end of the street.
“Stop where you are!”
There are soldiers on the other side of the screen door, rifles trained on us through its fine silvery netting. Three in all, eyes wide and dark like beetles. The one in front risks a glance down at the duffel bag that exchanged hands. A stack of green bills has spilled out into the pool of blood collecting at my feet.
It’s more money than I thought existed in the world, and it damns them all, not just in my eyes, but Ruby’s.
I have never been afraid of Ruby, never once in all of the years I’ve known her. But now I see that I should be; that, if she was anyone other than my friend, I should be following after that man, running as fast and hard as my lungs would let me without bursting.
She might not have had control before, but she does now. It takes a single look from her, and the soldiers, all three, step back as one, set their weapons down, and then move again, pressing their backs to the hallway walls.
There’s yelling, voices behind us.
“Ruby! Ruby!”
“Sam!”
I shove my way inside, grateful beyond words that it is the two of us alone right now, and Ruby turns and tells Vida, “Keep her outside!”
“Sam!” I hear Mia yell again.
The body.
The body.
The body.
Mia can’t see this—I’m sobbing so hard, the rooms in front of me disappear into blotches of color and light as I move through them, searching, and I’m calling for him, I’m calling, even though I know he can’t call back.
The kitchen is littered with clear, empty IV bags. There’s still one hanging from a thin, silver stand beside where they’ve stretched out his dark form on the wood table. And my first thought, the one that rises above all the others as I catch myself in the doorway, is that it looks exactly like the one we ate on hundreds of times in the Orfeo kitchen.
“Sam,” Ruby says from behind me, “Do you want me to…?”
Do you want me to see? Do you want me to tell you for sure?
I love her for this, I do, but it has to be me. It should be me. I can be strong enough to do this, to force my legs to solidify under me, to wipe my face. I don’t want anyone else’s hands to touch him.
Liam’s voice carries down the hall, through the house, followed by heavy steps on the porch.
“Here,” Ruby calls back, “We’re…we’re all right.”
I am not all right.
Lucas is so, so still on the table, his normally rich skin a sickly gray ash. His too-long dark hair has fallen across his forehead and I start to reach out, to brush it away, but I catch myself. I have to…I have to know for sure, but I can’t…
The body.
It’s the kind of touch I’d use to brush away a stray eyelash on his cheek: light, quick. His skin is still warm.
Somewhere inside he is still burning.
I lower my head down, and in that instant before I give in, close my eyes and scream, I see the slightest movement of his chest rising. I hold my breath, too terrified to move and disturb the moment—but there it is again. There it is.
He is breathing.
I choke out a gasp, a laugh, a sob, all rolled into one. When I look up, it’s Charlie pushing into the kitchen, picking up Lucas’s wrist, feeling for his pulse.
I want to cover him so they can’t see him like this, so weak, so gaunt, not when my Lucas is as bursting with life and light as the first morning of summer. Liam looks as stricken as I feel, and Ruby has her eyes shut. When she opens them, I see the relief there. I know we three have confirmed it in our own ways.
“Lucas?” Mia’s panicked voice breaks through the breathtaking relief that swamps me. It pushes everyone into action. I catch a glimpse of Vida’s bright hair as Mia slips past Ruby and Liam and rushes over to grab her brother’s other hand.
“We need to make a pass through the house, grab any of the camera feeds’ hard drives,” Liam says. “They can’t know we were here.”
“The exterior cameras were already switched off, so no worries there,” Vida says. “They must be knee-deep in something sketch to risk that.”
A deal. An under-the-table deal to sell Lucas to snatchers.
“I’ll have the soldiers deal with the…” Ruby trails off before she says bodies. God—she’s broken