Nelson gently eases her to the ground beside the dead boy. Then he turns to the old woman, who sobs from the chair to which she’s chained. “Your fault,” Nelson tells her. “Entirely your fault. That boy’s life is on your head for lying to me!”
The woman can only sob.
Now that the battle is over, he assesses the damage from the wrench. His shin may be fractured. It’s swelling and he can feel his pulse in it. His right ear is hot, and the back of his hand is turning purple and swelling. All in a day’s work. The pain will be good for him. It will release endorphins. Make him more alert.
“Please go . . .” wails the woman. “Just go . . .”
And he will . . . but not until he finishes his business here.
There’s a torn envelope on the desk and a cigarette lighter in his pocket. He notes that everything around the basement, from the felled bookshelf and its pile of books, to the stacks of paperwork on the desk, to the various wooden antiques—everything in this room—everything in this shop, in fact—is highly flammable.
He grabs the envelope, takes out the lighter, and flicks it until it releases its tiny controlled flame.
“Stop!” yells the woman through her tears. “I’ll give you Lassiter! I’ll give him to you if you stop this and let the others go!”
He hesitates. He knows this is just another game, but he’s willing to play, if only to give him a moment to contemplate the severity of what he’s about to do.
“God forgive me,” she says. “God forgive me. . . .”
“At this moment,” Nelson reminds her, “it’s my forgiveness that you need.”
She nods, unable to look at him, and that’s how he knows she’s going to tell him the truth. But will it be truth enough?
“He’s in your hand,” she says. “He’s in your hand, and you don’t even know it.” Then she lowers her head in defeat, and perhaps some self-loathing.
Nelson has no idea what she means . . . until he looks at the empty envelope he’s holding and reads the handwritten address:
Claire & Kirk Lassiter
3048 Rosenstock Road
Columbus, Ohio 43017
He looks down to the other envelopes on the ground, and he can tell by the handwriting that they were all written by kids.
“You had your AWOLs write letters to their parents?”
She nods.
“What a pointless thing to do.”
She nods.
“And our friend Connor went to deliver his personally?”
Then she finally looks to him, and the hatred on her face is a thing to see: as powerful as a smoldering volcano. “You have what you need. Now get the hell out of here.”
There have been many times in Jasper Nelson’s life when choice was taken from him. He did not choose to be tranq’d that fateful day two years ago by Connor Lassiter. He did not choose to get hurled out of the Juvenile force in humiliation. He did not choose to lose his ordinary, respectable life. He does have a choice here however, and it’s an awe-inspiring moment—because he knows his choice today will be a defining one.
He could walk away from here and go find Lassiter . . . or he could bring on a little suffering first.
In the end, his sense of social consciousness prevails. Because as a good citizen, isn’t it his responsibility to help rid the world of vermin?
Nelson memorizes the address, sets the envelope on fire, then drops it on the pile of envelopes on the ground.
“No! What have you done! What have you done!” cries the old woman, as the fire takes and the flames begin to rise.
“Only what necessity and my conscience dictate,” he tells her. Then he grabs Risa Ward’s limp, unconscious body, and carries her out the back door without a stitch of remorse.
37 • Sonia
How could she have done it? How could she have been such a fool to think he would let them go once he had what he wanted? She gave up Connor for nothing. It didn’t save the kids in the basement. It saved no one.
The flames climb to the curtains, and the stack of newspapers in the corner ignites as if it had been doused with gasoline. Sonia struggles against her chains but succeeds only in upending the chair. Her hip complains bitterly as she and the chair fall backward to the floor, just inches from the building inferno.
Sonia Rheinschild knows she will die. In truth, she’s amazed she has survived this long, what with so many other ADR operatives killed in “random” clapper attacks. But to lose the kids in her basement is too much to bear. Poor Jack, lying there beside her, had it easy compared to what the others will now have to endure.
Then, as the heat builds around her, as the air grows inky black with smoke, she hears the most wonderful sound she’s ever been blessed to hear. A sound that changes everything.
In that moment, her fears and regrets leave her. She smiles and begins to breathe deep, over and over again, resisting the urge to cough, willing her body to succumb to smoke inhalation so that she never has to feel the flames.
She will go to her husband now. She will join Janson in whatever place, or nonplace, all the living eventually go—and she will go there in peace . . .
. . . because the wonderful sound she heard from the basement below was the breaking of a window.
38 • Grace
Cold, confused, and covered with scratches, Grace crawls out of the prickly hedge. Her head spins, and she’s terrified because for the first few moments, she can’t fathom how she got there. Maybe she was hit by a car and thrown into the bushes. Maybe she was mugged.
When her memory begins to return, she resists it, because even before it oozes to the surface, she senses it’s going to be bad. And she’s right.
She saw Argent, but it wasn’t Argent, but it was. She screamed and passed out—perhaps from her shock, perhaps from something else. The sky is a bit darker now than when she lost consciousness. It’s still late twilight, though. How long was she out? Ten minutes? Twenty?
Her attention is drawn to orange light ebbing and flowing in random surges. Something around the corner is on fire.
Fighting the weakness in her knees, she holds on to a streetlamp for balance, then turns the corner to find Sonia’s shop on fire. Grace can feel the heat of the flames all the way across the street. She runs toward the burning building in a panic, but the shop’s plate glass window explodes before she can even reach the curb. She’s thrown back onto a manhole cover, its hard steel skinning her elbows.
People have come out into the street to watch—perhaps they want to help, but there’s nothing to be done. All they can do is stand there with phones to their ears. A dozen simultaneous calls to 911.
“Sonia!” she calls as she gets to her feet, then turns to the onlookers. “Has anyone seen Sonia?”
They answer with helpless expressions.
“You’re useless! All of ya!”
She tries to peer into the flames, but all she can see are antiques burning. Then out of the corner of her eye, she sees kids slipping out of the alley behind the shop. She hurries to the alley, to find it’s the AWOLs from Sonia’s basement, as she had hoped it would be.
“What happened? What happened?” she asks them.
“We don’t know! We don’t know!”
Farther down the alley, Beau pulls himself out of the broken basement window—he’s the last one out. As Grace scans the gathering of kids, she can’t find Connor, which means he hasn’t returned from whatever secret mission Sonia had sent him on. But Risa isn’t here either.