“It just made sense,” Eli says.
“Stop repeating everything I say.”
Eli tilts his head to the side, as if agreeing to stop. “So the blood.”
“Yeah, the blood.” Sweat has sprung up on David’s forehead. “I had the blood test done. I guess they’ve been looking for us, for our DNA. I don’t know the whole operation, but I figure it’s pretty huge. They must have just recently added the DNA to the database, though, because I’d had blood taken before. I figure all of us kids had at one time or another.”
A knock comes from the door.
“Dr. Smith?”
Janice, the angry nurse.
“Don’t speak,” David whispers. “The door is locked. She’ll go away.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Eli asks.
“Then I guess I’ll have no choice but to shoot her. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. Hopefully by that time they’ll have gotten here.”
“What if I do say something? What if I shout?”
“Then she’ll die, and whoever else comes in with her. You want that on your conscience?”
“What all did they tell you?”
“Not everything, but enough. I know your real name. I know you were once a scientist. I know we’re not your real kids.”
“How about what kind of people they are?”
“I don’t care what kind of people they are. All I care about is staying alive. They promised me I would if I cooperated.”
The woman knocks again, calling Dr. Smith, Dr. Smith, are you in there? She tries the knob, realizes it’s locked, and finally walks away.
For a moment there’s silence, besides the ongoing alarm. Then Ashley, still on the floor, still cradling Marta’s head, speaks.
“It was you.”
So far the gun has been steady in David’s hand. Now it begins to waver, if only slightly.
“What?”
“It was you,” Ashley says. “You were the one who contacted Melissa about your father dying. You were the one who talked her into getting everyone together.”
David grins. “It wasn’t that difficult. I knew Melissa would be the best choice. She’s always been the one who tried to keep everyone together. I had the ball, so I put it in her court.”
As he says this last bit, Marta takes her final breath. Her eyes, which have been growing progressively emptier, go blank. Her body seems to relax. Blood is still between her lips, and there is a bubble there, a very small bubble of blood. A second goes by, maybe two, and the bubble bursts.
Bravery, I’ve decided, is for chumps. Survival, on the other hand, is all that matters. Everyone wants to survive. Nobody wants to die. I don’t want to die. Not yet. And that’s why, I think, I take a step forward.
“Don’t,” David says again.
I hesitate, then take another step forward.
David says to me, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Like Eli said, you aren’t going to kill us.”
“No, I’m not going to kill Eli. That’s what they told me, to keep him alive. The girl, too.”
This gives me pause. I glance at Ashley and see confusion on her face. Then, steeling myself, I take another step.
“Don’t do it, John.” David shakes his head slowly, keeping his gaze on Eli. “I don’t want to have to kill you.”
This stops me for a beat. Then, glancing once more at Marta dead on the floor, I start forward again.
“Goddamn it, John, I said stop.”
I don’t stop. I take another step.
“You know what I was just thinking about, David? When we were kids, back at school, remember what those bullies did to you?”
The gun in his hand begins to shake. I can see it in his face that the memories still haunt him. The bullies holding him to the ground, forcing him to eat gobs of spit.
“I could have let them keep torturing you, but I didn’t. I didn’t because you’re my brother. That’s what you do for your brother. You help him when he’s in trouble.”
I take another step forward, decreasing the space between us by maybe another three or four feet.
“Don’t test me, John.”
Like the dumbass I am, I take another step forward.
“I mean it.”
Another step.
“Goddamn it,” David says, the gun in his hand trembling even more.
Another step.
“I warned you.”
He turns so the gun is now aimed right at me.
Five feet between us.
The gun barrel stares back at me.
David stares back at me, little beads of sweat still on his brow.
The alarm keeps blaring, the strobes keep flashing.
I take another step.
“You know what, David?”
“What?”
“You’re an asshole.”
And I spit right in his face.
forty-six
The girl, too.
Three words. Three simple words. Three words out of hundreds that had been spoken in the past couple of minutes, and yet it was those three words that Ashley kept running again and again in her head.
The girl, too.
It didn’t make sense. Why would he have said it like that? It hadn’t been an afterthought so much as a gradual progression of details. It made sense not to kill Eli, not after everything Ashley had heard and pieced together. Whoever this Matheson was, he wanted Eli kept alive, no doubt so he could kill Eli himself. But why keep her alive, too?
This was what she was thinking as John Smith started to make his advance on David Smith, John taking one slow step after another, David telling him to stop and then stop again, until finally John did the most perplexing thing: he spit in his brother’s face.
After that, things started happening very quickly.
Ashley didn’t see exactly where the spit landed, but she heard David cry out. He crumpled, too, bringing his arms in toward his body as he turned away, the gun no longer aimed at either Eli or John. Eli was moving almost instantly. He threw all his weight into David, throwing them both to the floor. The gun hit the carpet and bounced away. David reached for it but Eli shoved him down again, trying to hold him in place.
Eli shouted at John, “Shoot him!”
John dug the gun out of his jacket pocket. He hurried forward, around the desk, because that was where David and Eli were now, David struggling, Eli holding him down.
Ashley blinked. Suddenly she remembered what she was doing. Who she was holding. Still cradling Marta’s head in her hands. The dead woman was staring up at her blankly. Her head, somehow, felt even heavier than it had only a minute ago.
“Shoot him!” Eli shouted again.
She gently placed Marta’s head on the floor. She wanted to close the woman’s eyes but didn’t want to touch the body any more than she already had. This revelation brought shame, and she wanted to force herself to close Marta’s eyes just so she could prove herself wrong. Instead, she rose to her feet, reaching into her jacket pocket for her gun.
Eli and David were still going at it. David threw an elbow, connecting it with Eli’s nose. Eli jabbed a fist at David’s head. They kept struggling, while John loomed over them, aiming the gun.
“Get out of the way,” John said. He kicked David’s gun toward the other side of the room.
Eli rolled away from David. He groaned in pain. He reached for the desktop, started to pull himself up.
David stayed where he was on the floor. It was clear to him he didn’t have any more options. His gun was out of reach. He currently had a gun aimed at him. He just lay there, staring up at John.
“Shoot him,” Eli said.
John kept the gun aimed at David, but he didn’t pull the trigger. “I don’t … I don’t think I can.”
“He was just about to kill you.”
“I know that. But I … I’m not a killer.”
“This isn’t a morality play, John. We’re talking about life and death here.”
Ashley stepped up next to Eli. Her gun, she realized distantly, was in her hand. Without thinking, she leveled it at David’s chest.
John asked her, incredulous, “Are you going to shoot him?”