Owen grimaced. He reached out and touched one of the brown briars wrapped around the weeping willow, sliding his thumb over one of the thorns. It was several seconds before he finally spoke.
“I don’t blame you for Salina’s death. You did what you thought needed to be done.”
“But you didn’t agree with it then,” I said. “And you still don’t now.”
He sighed, looking as sad and tired as I felt. “Like I told you before, everything’s all mixed-up inside me right now. You, Salina, how I feel about her death and your part in it. I keep going over it again and again in my head, wondering if I could have done something different, if I could have changed things. But I can’t see how I could have, other than waking up and realizing what Salina was really like when we were young. But I didn’t see the real her, and now she’s dead. I can’t change any of that, and I haven’t sorted any of it out. Not really.”
It was a shortened version of the same speech Owen had given me at the Pork Pit a few weeks ago, when he’d told me that he needed some time to himself. I’d hoped that tonight’s events, that the danger and emotions we’d shared, had meant that he’d come to terms with at least some of his issues. But he hadn’t, and I didn’t know if he ever would.
“Jillian was a friend,” he continued. “But I wasn’t one to her. Not really. Because I didn’t even realize that she wasn’t in the rotunda with the rest of us. When Clementine threw that body down, and I thought it was you . . . I couldn’t think about anything else but you being dead. I always seem to let down the people I care about. Eva, Phillip, Cooper, you. I let you all down because of Salina. And tonight, I didn’t even notice that Jillian was missing. Some friend that makes me, huh?”
Owen barked out a harsh laugh, his face twisting with guilt and misery.
“And that kiss you laid on me in the vault?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me. Instead, he pressed his thumb into the thorn, drawing a bit of blood, pain etching lines in his sweaty, rugged, soot-streaked face. “I was just so glad that you were alive, Gin. I will always be glad for that, no matter what.”
Despite the fact that I’d killed Salina. That’s what it seemed like he really meant. But I couldn’t blame him for his feelings. He’d loved her once, and I’d cut her throat even though he’d asked me not to. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you got over easily, if ever.
Still, I’d hoped—I’d hoped that by saving Owen, I could save us too. Hope. Such a stupid, foolish emotion. One that could lift your heart to the heavens and then grind it into the ground in the very next instant. My emotions felt as tangled and twisted as the briars around us. And every move I made, everything I did to try to make things better, just stabbed another sharp, brittle thorn deep into the desolate wasteland of my heart.
“Gin?” Owen asked again, all sorts of questions in the soft, single syllable of my name.
Before I could answer him, bullets zipped in our direction.
19
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Bullets zinged through the air. I started to throw myself forward onto Owen, but he shook his head and held up his finger, pointing at the tree branches above us, and I realized what he was getting at. Those shots had been far too high for someone to have seen us. So why was someone shooting? Why waste their ammunition like that?
Crack! Crack! Crack!
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” a mocking voice called out.
Owen and I looked at each other and reached for our weapons. I didn’t know how many giants were waiting, but we’d fight our way through them just like we had all the others tonight—
A loud sigh sounded. “Quit messing around, Dave,” a second voice, this one female, said. “We’re supposed to be searching for the thieves. Do you want somebody to hear the noise and shoot us by mistake?”
“Please,” Dave, the first giant, said. “Whoever set off that bomb is long gone. So I say we have a little fun before we go back inside. Besides, we’re the only ones still out this far. Everyone else has headed back to the museum already, from what I’ve heard on the radio.”
A knife in my hand, I crawled over to the weeping willow at the other end of the hedge of briars and slowly got to my feet. Owen took cover behind another tree. Using the long, fluttering tendrils as a screen to hide me from sight, I peered around the tree trunk.
I spotted two giants in the semidarkness, both holding guns and standing about twenty feet away from us beyond the row of thorns. The male was tall and extremely skinny, with a shaved head that looked like a cue ball in the moonlight, while the woman was a bit shorter, with a plump body.
“Come on, Dave,” the woman said again. “We need to get back so we can help load up the rest of the art.”
“Sure, Cindy. We’ll go back—in a minute.”
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Dave laughed as he fired off a few more random shots.
“Will you stop that?” Cindy hissed. “It’s creepy enough out here already without you acting like a jackass—”
A sharp crackle of static filled the air, and a second later, Opal’s voice sounded. “Team one, what’s your position? I thought I heard shots in the trees near the west exit.”
Cindy raised her walkie-talkie to her lips. “It’s nothing, Opal. Dave thought he saw something and fired off a few rounds, but it was just a rabbit. We’re coming back inside now.”
“Roger that,” Opal replied.
Cindy clipped her walkie-talkie back to her belt and shot Dave another hot glare.
I put my finger to my lips, then made a circle and a slashing gesture with my knife at Owen. He nodded and held up his gun, telling me that he was ready to help.
Despite everything that had happened between us, Owen knew that we were in this together. Once we got off the island, well, we’d have to see where we stood. But for right now, we were together, and I was going to enjoy the solidarity while I could, even if I knew it was a result of circumstances, rather than of choice.
The tangle of briars wasn’t quite so thick around this tree, so I was able to maneuver around the far side of the trunk past the row of thorns and circle around so that I was parallel with the two giants.
“Come on, Dave,” Cindy said, a little more heat in her tone this time. “Let’s go back.”
“Fine,” Dave muttered, holstering his gun. “I’m out of ammo anyway.”
Out of ammo? What a shame. I smiled and headed toward my enemies. Maybe something was finally going to go right—
Cindy turned her head at exactly the right moment to see me step out from behind the trees.
“Dave!” she yelped. “Watch out!”
As always, I cursed fickle, fickle luck for messing with me yet again, but there was nothing I could do but follow through with my strike.
Thanks to Cindy’s warning, Dave was able to sidestep my initial attack. The giant was quicker than I expected, and he grabbed hold of my arm and shoved me into the closest tree before stepping up and driving his fist into my kidneys.
I hissed from the impact, but I returned the favor by snapping my elbow back into his ribs as hard as I could. Dave took several steps back, which put him right in Owen’s path. Owen crashed through the middle of the briars, raised his gun high, and smashed the weapon into the side of Dave’s head. The giant grunted, reached out, and tackled Owen. The two of them fell to the ground, rolling back and forth in front of the thorns.