I sat there, staring at him, my legs starting to shake.
“That son of a bitch told me if you didn’t back off, he was gonna take her out,” he said, his eyes empty. “He thought that would do something for me, make me rethink talking to you. I think he feared me just enough to not go directly after you. But he thought threatening your girlfriend might shake things up.”
The shivers moved from my legs up my spine.
“Well, it did, but not the way he thought,” he said, chuckling.
“You didn’t tell me,” I whispered.
“Hell, no, I didn’t tell you,” he said. “I wanted Keene to go after her. I needed something to kick you in the ass. I could see you didn’t have it in you. I thought that might be it.” His smile contained a million little daggers. “And I was right.”
I jumped out of the chair at him, but he was ready. In one smooth motion, his arm swept around my neck and he brought my head down onto his knee like he was slamming a door shut. Colors exploded behind my eyes, and pain rocketed through my head and neck.
I fell to the floor. Voices and heavy footsteps echoed around me. I rolled over onto my back. Simington was bent over the table, a guard on either side of him, his hands already in cuffs. One of the guards was talking into the mic wired into his shirt.
Blood leaked into my right eye. The impact had opened a gash above my eyebrow, and I could feel the air sucking into the gap in my skin.
Another guard helped me up. “Are you alright, sir?” “I’m fine,” I said, dizzy and disoriented. “You’re going to need to go to the infirmary,” he said. Simington was smiling at me as the two guards raised him off the table.
“I’m fine,” I repeated.
“We’ll see what they say at the infirmary, sir,” the guard said, slipping his hand behind my arm and steadying me.
“Sorry, son,” Simington said. “Sorry that it had to end like this.”
The blood stung my eye but I didn’t lift a hand to wipe it away. Carolina had warned me.
I’d failed there, too. He’d hurt me in several unimaginable ways, ways that were going to leave lifetime scars.
Simington chuckled again as the guards escorted him out of the room, my last vision of him blurred and bloody.
SEVENTY-THREE
The nurse in the prison infirmary wanted to stitch the cut, but I refused, not wanting to spend any more time there than I had to. She closed it with a butterfly bandage and urged me to reconsider getting the stitches.
I left without saying a word.
My flight back to San Diego was delayed. I sat in the airport fingering the bandage and trying not to watch the news coverage on the overhead television monitors, most of it focusing on Simington’s impending execution, now hours away. The crowd outside the prison had multiplied since I’d left.
Two hours behind schedule, the airline personnel finally boarded us. I slid into my window seat.
It was dark now outside, the tiny runway lights blinking as we taxied. The plane paused as we positioned for takeoff.
San Francisco had not been kind to me. It wasn’t the city’s fault, but I would always associate it with the ugliest time in my life.
My breathing sped up. I tried to slow it, but I couldn’t.
The plane accelerated, pressing me back into my seat.
My fingers went to the bandage, feeling the gauze and tape and what Simington had done to me. And to Darcy and to Liz.
We lifted off the ground and I felt it all—all of the things that I’d gone through the last few weeks—catch me like a sucker punch from an invisible fist. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push it away.
The plane angled upward and turned.
I opened my eyes and looked out the window, the tears obscuring everything I was saying goodbye to.
SEVENTY-FOUR
My cell phone rang as soon as I turned it on, stepping off the Jetway in San Diego. I recognized Carter’s number and answered.
“Hey.”
“Where are you?” he asked, his voice urgent. “Just got back. Walking to my car.” “From where?” “San Francisco.” “They found him.”
I moved over to the wall, out of the flow of foot traffic. “How do you know?”
“It was on the news an hour ago,” he said. “Hikers coming back from camping in the desert. They found him. Tried to call you, but I guess you were on the plane.”
