same. Guess I'm not one for learning my lesson.
As I stood there, staring at the place, a shiver coursed down my spine. A bead of sweat trickled down my side. Kate peered at me with concern. 'You OK?' she asked.
'Just a shiver,' I told her. She put an arm around my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Then, the sound of sirens growing ever louder, we set off down the street.
'Sam, what are you doing here?'
I looked at Elizabeth, clad in darkness, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with balled fists. But for the occasional snore from her fellow patients – each separated from one another by curtains that extended outward from the walls – the ward was quiet, and the nurses' station was empty and unlit. The only illumination came from the window at the end of the long shared room: city lights reflected cold and brittle off the walls, the linens, the floors. But even in the dark, her expression wasn't hard to read. Liz was frightened. Frightened and suspicious.
'I don't know. I – I just had to see you. To make sure you were OK.'
'It must be three in the morning!' she whispered. 'People here are trying to sleep!'
'I know,' I said. 'I'm sorry.' Actually, it was closer to four. I'd been walking the streets of the city since Battery Park, since Dumas, trying to wrap my head around what I'd done, but it was no use. I'd never taken a life before – hadn't thought myself capable – and it was just too much for me to deal with on my own. I didn't know at the time that I was coming here, at least not consciously. But while my thoughts went round and round, my feet had other plans. So here I stood. Broken. Trembling. Wanting nothing more than for her to tell me everything would be OK.
But Liz was having none of that. She clicked on her bedside lamp, looked me up and down. My eyes were red and swollen, and my cheeks stung from the salt of drying tears. My clothes were peppered with blood. Gunpowder burns had seared the flesh of my right hand, although the damage was hard to see, because try though I might, I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. She said, 'Jesus, Sam, what happened to you?'
'Nothing – it's not important.'
'The hell it's not! I haven't heard from you in days, and now you show up in the dead of night, looking like some kind of crazy person. And what is that all over your shirt? It's blood, isn't it? Oh, God, what kind of work are you doing for that man, anyway?'
'Believe me, you don't have to worry about Dumas anymore,' I said.
Elizabeth's eyes went wide. She recoiled, her hands to her stomach, retreating to the far end of the bed. 'You didn't. Tell me you didn't.'
'You don't understand – this guy was as rotten as they come.'
'Tell me you didn't,' she repeated, tears welling in her eyes.
'I had no choice, Liz.'
'Just please tell me that you didn't,' she said, pleading now, tears pouring down her cheeks.
'I did what I had to do,' I said. 'I did it for us.'
Elizabeth buried her face in her hands, her body racked with sobs. In the darkness, patients stirred around us, their sleep disrupted.
'I'm sorry, Liz, but there was just no other way. It's over now, though, and we can start fresh, you and me – maybe head back to California, or get that little place in Maine you're always talking about. But we gotta go now, if we're going. It's like we always said, love: it's just me and you, and to hell with everything else. C'mon, baby, what do you say?' I rested a hand atop her shoulder – a comforting gesture, I told myself, and I was only half-lying. The comfort was real. I just had the who it was comforting part backwards.
'Don't touch me,' she spat, shaking off my hand. Her eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere in the middle of the bed, as though she couldn't even look at me.
'Liz, please.'
'I want you to leave,' she said.
'What?'
'I SAID LEAVE!'
At that last, the lights came on. I heard the grumble of patients in nearby beds, angry at the sudden disturbance. I heard a clatter of footfalls from down the hall, and the officious tones of hospital security ringing off the walls. And last, I heard the thudding of my heart, which threatened to burst inside my chest. I looked at Liz, my face a silent plea, but she was having none of it. So, security drawing closer, I fled.
I headed away from the nurses' station and hit the stairwell at a run, tears streaming down my cheeks. Four stories' worth of stairs passed unnoticed beneath my feet, and I spilled out into the biting cold night. I was in a narrow alley, the street beyond hidden behind a heaping mound of trash. Pavement bit the tender flesh of my hands and knees as I collapsed, retching, to the ground, my body racked with sob after painful sob. I didn't know if they were coming for me. At that point, I didn't care. I thought I'd reached the bottom, then. The worst that it could get.
I had no idea how wrong I was.
'Shit, Sam, I always figured you were kinda gutless, but this? Crying like a little bitch in the street?'
At the sound of his voice, my stomach clenched, but there was nothing left to purge. I didn't want to look at him. I knew I couldn't not. Almost without volition, I lifted my head.
Walter Dumas stood beside me, smiling. Black fire raged in his eyes. He was wearing the same suit I'd seen him in this evening, now filthy and blood-soaked. Three jagged holes, redbrown with drying blood and
