large enough to give him cause to leave her in that room.

“Gray might come back,” he says. “To check on Brienne if he didn’t before, and if he does and we have to run, and your leg gives way …”

“Then you’ll keep running.”

“No, I will not.”

“You have to. That’s the pact I had with Brienne.”

“Too bad. The one you have with me says I’ll stop if you fall, and if I fall, you will not stop.”

“How is
that
fair?”

“It’s not. That’s life. Blatantly unfair. And that’s our pact.”

“No, if you fall, I’ll stop.”

“Then I’d better not fall. I, however, am not injured. You are. Now stop arguing and get in that room, because I’m not taking another step until I know you’re safe, and if you come out …”

She waits, and then says, “What’ll you do if I come out?”

“An undetermined threat. Always the worst sort. Rather like signing a blank check. Terribly dangerous. Now, stay, Riley.”

“Woof.”

“Good girl.”

Her leg is only the excuse for putting her in that room. The real reason? If she hasn’t seen Brienne dead already, then she doesn’t need to.

Brienne is just around the next corner. She ran down it, and Gray came around the corner and …

No need to think of that. It won’t do any good. Max jogs around the corner and sees her, lying sprawled, arms and legs akimbo.

Akimbo: limbs flung out widely or haphazardly
.

He’s heard the word before. Understands the meaning in theory. Now he sees exactly what it means, because it is the first word that comes to mind. Brienne looks like a rag doll dropped from the ceiling, her limbs every which way, her head turned to the side, her eyes shut.

Gray shot her in the back.

Coward.

Max snorts to himself. What does he expect? They
are
cowards. Which makes them no less dangerous. Perhaps more. Contempt is no defense against pistols at ten paces, a shot through the back of a running girl.

Coward or not, Gray won. An innocent girl lost.

Max looks for Predator’s gun, but Gray obviously took it. He moves carefully past the blood. Yes, there is blood.
Less than with Aaron, but it soaks her shirt and seeps from under her. He crouches beside Brienne. Her eyes seemed shut, but he sees they’re half open. He reaches to close them, as Riley did for Aaron. Her eyelids flicker, and he falls back.

“Max?” Brienne whispers.

“You’re— you’re—”

“Not a ghost,” she says, her voice so faint he has to bend to hear it. “Not yet.”