Placebo (36 page)

The impact is even more jarring than I expect.

The air bag smacks me in the chest and knocks the wind out of me, causing a whole new flood of pain to rupture up my side from my cracked ribs. The current grabs the vehicle, tilting it forward and redirecting us downstream. We're low enough for water to pour in through the open window, and the SUV tips in my direction.

After all the cold-water escapes I've done, I'd figured I'd be more able to withstand the shock of the river water than Daniel would, but I'm out of practice, and with the fractured ribs I'm having a hard time breathing at all.

Both of the air bags are deflating, giving us more room to move. Daniel, who's handling the chilly water better than I thought he would, wrestles to get his door open, but I clutch his arm and hold him back.

“Your brother's dead,” I tell him. “It's over.” Pain wracks my side with every breath. With the open window, the SUV is sinking fast and the water is almost to my chest.

“I know. His left side.”

But how? He left before—

Oh, just like your boys. He feels the pain his brother felt.

He punches my jaw, stunning me, then wraps his hands around
my throat and shoves my head down. I struggle to get free, but his grip is fierce and he manages to get my face beneath the water that's cascading into the SUV.

I wish I could smack the handcuff dangling from my wrist into his face, but the angle's not right for that arm.

But it is right for the other arm. I'm still wearing the watch from Banner, the one built to withstand a bullet, so I use that instead. I swing my wrist backward, smash it into Daniel's face. His grip weakens just enough for me to fight free, sit up, grab a breath.

Water is rising fast. He goes for his door again, then sees the handcuff still hanging from my wrist, seizes my arm, and drags it toward the steering wheel.

Oh—

No.

I try to pull free, but he hits me hard in the jaw again, causing me to see stars.

“I'll kill her,” he says evenly. Looks at me with eyes fierce and cold. “The woman back there. Her life for his.”

Don't let him get out. Do not let—

He angles my wrist to snap the cuff to the steering wheel—

Now.

You've done it before in your stage shows. It's not that hard of a move.

In an instant, I twist my hand around, slap the open side of the handcuffs to his wrist, and smack the lock mechanism against his chest to ratchet it shut, cuffing his wrist to mine.

For a moment it's as if he doesn't realize what just happened, then he yanks powerfully at his arm, but there's no getting free. The water is almost up to our necks. I don't know how deep the river is—we haven't hit bottom yet, and it looks like water's going to fill the vehicle before we do.

Water splashes into my mouth. We won't have air for more than a few more seconds.

Daniel wrenches at the cuffs again but it does no good.

“Never threaten a guy's girl, Daniel. It's not a good idea.”

The force of the current swirls the SUV and takes us farther down, and the water roils higher. I snatch one final, deep and painful breath, then the water is over my head.

As his mouth goes under, I hear a fierce, enraged scream that uses up a lot of air, and that's bad for him. It's seriously going to shorten his life.

I used to be able to hold my breath for three and a half minutes, but not in water this cold, and that was back when I was practicing every day. I figure the temperature will cut into that time; I might have a minute, maybe less.

You can still get out of this.

Pick the lock. You need to pick the lock.

How?

Beside me, Daniel is struggling to get away, but that's a mistake because he's using up the precious oxygen in his blood. You want to stop moving. That's the secret.

Hang on, Jev.

His hand goes for my throat. I try to pull it away, but he's stronger than I am.

Not like this, Jev.

Don't let it end like this.

Again I try to pry off his hand but can't.

The water is too cloudy for me to see him anymore, but I can feel him squeezing harder. He jerks again at the cuffs, but then his grip on my throat begins to weaken. A moment later his arm goes slack and he begins to shake uncontrollably. I know what's happening, what he's going through. I've been there myself. It'll go on for a few more seconds.

And then it will stop.

Which it does.

They died like this. Your boys did. And Rachel did too. Drowning in that minivan.

How much time?

Thirty seconds.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Cuffed to him like this, I can't think of a way to get out. My first thought is to try to get his body out of the vehicle and swim it to the surface, but I have very little air left in my lungs, the current is strong, and I'm exhausted. I'd never make it.

This is your punishment for not stopping Rachel. Dying like your family did.

Drowning.

All is dark and cold as the SUV comes to rest on the river bottom.

My strength is fading.

I'm sorry, Rachel. I'm sorry, Tony. Drew. I loved you.

I do love you—

Relax.

Maybe I deserve to die.

I hear Charlene's words:
Stop hating yourself . . . Rachel had problems . . . She was ill . . . Something broke inside of her and she didn't have the chance to get it fixed.

Death always wins in the end.

It was her choice, Jevin, not yours.

Death always wins.

Yes.

In the end.

I did love you, Rachel. I do. I can't help it.

But I couldn't save her.

No one could.

I think of the two women. Rachel, Charlene. One gone. The other waiting for me. Three lives wound around each other. Destinies intermingled.

Entangled.

I think of how much the death of those I loved affected me, wonder how much my death will affect Charlene.

You can postpone death, but you cannot conquer it. Only one person, the one who rose, ever has.

One day death will have its way with me.

But that doesn't need to be today.

You're an escape artist, Jevin Banks. So escape.

Yeah, I think I will.

Pick the lock. You have to pick the lock.

I don't have anything with me to—

Well—

Except for one thing.

The car key.

But not the key exactly.

What it's attached to.

With my free hand I feel for the key, find the looped wire ring that connects it to the keyless entry fob. I try to twist it from the ignition, but the car is still in drive. I pop it into neutral, remove the key.

My air is giving out fast. I don't have long.

Stay calm, Jevin.

Lower your heart rate.

Just like you used to. In your show.

But a torrent of air bursts up from my mouth.

No! Come on, focus!

The wire resists at first, but when I jam my fingernail in and twist, it uncurls a little bit. I don't need to unloop it all the way, just enough to get it into the handcuff's lock.

It takes a few seconds, a few precious seconds, but I manage, and once it's in the lock mechanism, my fingers know what to do. Instinct.

The cuff snaps open, I pull my hand free from the assassin's corpse and snake my way out the open window, then push off the side of the SUV with my feet to propel myself toward the surface. I stroke as best I can with my broken ribs, and as soon as my head breaks through, I sputter and gasp for breath.

The current has pulled me toward the middle of the river, and the bank is more than fifty feet away.

With the water moving this fast and as weak as I am, it won't be easy to make it that far.

I hear my name and see Charlene, cuffs gone, sprinting along the shoreline. I'm too out of breath to reply, but pivot in the current and start to swim toward her.

Fighting the current is tough. I wish I'd done laps with her this last year, kept in shape for swimming. I manage a few strokes but that's it. I'm too weak, it hurts too much, strains the muscles around my fractured ribs.

I begin to sink again, and the last thing I see before the dark water swallows me is Charlene throwing off her jacket and rushing toward the water.

Riah stared at Darren's body, the trocar still embedded in his side, still pumping embalming fluid into his corpse.

She'd always wondered what it would be like to kill a human being. And now she knew.

It felt like nothing. No more impactful or moving than tying her shoes or putting on makeup.

Watching him while it happened had only made her wonder how long he would twitch before he stopped quivering for good, just like that snake's body that she held when she was a girl.

Killed but not yet dead.

But now Darren was both.

Finally, she turned off the pump.

Leaving the funeral home, she saw that the SUV was gone. Tire tracks led to the river, but none of the three people—Daniel, Mr. Banks, or Ms. Antioch—were anywhere to be seen. Perhaps they all drowned. That would be unfortunate if they had other things they were hoping to accomplish today.

She had killed one person and could kill again. She could kill her father. Yes, she could do it and feel no remorse whatsoever.

Now you know. Do it for Katie.

At her apartment she already had the items she would need to restrain him while she did her work—the things she'd acquired for her sleepover with Cyrus.

He raped Katie, the incestuous pedophile sexually abused and raped both of his daughters.

Both of them. So many times. He impregnated his youngest daughter and caused her to stop believing in love.

Perhaps killing him was the closest Riah would come, could ever come, to loving her sister and even her dead mother.

It wasn't much, but it was something. Yes, human beings do want to love and be loved. To experience the real thing. Riah had wanted that for herself but had been unable to ever attain it or express it. But even if she couldn't, she could at least act on behalf of justice, on behalf of those she wished she could have cared about.

Planning how she would take care of her father, Riah Colette, the psychopath, left the funeral home to get the items she would be needing from her apartment.

The president's speech was postponed. The police disbanded the crowd and thoroughly searched the rooftop as well as the pavement below, but they found no sign of the man who'd leaned off the edge of the Franklin Grand Hotel, exploded, and apparently disintegrated in midair.

The dark-haired man who'd introduced himself as Cyrus's friend had left a few minutes before, and when her boss didn't answer his phone, Caitlyn Vaughn decided to check on him.

She found him tied to his office chair, slowly regaining consciousness.

His lips were stitched shut with thick black thread. His shirt was off; the skin of his stomach had been sliced open and then sewn back up. Beneath the skin something squirmed, then something else, until the whole surface of his belly began to quiver and bulge unevenly, and when she glanced at the aquariums in the corner, she saw that the one containing the roaches was empty.

There were only a few wasps remaining in the other.

Looking back at Cyrus, she saw a wasp squeeze out from between his lips, tug itself free, crawl across his cheek, and then lift into the air.

Caitlyn had never seen anything so disturbing and she felt repulsed. Turned away.

But then hesitated.

This was the man who'd slept with her and promised to leave his wife to be with her, but had not. This was the man who'd flaunted his affair with Riah Colette right in front of her, and then had sex with her right here in his office while she was just outside the door, forced to listen to everything.

This was the man.

He'd lied to her. Used her. Only. For. Sex. Betrayed her.

And so, as Caitlyn Vaughn went to the desk phone to call 911, just perhaps she did not dial the number as quickly as she might have if Cyrus had treated her more like a woman deserves.

I hear sounds wrestling for my attention. The river. A roar in my head. Sirens. A voice: “Jevin.” It's Rachel, coming from somewhere beyond space and time, calling to me. “I love you, Jevin.”

Rachel—

No.

She's gone, Jevin.

She's dead.

She's—

“Jevin—”

My head begins to clear.

No, it's Charlene. Not Rachel.

Rachel drowned when she killed your boys.

It's hard to open my eyes, and when I manage to at last, it makes me dizzy, but I see Charlene leaning over me. “Jevin! Thank God you're okay!”

I cough harshly and my side roars with pain. I turn my head, spit out a mouthful of water.

Charlene eases her hand beneath my neck to support me.

Yes, those are sirens in the background. Around me light is swimming with sound. I close my eyes and cough, draw in as deep a breath as I can, try to lean up on my elbow, but my side screams at me again and I end up dropping to my back. Gazing at Charlene, I see that she's soaking wet. “You pulled me out.”

“Yes.”

“Mouth to mouth?”

“Yes.”

Okay.

“That's the seventh time I've drowned and you've saved me.”

“Who's counting.”

“I'm glad you got out of those cuffs.”

“I'm glad I was wearing those earrings.”

I gesture toward the water. “Did he come up?”

She shakes her head.

A moment passes. I don't know how to say this. “Charlene, did you, a moment ago . . . I thought I heard someone say ‘I love you.' I thought it was Rachel.”

“Yes.”

“Was it . . . ?”

“Yes.”

I can't tell if she means that it was my imagination or if she means that it was her. For some reason it doesn't feel right to ask her to clarify.

There are so many things I want to say to her. So many things I
need to say. Her hand is still under my neck. “In the hotel,” I tell her, “you said that without hope you wouldn't be able to make it through the day.”

Our thoughts can heal us or destroy us. Placebos. Curses.

“I remember.”

Blessings. A love that conquers death . . .

The idea that death could be conquered, that life would win in the end . . . an idea too good to be true, but also the most necessary truth of all.

“Prana.” The word barely comes out. I'm feeling weaker than I thought.

She leans close. “What?”

“The life-sustaining force. I finally know what it is. It's hope.”

The placebo for grief, for hating yourself. The only way to move on.

“Yes.” Her eyes smile at me. And I can't remember ever seeing her look so beautiful before. The longer we look into each other's eyes, the more right it feels, and finally she says softly, “We're entangled, aren't we?”

I draw her close, and by the way I kiss her, I doubt she'll need to read my mind to know the answer.