Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,99
time I got the call and drove back they’d secured the area. I draped it over his computer while everyone else was in the gym.
“When I fall asleep, though, I still have it.” He swallowed, squeezing the handle of the gun until the tips of his fingers were white and bloodless. “I can never get rid of it in my dreams.”
Nora set the ice pack aside, trying not to shake. She’d gotten exactly what she wanted—the truth, at last—but the more he’d told her, the more certain she’d become of one thing: Gregg Abbott wouldn’t have confessed to anything, the fraud or the murder, if he’d planned to let her leave this place alive. She couldn’t outrun him, and no one had come to help.
“What are you going to do with me?” She still used her interviewer voice, the low, dispassionate tones that made discussing her own death sound like a restaurant decision. “Two bodies at Strike in the same year? I doubt Detective Li will sign off on a second suicide so quickly.”
He pushed all the air out of his lungs, as though the oxygen itself was hurting him. “This isn’t what I wanted, Nora. If you’d just followed the evidence and found the refunds, it would have been fine. How much easier did I have to make it? Logan even confessed to hiding the money, for Christ’s sake. None of this had to happen.”
She didn’t know what it was, his tone or the insidious shift of blame, but all at once everything stopped. The tremors. The fear. Her attempt to draw out the interview until she could somehow find a way out of this room. There was no way out. One way or the other, this ended here.
Finding her balance, Nora rose. She forced her broken arm to lift and shifted until her whole body aligned into a fighter’s stance.
“No.”
“Nora, don’t make me use this.” He stood, too, and the gun twitched in his hand, but he didn’t raise it. He was sweat-slicked, sick, and maybe even a little afraid. Good. She licked blood off her lip and flexed her good arm.
“I’m not making you do anything.” The words ground out from the depth of her gut. “I’ve never cheated. I’ve never stolen. I never put a gun to anyone’s head and pulled the trigger.”
She jabbed with her good arm, landing the blow in his shoulder and backing him up a step.
“None of this”—she shot a fist at his chest, and then another to his gut—“is my fault.”
It never was, not Sam White, not her parents; she’d never done anything to deserve any of it. The adrenaline coursed through her, burning with the need to fight, to stand up for once, even if it was the last time she did.
He’s going to kill me anyway, she thought, hearing Henry’s voice from the day she’d watched him play his video game. His opponent had been unbeatable, yet he’d attacked anyway. He’d charged ahead, fearless. Hot tears stung the cut on Nora’s face. She hadn’t written him any letters. She hadn’t told him how proud she was. She’d failed him a thousand ways, but if she was going to die, at least she’d die big. Just like Henry had taught her.
“You can’t win this, Nora.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She sent a hook to his head, putting more power behind it, but he blocked it this time. “Hit me, shoot me, I don’t care. I’m going out big.”
Without warning, she lunged for the gun. The room tilted as they struggled, both pulling at the weapon until he grabbed her broken arm and she screamed.
Shoving her back, he pointed it at her heart. His hand shook. “Where’s Logan?”
“She’s right here.”
The voice came from outside the ring. Nora spun around and the room itself seemed to revolve. Cool and collected, the body bags flanking her like a guard of honor, Logan walked out of the shadows and onto the red carpet.
* * *
“You need to go.”
The last rays of sun filtered through the trees into the hidden meadow. Frogs and cicadas had begun to sing, the only sounds now that Henry had run home. What would Nora have given, a week ago, to share a moment like this with Logan Russo? But last week her shoulders wouldn’t have tensed like they were doing now, her feet wouldn’t have shifted to seek the high ground. Last week she would have shied away, embarrassed by the storm of emotion she felt whenever she was in the