BEN

“I’m not gonna do that.” Ben kept his grip on the phone, though all he wanted to do was crush the thing in his fist. “I don’t know why you would want me to, Matt.”

“Because you’re so twitchy,” Matt said. “Too twitchy. I don’t like it. Open the phone and call her back. Put it on sp—”

“No.”

“Put it on speaker. I ain’t asking you.”

Matt’s voice was low, deadly. He was snake-coiled and lethal. Ben had seen him like that only once, maybe twice ever, and it had put the fear of God into him. Actual fear of actual God, like what Matt was about to do was bigger than a man’s intent, the workings of something far more inevitable. An avalanche. A cave collapse. The silence in the room offered Ben not a shred of inspiration on how to wiggle out of this, no relief from the wild panic thumping in his brain. He had no plan for what he would say to Andy when she answered. Because of course she would assume he was alone. She would ask him about the last text. Important re: Luna. Best-case scenario, it would look like he’d been discussing his missing girlfriend with his current girlfriend. Which wasn’t the story. Wasn’t the script. Worst-case scenario, Andy was going to be pissed that he’d gone rogue, and she’d cut in over the top of him before he could stop her and she would say that. Reveal that. That there was a fucking script. That this was all a game.

Sweat was running down the back of Ben’s calves into his socks. The energy in the room was too dark now. They had to be suspecting that what was on the line here was more than a secret relationship. Ben could feel it, the knowledge buried in all three of them, waiting to be unearthed.

Andy is an undercover.

Ben is her rat.

The last sand covering these terrifying truths was being shaken off behind Matt’s, Engo’s, and Jake’s eyes.

“Matt—”

Out of nowhere, Matt put a Glock on the table. Just lifted his hand from out of view and put it there on its side, the barrel pointing right at Ben’s chest. Engo burst out in laughter.

“What the fuuuuu—”

“Shut up.” Matt looked at him. Engo’s laughter snapped off. Matt’s eyes slid back to Ben, languid. Like he was under the influence of something or someone else. Hand of God. Hand of Lucifer. “Open the phone.”

Ben told himself he would get through this. He punched his code into the phone, right there, in front of everyone. The gun sat pointed at him, Matt’s hand resting near it.

“Open the messages.”

Ben didn’t move. Matt reached over and took the phone. He went right to the messages and opened them. Engo leaned over to read. Jake was rigid in his chair, watching Ben.

“‘Important re: Luna,’” Matt read.

They all looked at Ben. He could feel that cold sweat now sticking his shirt to his back.

“What does that mean?” Matt asked.

Engo was watching the screen carefully. “She’s writing back,” he said.

Ben felt a bolt of pain in his core, toward the back, like he’d been poked hard. It was now or never, and Engo’s grin of delight did it—gave him what he needed. The grotesque wetness of his teeth. Ben leaned over the table and looked Matt defiantly in the eyes.

“Call her,” Ben said.

Matt made the decision. He put a finger to his lips, glanced at Engo and Jake in turn. He made the call and tapped the speaker option on.

Andy came on the line first, cut over him, as Ben knew she would.

“You really are trying to fuck this thing up, aren’t you?”

Ben had three gun barrels trained on him. The Glock, and Matt’s eyes.

“I’m not,” Ben said. “I promise you, Andy, I’m not.” He watched the others, tried to look resigned. Defeated. “Just let me explain, okay? When we … When we were in bed last night…”

Engo’s mangled hand flew to his mouth.

“When we were together, and I said Luna’s name.” Ben pretended to struggle. Shook his head, humiliated. “It … It was just out of habit, okay? I wasn’t thinking about her while I was having sex with you.”

Engo gave a low groan of delight. Matt reached over and gripped his arm to silence him.

“I’m not trying to fuck things up between you and me,” Ben continued, staring at the ceiling, praying to God or whatever the hell was up there to help Andy to understand the situation. That he was compromised. That they weren’t safe. “I like you, Andy. Okay? It’s important that you understand that. Okay, yeah, I said her name. And that’s fucked up. Really fucked up. But it was an accident. There was nothing behind it.”

Silence on the line. Ben’s head was swimming. Ten long, painful seconds passed. He counted them, wondering if they’d be his last on earth.

Finally, she spoke. “How do you do that?” Ben felt the tension in the air split. “How do you accidentally say one woman’s name while you’re fucking another one?”

Engo couldn’t hold it together. He went to the windows to laugh into his hands.

“I don’t know.”

“I know.” Andy sounded tired. Pissed. Like every girlfriend he’d ever crossed before. “It’s because all her stuff’s still there in your apartment, Ben. Her clothes are in the closet. Her makeup is in the bathroom. The only thing about the scenario that was different for you last night was me being under you and not her.”

Ben wiped sweat off his brow.

“In the beginning, it wasn’t that weird,” Andy ranted on. “But it’s getting weird, Ben.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know where Luna went but she’s gone. She’s gone, okay?”

“Yep.”

“How long are you going to wait for this woman to show up back in your life? Because your dick has moved on, that’s for sure.”

“I’m sorry, Andy.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“Do we have to talk about this over the phone?” Ben looked around the table. “Can I … Can I just come and see you?”

“Maybe.”

Andy hung up. Engo was wheezing, crouched by the pool table, hanging off the corner pocket. “Oh man,” he laughed. “Oh maaaan!”

“So you are still fucking her,” Matt said. Ben didn’t nod. He didn’t have to. Matt didn’t have to tell him to get out, either. The message was clear, and Ben didn’t waste any time hanging around in case it inspired Matt to start digging a place for him under his pool. He slunk to the stairs and went out the back and took the side passage to his car, the sounds of Engo’s laughter and Swift’s crooning following him all the way there.

2005

Someone drove over the pipe on the road, and the buzzer sounded. Ten seconds later, a dusty Camaro pulled up at the first pump, and Dahlia glanced out the gas station doors at it without really seeing the vehicle, captivated instead by Brangelina in Kenya, a photo shoot in W magazine. What insiders were saying about Jen’s rage and torment, her unrequited yearning for her own Domestic Bliss. The sound of the TV drifted through the thin door to the back apartment, competing with the hum of the fridges. Her parents’ quiet, comedic dissection of the news had drained away as The Office stole their consciousness, and that had been Dahlia’s sign that it was safe to switch over from her chem assignment to the trash mags. The car pulled in and just sat there idling, and the twenty-two-year-old took no notice.

It was maybe thirty seconds before the guy got out. He walked to the bumper of the car, stood there facing the rusty sunset, his hands hanging by his sides. He was there another minute or two before something icy tickled the back of Dahlia’s neck. Her first thought was that he was watching the sunset. Then, that he’d perhaps seen something out there in the desert. But some deeply rooted alert system in her core told her he was standing there just slightly too long, and too still. Nobody traveled this road who hadn’t seen a Texan sunset a thousand times before. And there was nothing out there to look at. Nothing for hundreds of miles.

That’s when she went around the counter and over to the automatic doors. They bleeped and slid open, and she saw the blood.

It was running down the back of the man’s neck in a thick, red-brown smear to his mid-back, where it butterflied out on the white cotton of his singlet, spectacular wings of red and pink. A contact stain, from where he’d been pressed against the driver’s seat. The backs of his jeans black with it, where it had pooled as he sat. Dahlia stepped closer, her whole world wobbling and tilting, and traced the blood landscape back up the man’s body to his head. The sandy-blond hair at the rear of his skull was dark with blood and a whole hank of it was hanging down, still attached to flesh and bone, a round door into his skull that had been blown almost completely off its hinges by the bullet.

“Oh,” Dahlia said. The word used up all her breath. She sucked another chestful and used it all again on another single word. “Jesus.”

“Mom?” the guy asked. He turned and looked through her. Dahlia could see where the bullet had entered his hairline; a dark, round hole. His eyes, bloodshot and sliding around, moved right over her like she wasn’t there. “Mom? Are you home?”

Dahlia turned and ran so hard she misjudged the counter, banged it as she went by, knocked over a stand of novelty fridge magnets. They scattered on the floor. She yanked the door to the apartment open. Her dad had leaped off the couch before she could get the words out.

“Help-help-help!” she screamed.

The guy was in the store by now. His legs were shaking hard. Dahlia’s father caught him, lowered the guy to the linoleum. “Holy fuck, what happened?”

“I don’t know! He just pulled up and got out and—”

“Get a towel. Rina! Get towels!”

Dahlia’s mother had made it to the edge of the counter. She spun and rushed back through the door to the apartment, came out with her arms full of towels. The guy was seizing on the linoleum, back arching, sneakers squeaking, Dahlia kneeling there holding him. She felt her mother come alongside her. Rina carefully shut the door in the guy’s skull with shaking, already blood-soaked fingers, pressed it there with the towel. Dahlia gagged. Then her mother gagged. Then they carried on, swathing the head together like they were frantically wrapping a last-minute Christmas present.

“Shaun, we gotta call 911!” her mother shouted.

Dahlia’s father didn’t answer. She looked up and saw why. Through the automatic doors, the silver-haired and sunbaked Shaun Lore was holding open the passenger-side door of the Camaro. Another guy was spilling out of his seat; a red, liquid human, legs twisted in the footwell and wet arms hanging over his head. This guy wasn’t moving. Dahlia noticed for the first time that the windshield of the Camaro was blown out. Her father’s boots crunched on glass as he came back into the gas station, leaving prints, making the doors bleep again.

He pointed to the twitching guy. “Leave him,” he said. He grabbed Dahlia by the biceps and yanked her up. “They’ll be here soon.”

“Who?”

“Whoever shot these guys,” he said. “The back seat of the car is full of cash.”

“What?”

He was shoving her, hurting her, his hands vicious with a parental terror. “Go to your room, Dahlia. Hide in the closet. Rina, go with her.”

“We can’t leave him!”

“Get in the fucking closet! Now!”

They went. There was so much blood, Dahlia smeared it all over the door and walls and the closet handle just getting to a hiding spot. Felt angry and heartsick over the guy with the hole in his head and her father out there in the store doing useless things like locking the doors and turning the lights out while he bled and bled.

Then Dahlia felt them coming. Her father’s words had brought them to life, summoned them, and now the beat of their dark hooves was in her neck and chest. Whoever. Her mother clutched her, hushing her, the two of them awkwardly kneeling on her sour-smelling shoes, the dust in the bottom of the closet making her eyes itch. They knelt and panted and whimpered and listened to the hellish orchestra of Shaun’s last moments.

Shaun Lore. Gas station owner. Husband. Father. Longhorns fan. Secret comic-book nerd. Stoic, mustached, deadpanning pepperoni-pizza-loving daddy-man. He was about to be murdered. Dahlia didn’t know it then, and yet of course she did, because she’d heard it in his voice. The finality of it.

Hello? This is Shaun Lore out at the Road Haven. 1081 Dryden Road. We got a shooting here. I need the sheriff now.

Screaming in response. Steve Carell hysterical about something. The Office was still playing in the den.

One’s dead and one’s just about. I don’t care; I care about who’s comin’ down the road. My wife and daughter are here, okay? Whatever’s gone down with these guys, it might not be finished yet. Tell the sheriff to have lights and sirens on because—

“Listen to me.” Rina grabbed her daughter. Dahlia felt her mother’s hands on her cheeks, warm with sweat and blood. “We’ve got to keep calm.”

“I can’t keep calm!”

“Baby, baby, baby, listen! If your daddy’s right,” Rina said, “whoever’s after those guys is gonna get here long before the sheriff does.”

“Mom! Please!”

“That man can’t have been driving far with a hole in his head like that. If they didn’t take care of whoever was after them, then—”

“Stop.” Dahlia was gripping her mother’s neck, her hair, didn’t know whether to hug her or gag her. Because she knew. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. Whoever was coming. “I can’t hear it, Mom. I’m scared. I’m scared!”

“We’re not gonna be scared right now, baby. We’re gonna be smart.”

They heard a clatter. Shaun tossing the phone on the counter. The clumping of his boots, then the shunting of the shotgun from under the counter. Rina and Dahlia held each other, sticky-fingered, dry-mouthed, wide-eyed and blind. The pipe buzzer sounded. A car engine turned off. Two car doors popped open and shut, quietly, calmly. Boots on the glass, slow, confident. The credits were rolling on both The Office and Shaun Lore’s life.

Open up.

No. I can’t do that. I can’t do that, okay? I’m not lookin’ for trouble, and I’m not lookin’ for violence, guys. So take the car and go. The sheriff is on his way.

Open. The doors.

Back away, mister. I will fire. We don’t have to do this.

“Oh God, Mom!” Dahlia held her mother, gripped her shirt in both hands. “Please, please, please, please. Don’t let them kill him, God, pleeeeaaase!”

Footsteps at the back of the house. A bucket clanging. A broom toppling, hitting the bricks. A door handle jangling.

One last chance to open the doors.

A gunshot, loud and roaring. Two more, softer, popping. A pistol. The women screamed, the shots pulsing in the tiny closet. Dahlia heard her father’s gurgling cry. The sound of it lit something in Rina. She grabbed Dahlia’s wrists and peeled the young woman from her body.

“I’m going to go out and lead them away from you.”

“What! No!”

“Use the distraction to climb out your window, Dahlia.”

“Mom! No! No-no-no-no-no! Don’t leave me here!”

Two more shots, closer than the first, inside the gas station. Not shotgun shots. Pistol shots. The boots, still slow, taking his time. Rina slid aside the closet door. Dahlia’s throat was so dry, her words rasped out like growls.

“Mom, don’t leave me!”

The door to the laundry being opened from inside. Whoever had murdered Dahlia’s father had crossed the living room on the carpet in silence, and was now letting his partner in through the back. Canned laughter and piano music. Dahlia raked her mother’s fingers with her nails as the older woman pulled her hand away.

“You’ll be okay,” she said as she reached the door. “I love you.”

Dahlia crawled out of the closet, went to her bedroom window, knocked scented candles and statues of angels onto the floor as she climbed through. A wind chime caught in her hair, pulling strands free. The night air was warm. Behind her, the voices and the gunshots were barely audible over her own ragged panting.

Is there anyone else here?

No. Please, don—

Pop. Pop.

Dahlia hit the ground and ran for the horizon. It bounced and shuddered, a red-black and featureless brush mark. Whimpers and cries escaped her, tears streaking from the corners of her eyes and into her temples. She heard the window she’d escaped from shuddering as Whoever shoved it open further. More pops. Her shoulder was shunted forward by a flaming-hot poker, sending her tumbling in the sand.