The Retribution of Mara Dyer (12 page)

A small shift in movement, and the scalpel was in my hand. I tucked it against my forearm, holding it tightly against my skin. It was sharp enough to cut me.

I swallowed, then said, “I need my hands. I can’t do anything without my hands.”

He adjusted his gun, poking it under my ribs, then nodded once quickly.

I brought my hands in front of me, tugging the waistband of the
WELCOME TO THE SUNSHINE STATE
boxers down with my thumbs. Mr. Ernst was watching, but not closely enough. Stella had fled. And before he could even register the movement, I stabbed him in the eye. He screamed until I cut his throat.

I took his keys and his gun when I was finished. Before I left, I glanced up at my reflection in the dark, cracked mirror. The asinine
WELCOME TO THE SUNSHINE STATE
T-shirt was streaked and soaked with Mr. Ernst’s blood, and so was my skin. It was under my fingernails, in my hair. It freckled my face.

I stared at my reflection, waiting for a rush of disgust or terror or regret—something. But it never came.

18

I
KNEW WHAT I LOOKED
like as I walked calmly back to the truck. Jamie and Stella were already on their way back to find me.

“Fuck,” Jamie said when he saw me. That about covered it.

“I’m okay. Get into the truck.”

“Is he . . .”

Yes. Yes, he is.

“I have the keys,” I said. “We need to go.”

Stella reached out her hand. It was shaking. “Keys?” she asked as Jamie pulled me up into the cab. I reached into my pocket and tossed them at her.

“What—what happened?” Jamie asked.

I looked out the window, catching my reflection in the side-view mirror. She shrugged. “He made a mistake,” I said quietly. I began to notice the blood drying on my skin. I felt sticky. Dirty. I pulled my hair back into a knot. It was clotted with blood.

“Mr. Ernst?” Jamie asked. “Did he touch you?”

“He tried,” I said under my breath.

“Mara.”

I swallowed hard. “I’m okay.” It was true enough. I wasn’t hurt. “He thought I was someone else.”

Jamie’s eyebrows knitted in confusion. “Who?”

“Someone who wouldn’t fight back. Listen, we need to go.” I withdrew Mr. Ernst’s gun from the back of my boxers and shoved it into the glove compartment. Jamie’s mouth hung open, disbelieving.

“Did you shoot him?” Stella was looking at the floor of the cab. Her voice sounded hollow, like she wasn’t really there.

I shook my head. “He had the gun. He was pointing it at me. I cut him while he was trying to . . . undress.”

“I should have stayed with you guys,” Jamie said. “Fuck.
Fuck
.”

Stella’s chest rose and fell rapidly. Her face was pale and bloodless. “Mara helped me,” she said, as if to herself. “And then she had to help herself. It was self-defense.” She began to nod. “I saw it, most of it, before I ran to get you, Jamie. So we can call the police and tell them—”

“We can’t call the police,” Jamie said. His voice was muffled. He had put his head between his knees. “You know we can’t.”

Stella closed her eyes and squeezed them shut. “Right. Right. Okay, so, Mara wouldn’t have done anything unless she had to—and she had to.”

I had to.

“But now we have a problem.” She looked at my hands. “His DNA is under your fingernails. Yours is probably all over his body. This isn’t like Horizons. We have his
truck
. If we leave it here, we’re stranded. If we take it, we’ll be easy to track.”

“It can be tracked anyway, even if we leave it. But Mara’s right, we can’t stay here,” Jamie said. “I vote for ditching the truck somewhere unobvious and then we’ll figure the rest of this shit out.”

“We’ll burn the clothes or something,” Stella said, looking at my T-shirt. “Clean you up. It’ll be all right.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince me.

“Then the only way out is through,” Jamie said, and Stella started the truck.

19

T
HIS IS LIKE THE PERFECT
storm of bad decisions,” Jamie said as the three of us approached a bed-and-breakfast in Key Largo. It was dark out. We’d ditched the truck about seven miles before; minutes later, it had begun to rain. Not enough to wash the blood out of my T-shirt or off my skin, but more than enough to make the miserable seven-mile walk even more miserable. Stella scratched at a thousand mosquito bites, and Jamie muttered about Lembas the whole way.

“Fine. Let’s get this shit show on the road,” he said as we stood in front of a well-lit, charming old green Victorian with yellow plantation shutters and scalloped trim. The shingles
were weather-beaten and worn, and creepers snaked up the siding from the ground to the windows. “Mara, you should probably stay outside while I—”

“What?” I looked up. I’d been picking at a flake of dried blood between my thumb and forefinger, not paying attention.

“You’re not exactly inconspicuous,” he said. “And I’ve never tried to Jedi mind-fuck anyone like this before.” His voice wavered a little.

I arched an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean ‘mind-trick’?”

“Not when I do it,” he said.

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Just ask for three rooms.”

But I’d never seen him so nervous. He ended up taking my hand and walking in with me, filthy and bloody though I was. Our clothes dripped water on the maroon runner that led up to the front desk. The wood had been painted a dark hunter green, and the desk itself looked like it was covered in a giant doily. A fan lazily spun above our heads, and the breeze made me shiver.

No one was actually at the desk, of course. There was a little silver bell, like an actual
bell
, with a card that said
Ring for Service
in calligraphy.

“Well?” Stella looked at Jamie.

Jamie fidgeted. “I’m not sure I can—”

“You can,” I said gently.

“No, but if I can’t, though . . . I mean, if I screw up, what if she calls the police?”

“Then you’d better not screw up.” I smiled.

“Don’t be such a dick,” Jamie said, but he was smiling too. Then he rang the bell. He looked ready to bolt at any second.

“Just a moment!” The three of us heard shuffling, and then a pair of doors swung open. A bespectacled elderly woman appeared, beaming at us. Well, not all of us.

“Oh my,” she said as she got a good look at me. “Oh, sweetheart, are you all right?”

I mustered up my most winning smile. It did not have the desired effect.

“Um, we’d like to book a room,” Jamie said quickly as the woman held her hand to her chest. Stella nudged him. “Two rooms. Three rooms,” he amended.

“Dear, what
happened
to you?” she asked me. “Do you need a doctor?”

“Um, no—We were just—Jamie,” I said through gritted teeth, still smiling awkwardly. “Do something.”

I could see the woman’s confusion turn to nervousness and then to fear as she looked from me to the others. “Three rooms, you say?” Her voice wobbled slightly. “You know, I think I have just the ones for you. I’ll just run and do a quick check and make sure they’re ready. It’s been a while since we’ve had anyone up in the suites. Won’t be but a minute.”

“There’s no need to check,” Jamie said suddenly. His voice wasn’t loud, but it still felt like it was the only sound in the room. “The suites will be perfect. What floor are they on?”

“Third,” the woman said, blinking at him. “Third floor, rooms 311, 312 and 313.”

“Those will be perfect.”

The woman nodded, looking a bit dazed. “Yes. Perfect. I’ll just need your names?” She took out a guest book and a pen, and looked at Jamie expectantly.

Something came over Jamie then. He lifted his chin as he said, “Barney.” I cocked my head to the side. “Rubble.”

Stella put her head in her hands.

“And this,” he said, a smile spreading across his lips as he sidled up to Stella, “is Betty.” He put his hand on her shoulder. She smiled weakly. “And this is our daughter.” Jamie placed a hand on my head. “Bamm-Bamm.” I stepped on his foot.

“Ow,” he said through a clenched smile.

The woman clapped her hands together, clearly pleased. “What a
lovely
family you have, Mr. Rubble.” Her green eyes twinkled as she wrote our names in the guest book. “I’ll just need a credit card and one form of ID?” she asked Jamie.

“We already gave it to you,” Jamie replied.

“Oh yes!” she said, shaking her head. “You already gave it to me. Of course you did. Forgive me. The old brain’s not what it used to be. And how long is it that you’ll be staying?”

Jamie looked at me. I shrugged.

“Indefinitely,” he said, flashing a dazzling smile at her.

The woman handed him three keys. He handed one to
Stella, one to me, and pocketed the last for himself.

“One last thing, Mrs.—”

“Beaufain,” the woman answered.

“Mrs. Beaufain, are there any security cameras on the premises?”

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “We had some once, right by the entrance, but they broke, and my son’s not out here often enough to help me fix them, so I just let it go already. Life’s too short.”

“Truer words were never spoken,” Jamie said, and thanked her.

Stella and I began to head up the stairs. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” Jamie said, looking shaky and gray.

“You okay?”

“I’m—I don’t know. Mrs. Beaufain, is there a bathroom down—downstairs?”

She shook her head. “Just in the rooms, Mr. Rubble.” It was a testament to Jamie’s amazingness that she said it with a straight face.

Jamie nodded and turned on his heel. We watched him push open the glass door and heave into a hedge out front.

“Ugh,” Stella said. “You think he’s okay?”

“Should we wait for him?” I asked. As the words left my mouth, I felt a prickle of awareness, like I was being watched. I glanced at Stella.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I peered behind us. My skin was still crawling; it felt tight, stretched over my bones. Even when Jamie appeared, looking normal and healthy under the circumstances, I couldn’t shake the sense that something was deeply wrong.

“You look weird,” Jamie said, as we headed up the stairs. “You okay?”

I shook my head but said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.

We unlocked the doors to our rooms, but congregated in one for a powwow about what just happened. Jamie and Stella did most of the talking. My tongue felt thick in my head even as my thoughts raced. I couldn’t focus on what had happened—I was thinking about what would have to happen next.

I crossed the room and looked at Noah’s bag. My fingers unzipped it before I realized what they were doing. And then my hands settled on something familiar. The textured cover, the spiral binding—I pulled out my sketchbook. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it.

I heard Jamie say my name, but I ignored him as I opened it. My heart turned over when I saw the pictures of Noah that I’d drawn at Croyden. In every stroke of the pencil, every smudge of charcoal, there was a sense of cautious happiness, of restrained excitement. It felt like someone else had drawn those pictures. It felt like another life.

I moved through them quickly without knowing why, but then, when I turned the next page, I stopped.

I was staring at a picture drawn in negative space. The entire page was black, except for the figure at the center of it. It was unmistakably Noah, etched out in white; his messy hair, his sleeping face. His eyelids were closed, and I thought I’d drawn him sleeping until I looked at his chest.

His ribs were cracked and open. They pierced his skin and exposed his heart.

Time stretched and flowed around me. The world rushed by me, but I stayed still. I didn’t know if I was awake or dreaming until Noah appeared and took my hand.

He led me out of the room, out of the bed-and-breakfast. When he opened the door for me and I stepped through, we were in New York. We walked hand in hand down a crowded street in the middle of the day. I was in no rush—I could walk with him forever—but Noah was. He pulled me alongside him, strong and determined and not smiling. Not today.