I hesitate. I don’t know for sure if this guy’s a murderer or just a douchebag. But what I do know is that I want to know what happened.
The truth. The end.
He gestures at the low wall, slowly, like he doesn’t want to startle me. “Let’s sit.”
“Let’s not. If you’re serious about this, you can take a step back. I don’t want you this close to me.”
Marsh lifts his hands. “Okay.” Steps back. “Okay.”
“So tell me,” I say.
“Celine liked heroin,” he says. “Said it made her feel like she lived in a beautiful world.” He smiles a little. “She was kind of… dramatic. You know? I stayed behind to do some with her. Just a snort. We crashed out and listened to music for a while. I left. I guess she did some more after that. She just did a little too much. I used to think she was maybe suicidal. Maybe she was.” He shrugs. “That’s it. There’s nothing else to it.”
“Nothing? Nothing about how she saw a dead girl at Tiantian’s party?”
“So what? So did I.”
We just stand there for a moment, staring at each other.
“You want to know how it went down?” he asks.
I nod. I can’t help it.
“The two of us were… just kind of hanging out. Celine and me. After it happened, Tiantian called Yang. He sent two guys to take care of the body. Celine helped them put some clothes on her that they brought over. Cheap-ass worker’s uniform, like a supermarket smock or something.”
I flash back to the photo of the dead girl. What the fuck is her name?
Wang Junyi. That’s it.
“Here’s the thing,” Marsh says. He sounds calmer now. “They’re gonna want to blame a foreigner. You’ve got Sidney in your corner. I’ve got Tiantian.”
My heart’s speeding up like somebody turned a dial.
“Tiantian?”
He nods. “Yeah. Gugu’s my buddy, but I fix things for Tiantian. Help him move money around. The pay’s a lot better.”
“Okay,” I say. “So we both have friends. How exactly do we help each other?”
That’s when he laughs. “Yeah, you know what? I can’t help you. But you can help me.”
He’s reaching behind him, into his waistband, and I already know what he’s reaching for.
I snatch up my daypack by the straps and swing it hard, as his hand rises with the gun.
The weapon, some pistol, I can’t see what it is, goes flying, but there’s no way I can beat Marsh to it. I don’t run that well, and he’s bigger than I am.
There’s only one thing I can think of to do.
I clamber over the low retaining wall and tuck and roll. Down the gentle hill, side over side, arms clasped over my chest, like I’m a kid playing a game, just rolling down the hill, collecting grass stains, except I’m going too fast, and I don’t come to a stop until I slam into a row of grapevines and some kind of wire strung along them, my forearm absorbing most of the blow.
I pick myself up and look up the hill. I don’t see Marsh, yet, but I have to figure he’s going to get the gun and come after me.
I head for the tall hedges. They’re like walls, one running along the side of the vineyard, the other perpendicular to it, facing the retaining wall up the hill. There’s a gap between them, the entrance to the garden, or whatever this is.
I don’t like going into terrain I don’t know, into someplace I could get trapped, but I need to find some cover, and there aren’t a lot of choices.
“What the fuck?” I mutter.
I can’t figure out what this is at first. One of the sheds I saw, it’s like this house or something, painted sand colored, and in front of it there’s a life-size stand-up figure of a soldier, in full-on battle rattle, holding a rifle aimed at me. I look around, and I see a mock-up of a tank-I mean, it can’t be a real tank, right? It looks pretty real, if a little old, metal rusting around the edges, done up in green camo. Behind that are concrete walls, crumbling in places, with black bursts around the broken places like they’ve been hit by mortars.
Weird thing is, there’s these bright splotches of color on the soldier, on the building, on the tank. Orange, and neon green, and bright red.
Paint.
Oh, fuck. It’s Sidney’s paintball playground.
Chapter Twenty Six
★
First thing I think is, Keep going. Get through this maze, however big it is, and to the other side. At least there should be some cover along the way.
Second thought: painted in big stenciled letters on the big shed to my right is army weapons depot. The door’s open.
I’ve got a second to decide.
I haul ass into the shed.
Inside, I can see racks of protective clothes, pads, goggles, supplies. And paint guns.
Spread out on a table is a clutter of gear, as if the last players just left it there when they finished playing. Including a couple guns.
Somebody didn’t field-strip his weapons, I think. Lucky for me.
I grab one. It sure doesn’t look like the paint guns I played with a few times when I was a kid, which looked and felt like plastic toys. This thing resembles an AR-15, and it has close to the heft of one, too.
I pop open the hopper, and it’s about half full of paintballs. I close the lid and pray the thing works. I don’t have time to do anything else. I don’t think Marsh rolled down the hill like I did, but it’s not going to take him that long to jog down here.
I poke my head around the entrance. I don’t see Marsh, but I think I hear him. I scramble across the courtyard, past the dummy soldier, to the tank. It’s actual metal, not a wooden mock-up. Maybe PLA surplus or something. I duck behind it and wait.
Now I do hear Marsh for reaclass="underline" a crunch of footsteps on gravel. “Come on, Ellie,” he says loudly. “I was just kidding around.”
I risk a peek. There he is, standing by the soldier, scanning the area, gun dangling loosely from his hand at his side.
I stand up, brace the stock against my shoulder, put my finger on the trigger, and unload.
Clack, clack, clack! My first two balls miss, and Marsh starts to raise his gun arm; my third shot hits him in the chest, and he flinches a little as the burst of green paint spreads across his black designer T-shirt. His gun’s level now, he’s taking aim, gun turned sideways like he’s seen too many stupid movies, and I fire again, semiauto, and I hit him right in the face.
“Motherfucker!” he yells, hitting a high note, and he’s clawing at one eye, and I think, Good. And I fire a couple more times and get him in the face again.
I may have been a medic in the National Guard, but I shot expert in basic training.
“You fucking cunt!”
I hope I put his eye out. Muzzle up, I run, deeper into the maze.
More crumbling walls and “bombed” houses. The shell of a burned-out car. I zigzag through it. I don’t know how big this place is. I don’t know where it ends or if I can get out the other side. A jolt of pain goes up my bad leg every time my foot hits the ground; my chest is burning, and I can’t catch my breath.
The course has opened up some, like it’s the town square. Not as much cover. A couple more burned-out cars. A dry fountain. Buildings and walls along the perimeter. I need to get to cover, I think. That low wall at the back. I’ll be able to see if Marsh is coming. Have a chance to keep running, if I can.
I make it to the wall, collapse behind it.
You can’t stay here, I tell myself. You need to keep running.
I look back the way I came, and I don’t see Marsh yet.
Maybe I did put his eye out.
I hear light running footsteps behind me.
I twist around, paint gun ready, and see Meimei.
“Jesus!” I hiss.
She drops down next to me.
“Go get help,” I whisper. “Marsh has a gun. He’s-”
And she’s pointing a handgun at me.
This is it, I think. The end. I feel nothing but empty.