I STARED AT THE EXTREME CLOSE-UP of the baby, my vision blurring because I couldn’t blink. Pilar’s newborn son was Dustin’s newborn son. The resemblance was undeniable—I’d seen the kid’s green eyes myself at the hospital. I was so focused on sneaking to Dustin’s room, I didn’t pick up on the shared trait.
Two nagging thoughts, sitting at the edge of my consciousness like massive, immovable stones, suddenly slammed together, fused into something new and grotesque.
Family concerns.
Seat belts.
Me and Reya thought Miguel was the family Eli spoke of in his video—a theory Dustin happily encouraged—but what if it was his favorite cousin Pilar, whose back he always had? What if the purpose of Eli calling Dustin to the J-Room was to discuss the newest branch on the Rios/Burke family tree? How would a conversation like that go? It might get ugly, depending.
Thinking of Dustin that way—the possibilities that I still couldn’t wrap my head around completely—jarred something from earlier, something I maybe forced myself not to remember because of the implications.
Dustin said the seat belt saved his life the night of the accident, and that Carrey and Lorenz didn’t like to wear them. Thing was, neither did Dustin. I’d seen him driving his Xterra on two occasions before today. At the park, the day after I found Eli. And at school the day the mayor dropped me off. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt either time.
Why start on some random late-night drive? It’d been a fortunate coincidence, considering what happened. Only, I don’t believe in coincidences.
I blinked, restarted time. “Reya, you need to see this.”
She turned to me, but a mighty crash of splintering wood and shattering glass sounded downstairs, drawing her attention back to the doorway.
Dustin yelled, “Dad, no! Get back! Get back!”
“You,” said the mayor, grunting, in a struggle, “stop that this ins—”
The abrupt silence set off alarms in my head. Dustin’s screams drowned them. “Oh God. Help me, guys. Please!”
I said, “Reya, don’t.”
She was already gone, sprinting to the aid of the boy I suspected of killing her brother, and then some.
Her talents were wasted on the cheerleading squad. Reya should’ve run track. I couldn’t catch her on the stairs, or in the corridor leading to the mayor’s office.
“Reya!” I hissed, already knowing it was hopeless. She turned into the room where Dustin continued his crying lure. I paused outside the doorway. If my suspicions about him were even close to right, turning this corner was a stupid, potentially deadly, decision.
What else was I going to do? Reya was in there. I stepped in, told myself, Think of it as our second date.
She stood beyond the threshold staring at the carpet—and the corpse—before her, her hand pressed to her mouth. Mayor Burke lay prone, a halo of blood pooling from an ugly dent in the side of his skull. A foot away, his boxing trophy. The heavy metal glove stained with blood, a few black and gray hairs plastered to it.
Dustin sat on the floor by the gun cabinet with his head low, making weepy sounds with no tears. The cabinet itself was smashed, bowed in like somehow had been hurled at it. A couple of the rifles had fallen free, scattered among the debris like NRA pick-up sticks.
I grabbed Reya’s hand, squeezed it. Hard. She looked at me, and I cut my eyes toward the door, tugging her arm at the same time. Let’s go. Now. She shook her head, missing my meaning.
Dustin spoke up. “He lost it, attacked me.”
Reya pulled free of my grasp, went to him. “Nick, help me get him up.”
Dustin caught my eye in a moment of hesitation. I thought I saw him twitch, but he resumed his dry crying, while Reya gripped one of his arms. “Nick,” she said again.
He didn’t know I knew about the baby, or suspected anything about Eli or the accident. This might be okay if I played it off. It had to be.
I joined Reya and helped that bastard to his feet.
Dustin lurched, his legs unsteady. Supposedly. He brushed glass shards and splinters from his clothing and smeared blood from a few scrapes along his unbroken arm.
“What happened?” I asked, needing to hear him talk, explain. See if he still sounded like the guy I’d believed was becoming a friend. Or did he sound like the new guy? The murderer.
“He just snapped, I had to.” Dustin widened his eyes to sell the shock and remorse, still no tears. “He was screaming about Reya’s uncle, and her car blowing up. It was crazy. I think he had some sort of mental break and was, like, confessing to everything we talked about.”
The mayor gave up Miguel and the car bomb. How convenient. The only thing missing was a shiny bow.
Dustin kept going. “Then he had this look, like he didn’t recognize his own son. He goes, ‘Now I have to shut you up, too, just like that reporter kid.’”
“He admitted it?” Reya, horror transforming to contempt, stared at the bleeding body like she wanted to kick it.
Dustin nodded, sticking to the ridiculous story.
Knowing what I knew, and seeing through his overacting, a part of me still wanted to believe him. His was the easiest, least frightening version of everything that had gone wrong since I arrived in Stepton. I would believe it. He’d think so, anyway. Until I could get Reya out of there.
“Should we call someone?” I left the decision with Dustin, wanting him to feel in control. It was safer that way.
“I guess. I’m not sure who to—”
The mayor moaned.
No, not now.
Mayor Burke turned his head against the carpet, smearing his cheek in his own blood. Struggling, he forced an arm and a knee under himself, pressing his body off the floor. He almost made it to a crawling position before collapsing, and moaning again. “Dus-tin. Help me, son.”
Dustin’s Shock Face disappeared, overcome by a coldness that narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips into a pencil line, the look of someone with an unpleasant chore ahead of them.
“We gotta call an ambulance,” Reya said, pulling her cell from her back pocket. “He’s going to answer for what he did to my brother.”
Dustin stepped away, glass crunching under his sneakers by the gun cabinet. He picked up a semiautomatic Remington rifle and aimed at Reya. “Don’t dial.”
“What?” She stared down the barrel like someone who didn’t get the joke, her hand hovering over the keypad. I could only watch, too much distance between me and Dustin to risk a move.
Me and Reya weren’t his primary concern. He kept the gun on her, but in an awkward one-hand grasp that had the buttstock protruding past his elbow. That kind of grip wouldn’t do for aiming, but he didn’t need good aim in a room this size. Still, I kept his improper handling in mind.
“Dus-tin,” Mayor Burke said again, pleading for his son’s help.
Dustin crouched by his father, stroked the man’s back with his cast arm. “It’s okay, Dad.”
He picked up the bloodied boxing trophy, raised it high, upended it so the glove pointed down. I took one step and the rifle barrel swung my way, freezing me. “Don’t, Nick.”
“Why?” I said, perplexed and scared of what was coming.
Calm, with that single bloodstained eye on me, he said, “Didn’t I tell you the other night? At the party?”
I shook my head, not recalling a conversation about his hidden homicidal tendencies. He reminded me.
“I do”—he dropped the glove on his father’s head, a squelching crunch, silencing him permanently—“what I can.”