CHAPTER 15

Billy’s back in Fallujah and the baby shoe is gone.

He and Pill and Taco and Albie Stark are behind an overturned taxi, the rest of the Nine behind a burned-out bakery truck. Albie is lying with his head in Taco’s lap while Pill tries to patch him up, which is a fucking joke, all the doctors in the Mayo Clinic couldn’t patch him up. Tac’s lap is a pond of blood.

It’s nothing, just clipped me, Albie said when the hajis ambushed them and the four of them ducked behind the overturned Corolla. His hand was pressed against the side of his neck, but he was smiling. Then the blood began spurting through his fingers and he started gasping.

Heavy fire is pouring at them from a house two down from the corner, there are muj in the upstairs windows and more on the roof, bullets going ponk ponk ponk into the taxi’s undercarriage. Tac has called in air support and he shouts to the others behind the bakery truck that a gunship is inbound, a couple of Hellfire missiles will shut those fucks up, two minutes, maybe four, and Pill’s on his knees with his dusty ass up and his hands pressed to the side of Albie’s neck, but the claret keeps flowing, a fresh squirt with every beat of Albie’s heart, and Billy sees the truth in Taco’s wide eyes.

George, Donk, Johnny, Bigfoot, and Klew are returning fire from behind the truck because they can see that those guys on the roof have almost got the angle on Billy and the others behind the taxi; it’s scant cover and lethal geometry. Maybe they can hold out until the Cobra arrives with the Hellfires, maybe not.

Billy looks around for the baby shoe, thinking he might have lost it just a minute ago, thinking it might be close, thinking if he can grab it everything will be magically okay, it’ll be like singing ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic, ’ but it’s not close and he knew it wouldn’t be close but looking means he doesn’t have to look at Albie, who is now breathing his final rasping gasping breaths, trying to take in all the world he can before he leaves it, and Billy wonders what he’s seeing and what he will see when he makes it to the other side, pearly gates and golden shores or just black nothing, and Johnny Capps is yelling from behind the truck, yelling Leave him, leave him, leave him and get back here, but they won’t leave him because you don’t do that, you leave none behind, that was Drill Sergeant Uppington’s biggest fucking rule, and the shoe isn’t there, the shoe is nowhere, he lost it and their luck went with it, and Albie’s going, almost gone, those terrible gasps for breath, and there’s a hole in his boot and Billy realizes it’s bleeding, he got shot in the fucking fo—

Billy bolts up so fast he almost falls off the couch. It’s Pearson Street, not Fallujah, and that’s not Albie Stark gasping for breath.

He hurries into the bedroom and finds Alice sitting up in bed with one hand grasping her throat, horribly like Albie when Albie at first thought the bullet just clipped him. Her eyes are wide and full of panic.

‘Wash …’ Whoop! ‘… cloth! ’ Whoop!

He goes into the bathroom and gets one. Wets it down without waiting for the tap to run warm, comes back and drapes it over her face, glad to cover eyes so wide they look ready to fall out of their sockets and dangle on her cheeks.

She keeps gasping.

He sings the first line of ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ to her.

Whoop! Whoop! is his answer.

‘Give it back to me, Alice! Sing! It’ll open you up! If you go down to the woods today …’

‘If you … go down … to the woods today …’ A gasp after every two or three words.

‘You’re sure of a big surprise. ’

Under the washcloth, Alice shakes her head. He grasps her shoulder, the bruised one, knowing he’s hurting her but doing it anyway. Anything to get through to her. ‘All in one breath, you’re sure of a big surprise. ’

‘You’re sure … big surprise. ’ Whoop!

‘Not perfect but not bad. Now both lines together, and put some feeling into it. If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. With me. À deux. ’

She does it with him, her half of the duet muffled by the wet washcloth where a crescent of mouth-shaped shadow appears each time she inhales.

He sits beside her as her breathing finally begins to ease. He puts an arm around her shoulders. ‘You’re all right. You’re okay. ’

She takes the washcloth off her face. Locks of damp dark hair are stuck to her forehead. ‘What’s that song? ’

‘“Teddy Bears’ Picnic. ”’

‘Does it always work? ’

‘Yes. ’ Unless, that is, half of your throat has been blown out.

‘I need to have it on my phone. ’ Then she remembers. ‘Shit, my phone is gone. ’

‘I’ll put it on one of the laptops, ’ Billy says, and points to the living room.

‘Why do you have so many? What are they for? ’

‘Verisimilitude. That means—’

‘I know what it means. Part of your disguise. Like the wig and the fake belly. ’ She uses the heel of her hand to brush the damp locks off her forehead. ‘I dreamed he was choking me. Tripp. I thought he was going to choke me to death. He was saying “Get them panties down” in this funny growling voice that wasn’t like his regular voice. Then I woke up—’

‘—and you couldn’t breathe. ’

She nods.

‘Have you ever seen a movie called Deliverance? Guys on a canoe trip? ’

She looks at him as if he’s gone crazy. ‘No. What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China? ’

‘Get them panties down is a line from the movie. ’ He touches the marks on the side of her neck, very lightly. ‘Your dream was a recovered memory. That’s possibly the last thing you heard before you went all the way out, not just from whatever he put in your drink but because he choked you. Lucky he didn’t kill you. It probably wouldn’t have been on purpose, but you’d have been just as dead. ’

‘If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. Okay, what’s the rest of it? ’

‘I don’t remember the whole song, but the first verse goes like this: If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. If you go down to the woods today, you better go in disguise. Your mother never sang that to you? ’

‘My mother didn’t sing. You have a good voice. ’

‘If you say so. ’

They sit together for a little bit. She’s breathing okay again, and now that the crisis has passed, Billy becomes aware that she’s wearing only her Black Keys T-shirt (which she somehow missed throwing up on) and he’s in his boxers. He gets up. ‘You’ll be okay now. ’

‘Don’t go. Not yet. ’

He sits down again. She moves over. Billy lies down beside her, tense at first, his arm behind him for a makeshift pillow.

‘Tell me why you killed that guy. ’ A pause. ‘Please. ’

‘It’s not exactly a bedtime story. ’

‘I want to hear. To understand. Because you don’t seem like a bad guy. ’

I’ve always told myself I’m not, Billy thinks, but recent events have certainly called that into question. He glances guiltily at the picture of Dave the Flamingo on the nightstand.

‘What gets said here stays here. ’ She gives him a tentative smile.

It’s a fucked-up bedtime story but he tells it to her, starting with Frank Macintosh and Paul Logan coming to pick him up at the hotel. He thinks about changing the names (as he did at first in the story he’s been writing) and then decides there’s little point. She knows Ken Hoff’s from the news, ditto Giorgio’s. He makes one exception: Nick Majarian becomes Benjy Compson. Knowing his name might make life dangerous for her later on.

He thought saying everything out loud might clarify things in his own mind. That didn’t happen, but her breathing is easy again. She’s calm. The story did that much, anyway. After thinking it over she says, ‘This guy Benjy Compson hired you, but who hired him? ’

‘I don’t know. ’

‘And why get the other guy, Hoff, involved? Couldn’t one of these gangsters have found you a gun? And not get caught doing it? ’

‘Because Hoff owns the building, I suppose. The one I took the shot from. Well, he did own it. ’

‘The building where you had to wait for however long. Embedded, like. ’

Embedded, he thinks. Yes. Like the reporters who came and went in Iraq, putting on armor and helmets and then taking them off when their stories were filed and they could go back home.

‘It wasn’t too long. ’ It was though.

‘Still, it seems awfully complicated. ’

It does to Billy, too.

‘I think I can go back to sleep now. ’ Without looking at him she adds, ‘You can stay if you want. ’

Billy, wary that his body might betray him again below the waist, says he thinks he better go back to the couch. Maybe Alice understands, because she gives him a look and a nod, then turns on her side and closes her eyes.

In the morning Alice tells him they’re almost out of milk and Cheerios are no good dry. Like I didn’t know that, Billy thinks. He suggests eggs and she says there’s only one left. ‘I don’t know why you only bought half a dozen. ’

Because I wasn’t expecting company, Billy thinks.

‘I know you weren’t expecting to feed two, ’ she says.

‘I’ll go down to Zoney’s. They’ll have milk and eggs. ’

‘If you went to the Harps on Pine Plaza, you could get some pork chops or something. We could grill them on the barbecue out back if it ever stops raining. And some salad, the kind that comes in bags. It isn’t that far away. ’

Billy’s first thought is that she’s trying to get rid of him so she can do a runner. Then he looks at the yellowing bruises on her cheek and forehead, her swollen nose just beginning to go down, and thinks no, just the opposite. She’s settling in. Means to stay. At least for the present.

It would seem crazy to someone on the outside, but in here it makes sense. She might have died in the gutter if not for him, and he’s showed no signs of wanting to re-rape her. On the contrary, he went out and got her the emergency pill in case one of those assholes impregnated her. Also, there’s the leased Ford Fusion to think about. It’s waiting for him on the other side of town. It’s time to bring it over here so he can leave for Nevada as soon as he feels it’s safe.

Besides, he likes Alice. He likes the way she’s coming back. She’s had a couple of panic attacks, sure, but who wouldn’t have panic attacks after being drugged and gang raped? She hasn’t talked about going back to school, she hasn’t mentioned friends or acquaintances who might be concerned about her, and she hasn’t fretted about calling her mother (or maybe her sister, the hairdresser). He thinks that Alice is in a space of hiatus. She has put her life on pause while she tries to figure out what should come next. Billy is no psychiatrist, but he has an idea that might actually be healthy.

Those fucks, Billy thinks, and not for the first time. Assholes who’d rape an unconscious girl. Who does that?

‘Okay, groceries. You’ll stay here, right? ’

‘Right. ’ As if it’s a foregone conclusion. ‘I’m going to have cereal with the last of the milk. You can have the egg. ’ She gives him an uncertain look. ‘If that’s all right. We can do it the other way around if it’s not. They’re your supplies, after all. ’

‘That’s fine. Will you help me with my stomach again after breakfast? ’

That makes her laugh. It’s the first one.

While they eat, he asks if she knows what Stockholm Syndrome is. She doesn’t, so he explains. ‘If I get spotted by the police and picked up, they’ll come here. Tell them you were afraid to leave. ’

‘I am, ’ Alice says, ‘but not because I’m afraid of you. I don’t want people to see me like this. I don’t want people to see me at all, at least for awhile. Besides, you won’t get picked up. With that stuff on you look a lot different. ’ She raises an admonitory finger. ‘But. ’

‘But what? ’

‘You need an umbrella, because a wig always looks like a wig in the rain. Water beads up on it. Real hair just gets wet and kind of tamps down. ’

‘I don’t have an umbrella. ’

‘There’s one in the Jensens’ closet. By the door as you go in. ’

‘When did you look in their closet? ’

‘While you were making the popcorn. Women like to see what other people have. ’ She looks at him across the kitchen table, her with her Cheerios, him with his egg. ‘Did you really not know that? ’

The umbrella does more than keep the rain off his blond wig; it shields his face and makes him feel a little bit less like a bug on a microscope slide as he leaves the house and starts walking toward the nearest bus stop. He can completely relate to how Alice feels, because he feels the same. Going to the drugstore was nerve-racking, but this is worse because he’s going farther. He could walk to Pine Plaza, it’s fairly close and the rain has slacked off again, but he can’t walk all the way across town. And something else – the closer he gets to leaving this city, the more he dreads being captured before he can do it.

Never mind the cops and Nick’s men, what if he meets someone from his David Lockridge life? He imagines rounding a corner in Harps with his little shopping basket over his arm and coming face to face with Paul Ragland or Pete Fazio. They might not recognize him, but a woman would. Never mind what Alice said about him looking different with his wig and fake belly, Phil would. Corinne Ackerman would. Even tipsy Jane Kellogg would, even if she was drunk. He’s sure of it. He understands such a meeting is statistically unlikely, but such things happen all the time. Journeys end in lovers meeting, every wise man’s son doth know.

He examined the online bus schedule before leaving, and waits for the Number 3 at Rampart Street, standing under the bus shelter with three others, collapsing the umbrella because leaving it open would look weird. None of the others look at him. They are all looking at their phones.

He has a bad moment in the parking garage when the Fusion won’t start, then remembers he has to have his foot on the brake pedal. Duh, he thinks.

He drives to Pine Plaza, both enjoying the feeling of being behind the wheel again and paranoid about getting in a fender-bender or attracting the attention of the police (two cruisers pass him on the three-mile trip) in some other way. At Harps he buys meat, milk, eggs, bread, crackers, bag salad, dressing, and some canned goods. He doesn’t meet anyone he knows, and really, why would he? Evergreen Street is in Midwood, and people who live in Midwood shop at Save Mart.

He pays for his groceries with his Dalton Smith Mastercard and drives back to Pearson Street. He parks in the crumbling driveway beside the house and goes downstairs with his groceries. The apartment is empty. Alice is gone.

He purchased a couple of cloth shopping bags to put his groceries in – HARPS and HOMETOWN FRESH printed on them – and they sag almost to the floor as he looks at the empty living room and kitchen. The bedroom door is open and he can see that’s empty too, but he calls her name anyway, thinking she might be in the bathroom. Except that door is also open and if she was in there she’d close it, even with him gone. He knows this.

He isn’t scared, exactly. It’s more like … what? Is he hurt? Disappointed?

I guess I am, he thinks. Stupid, but there it is. She reconsidered her options, that’s all. You knew it could happen. Or you should have.

He goes into the kitchen, puts the bags on the counter, sees their breakfast dishes in the drainer. He sits down to think about what he should do next and sees a paper towel anchored by the sugar bowl. On it she’s written two words: OUT BACK.

Okay, he thinks, and lets out a long breath. Just out back.

Billy puts away the stuff that needs to go in the fridge, then goes out the front door and around the house, once more using the umbrella. Alice has moved the barbecue out of the puddle. She’s scrubbing away at the grill, her back to him. She must have raided the Jensens’ front closet again, because the green raincoat she’s wearing has to belong to Don. It goes all the way down to her calves.

‘Alice? ’

She yells and jumps and almost knocks the grill over. He reaches out to steady her.

‘Scare a person, why don’t you? ’ she says, then whoops in a big breath.

‘I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to creep up on you. ’

‘Well …’ Whoop! ‘… you did. ’

‘Give me the first line of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic. ”’ Only half-joking.

‘I don’t …’ Whoop! ‘… remember it. ’

‘If you go down to the woods today …’ He raises his hands and wiggles his fingers in a come-on gesture.

‘If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. Did you get some stuff? ’

‘I did. ’

‘Pork chops? ’

‘Yes. At first I thought you were gone. ’

‘Well I’m not. I don’t suppose you got any Scrubbies, did you? Because this is the last one from upstairs, and it’s pretty well done-in. ’

‘Scrubbies weren’t on the list. I didn’t know you were going on a cleaning binge in the rain. ’

She closes the lid on the barbecue and looks at him with a hopeful expression. ‘Want to watch some more Blacklist? ’

‘Yes, ’ he says, so that’s what they do. Three more episodes. Between the second and third, she goes to the window and says, ‘It’s stopping. The sun’s almost out. I think we can barbecue tonight. Did you remember the salad? ’

This is going to work, Billy thinks. It shouldn’t, it’s crazy, but it’s going to work for as long as it has to.

The sun comes out that afternoon, but slowly, as if it doesn’t really want to. Alice grills the chops, and although they’re a little burned outside and a little pink in the middle (‘I’m not much of a cook, sorry, ’ she says), Billy eats all of his and then gnaws the bone. It’s good, but the salad is better. He doesn’t realize how starved he’s been for greens until he starts in on them.

They go upstairs and watch some more Blacklist, but she’s restless, moving from the couch to the seat-sprung easy chair that must be Don Jensen’s roost when he’s home, then back to the couch again. Billy reminds himself that she’s seen all these episodes before, probably with her mother and sister. He’s getting a little bored with it himself now that he’s figured out Red Reddington’s schtick.

‘You ought to leave some money, ’ she says when they turn the TV off and get ready to go back downstairs. ‘For the Netflix. ’

Billy says he will, although he guesses that thanks to their windfall, Don and Bev don’t exactly need financial help.

She tells him it’s his turn for the bed, and after a night on the couch he doesn’t argue the point. He’s asleep almost at once, but some deep part of his brain must have already trained itself to listen for her panic attacks, because he comes wide awake at quarter past two, hearing her whoop for breath.

He’s left the door ajar in case of this. He reaches it, then stops with his hand on the knob. She’s singing, very softly.

‘If you go down to the woods today …’

She goes through the first verse twice. Her gasps for breath come further apart, then stop. Billy goes back to bed.

Neither of them knows – no one does – that a rogue virus is going to shut down America and most of the world in half a year, but by their fourth day in the basement apartment, Billy and Alice are getting a preview of what sheltering in place will be like. On that fourth morning, a day before Billy has decided to set sail into the golden west, he is doing his sprints up to the third floor and back. Alice has neatened up the apartment, which hardly needed it since neither of them is particularly messy. With that done she subsided to the couch. When Billy comes in, out of breath from half a dozen stair-sprints, she’s watching a cooking show on TV.

‘Rotisserie chicken, ’ he says. ‘Looks good. ’

‘Why make it at home when you can buy one just as good at the supermarket? ’ Alice turns off the TV. ‘I wish I had something to read. Could you download a book for me? Maybe a detective story? On one of the cheap laptops, not yours. ’

Billy doesn’t answer. An idea, audacious and frightening, has come into his head.

She misreads his expression. ‘I didn’t look or anything, I just know it’s yours because the case is scratched. The others look brand new. ’

Billy isn’t thinking she tried to snoop in his computer. She’d never get past the password prompt, anyway. He’s thinking of the M151 spotter scope, and how he didn’t explain its purpose because what he was writing was only for himself. No one else would ever read it. Only now there is someone, and what harm can it do, considering what she knows about him already?

But it could do harm, of course. To him. If she didn’t like it. If she said it was boring and asked for something more interesting.

‘What’s going on with you? ’ she asks. ‘You look weird. ’

‘Nothing. I mean … I’ve been writing something. Kind of a life story. I don’t suppose you’d want to—’

‘Yes. ’

He can’t bear to watch her sitting with his Mac Pro on her lap, reading the words he wrote here and in Gerard Tower, so he goes upstairs to the Jensens’ to spritz Daphne and Walter. He puts a twenty on the kitchen table, with a note that says For Netflix, and then just walks around. Paces around, actually, like an expectant father in an old cartoon. He looks at the Ruger in the drawer of Don’s nightstand, picks it up, puts it back, closes the drawer.

It’s ridiculous to be nervous, she’s a business school student, not a literary critic. She probably sleepwalked through her high school English courses, happy with Bs and Cs, and very likely the only thing she knows about Shakespeare is that his name rhymes with kick in the rear. Billy understands he’s downplaying her intelligence to protect his ego in case she doesn’t like it, and he understands that’s stupid because her opinion shouldn’t matter, the story itself shouldn’t matter, he’s got more important things to deal with. But it does.

Finally he goes back downstairs. She’s still reading, but when she looks up from the screen he’s alarmed to see her eyes are red, the lids puffy.

‘What’s wrong? ’

She wipes her nose with the heel of her hand, a childish gesture, oddly winning. ‘Did that really happen to your sister? Did that man really … stomp her to death? You didn’t make that up? ’

‘No. It happened. ’ Suddenly he feels like crying himself, although he didn’t cry when he wrote it.

‘Is that why you saved me? Because of her? ’

I saved you because if I’d left you in the street the cops would have eventually come here, he thinks. Except that’s probably not all the truth. Do we ever tell ourselves all of it?

‘I don’t know. ’

‘I’m so sorry that happened to you. ’ Alice begins to cry. ‘I thought what happened to me was bad, but—’

‘What happened to you was bad. ’

‘—but what happened to her is worse. Did you really shoot him? ’

‘Yes. ’

‘Good. Good! And you got put in a home? ’

‘Yes. You can stop if it’s upsetting you. ’ But he doesn’t want her to stop and he’s not sorry for upsetting her. He’s glad. He reached her.

She grips the laptop as if afraid he might pull it away. ‘I want to read the rest. ’ Then, almost accusingly: ‘Why haven’t you been doing this instead of watching a stupid TV show upstairs? ’

‘Self-conscious. ’

‘All right. I get that, I feel the same, so stop looking at me. Let me read. ’

He wants to thank her for crying, but that would be weird. Instead he asks what her sizes are.

‘My sizes? Why? ’

‘There’s a Goodwill store close to Harps. I could get you a couple of pairs of pants and some shirts. Maybe a pair of sneakers. You don’t want me to watch you reading and I don’t want to watch you do it. And you have to be tired of that skirt. ’

She gives him an impish grin and it makes her pretty. Or would, if not for the bruises. ‘Not afraid to go out without the umbrella? ’

‘I’ll take the car. Just remember if the cops come back instead of me, you were afraid to leave. I said I’d find you and hurt you. ’

‘You’ll come back, ’ Alice says, and writes down her sizes.

He takes his time in the Goodwill, wanting to give her time. He sees no one he knows, and no one pays particular attention to him. When he gets back, she’s finished. What took him months to write has taken her less than two hours to read. She has questions. None are about the spotter scope; they’re about the people, especially Ronnie and Glen and ‘that poor little one-eyed girl’ in the House of Everlasting Paint. She says she likes how he wrote like a kid when he was a kid but changed it up when he got older. She says he should keep writing. She says she’ll go upstairs while he does it, watch TV and then take a nap. ‘I’m tired all the time. It’s crazy. ’

‘It’s not. Your body is still working to get over what those fucks did to it. ’

Alice stands in the doorway. ‘Dalton? ’ It’s what she calls him, even though she knows his real name. ‘Did your friend Taco die? ’

‘A lot of people did before it was over. ’

‘I’m sorry, ’ she says, and closes the door behind her.

He writes. Her reaction lifts him. He doesn’t spill many words on the slack time between April and November of 2004, when they were supposed to be winning hearts and minds and won neither. He gives it a few more paragraphs, then goes to the part that still hurts.

They were pulled back for a couple of days after Albie’s death because there was talk of a ceasefire, and when the Hot Nine (now the Hot Eight, each of them with ALBIE S. written on his helmet) got back to base, Billy looked everywhere for the baby shoe, thinking he might have left it there. The others also looked, but it was nowhere to be found and then they went back in, back to the job of clearing houses, and the first three were okay, two empty and one inhabited only by a boy of twelve or fourteen who raised his hands and screamed No gun Americans, no gun love New York Yankees no shoot!

The fourth house was the Funhouse.

Billy stops there for exercise. He thinks maybe he and Alice will stay on Pearson Street a little longer, maybe three more days. Until he finishes with the Funhouse and what happened there. He wants to write that losing the baby shoe made no difference one way or the other, of course it didn’t. He also wants to write that his heart still doesn’t believe it.

He does a few stretches before running up and down the stairs, because he can’t go to a walk-in clinic if he pops a hamstring. He hears no TV behind the Jensens’ door, so Alice is probably sleeping. And healing, he hopes, although Billy doubts that any woman ever heals completely after being raped. It leaves a scar and he guesses that on some days the scar aches. He guesses that even ten years later – twenty, thirty – it still aches. Maybe it’s like that, maybe it’s like something else. Maybe the only men who can know for sure are men who have been raped themselves.

As he runs the stairs, he thinks about the men who did it to her, and they are men. She said that Tripp Donovan is twenty-four, and Billy guesses Jack and Hank, Donovan’s rapin’ roomies, must be about the same age. Men, not boys. Bad ones.

He comes back into the basement apartment out of breath, but feeling loose and warm, ready to get back at it for another hour or maybe even two. Before he can get going, his laptop bings with a text message. It’s from Bucky Hanson, now hunkered down in the Great Wherever. No money has been transferred. Don’t think it’s going to happen. What are you going to do?

Get it, Billy texts back.

That night he sits beside Alice on the couch. She looks good in her black pants and striped shirt. When he turns off the TV and says he wants to talk to her she looks frightened.

‘Is it something bad? ’

Billy shrugs. ‘You tell me. ’

She listens to him carefully, her wide eyes steady on his. When he finishes, she says, ‘You would do that? ’

‘Yes. They need a payback for what they did to you, but that’s not the only reason. What men like that have done once they’ll do again. Maybe you’re not even the first. ’

‘You’d be taking a risk. It could be dangerous. ’

He thinks of the gun in Don Jensen’s nightstand and says, ‘Probably not very. ’

‘You can’t kill them. I don’t want that. Tell me you won’t kill them. ’

The idea hasn’t even crossed Billy’s mind. They need to pay, but they also need to learn, and those who are obliterated are beyond lessons. ‘No, ’ he says. ‘No killing. ’

‘And I really don’t care about Jack and Hank. They weren’t the ones who pretended to like me and got me to come to that apartment. ’

Billy says nothing, but he does care about Jack and Hank, assuming they participated, and based on what he saw when she was undressed, he’s sure that at least one of them did. Probably both.

‘But I care about Tripp, ’ she says, and puts a hand on his arm. ‘If he was hurt that would make me happy. I suppose that makes me a bad person. ’

‘It makes you human, ’ Billy says. ‘Bad people need to pay a price. And the price should be high. ’

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