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BEN SPRANG UP OFF HIS couch as soon as I came through the door. “You got it?”
I closed the door behind me. “That should probably be locked.”
He shrugged. “I don’t think like a criminal. You got it?”
I tossed him the bottle, and he caught it with hands in blue surgical gloves. He was wearing a mask, too. I hadn’t thought that was weird—seemed like a COVID thing—but when I spotted the gloves, I noticed the shower cap, too.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “This isn’t ‘Breaking Bad.’”
He took the acetone back to his kitchenette where he had the gun propped up in a dish-drying rack in his kitchen sink. He’d already scrubbed off all the dried blood with a dish sponge.
“How should we—?” I asked, but before I could finish the question, he opened the bottle and dumped half its contents over the gun like he was putting out a fire. Then he went in with a fresh sponge, scrubbing all the nooks and crannies
When he got near the trigger, I flinched. “Careful!”
He shook his head. “I figured out how to engage the safety. And I removed the live ammo.”
“YouTube?” I guessed.
“No, Carl.”
“Gross Carl? From downstairs?”
He flinched a little, and I remembered how thin the walls were. But he nodded. “He knows a lot about guns.”
I waved toward the kitchen sink. “And destroying evidence?”
Ben laughed. “Nah. He called me a fed and locked the door when I started asking about blood spatter. But I’d gotten what I needed.”
He grabbed a handful of paper towels off the roll and gave the gun a quick rub down, then snapped open a brown paper bag with a motherly whipcrack, dropped the gun in, folded over the top, and sealed it with a strip of tape he already had ready.
“Wow!” I said. “You were all prepared.”
“We’re in the final act, man! Things just go faster and faster now. It’s the nature of narrative. Plus, you were gone forever.”
“Oh! Yeah. I ran into Dad.”
His eyes went wide, expecting a big story. “You did? And?!”
I thought back over it—his concern for me, his surprising calm in the face of real danger, his belief in my confidence instead of my plan. He’d shown a lot of faith in me. And in miracles. He was a weird guy. But how could I put all that into words? Maybe later.
In the moment, I clapped Ben on the shoulder and said, “He’s going to call the cops on us.”
Ben thought about that for a moment, then breathed a big sigh of relief. “Oh, good! I did not want to have to do that.” Then he passed me the paper bag like a proud mom sending her kid to school. “Go get ‘em, Dave! I’ll let you know about Jess.”
That was it. The clock was ticking. I ran back downstairs to my car, said a silent prayer of thanks for Gross Carl, and headed home.
Home. Shoot. The place felt more like a map from a video game than my real life now. It was supposed to be the realest thing in the world. It was nothing fancy, but it was supposed to be my refuge. My place of rest. My home.
It hadn’t been for a long time. Dad’s place, either. He was a good dad, but when I got college-aged, his home wasn’t mine anymore. He’d sent me out to find one, and I’d done the best I could....
But it was a dump. I always knew that. It was the place where I thought I belonged, and I went along with it. I lived like a loner. And that’s what got me tangled up in all this mess! That’s why my apartment was trashed and my car was full of bullet holes and my friend was committing felonies.
It’s also why I was in a position to get the police involved and save an innocent girl. It wasn’t fair, but I was willing. What had Dad said about Joseph?
The question fled my mind as I turned the corner into my complex. For the first time (and way too late), I realized they might be watching for the car they shot up Sunday night.
It was a stupid oversight, but it was too late to change the plan. We did need a disturbance, but I didn’t intend to be caught in it.
The best I could do now was move quietly—get in and get out and get hidden before the action started. I pulled into the empty spot right in front of my apartment. There was no sign of a guard or workers.
I messaged Cass. “I’m here. I have the package.”
“inside” she answered right back. “bring it”
She was already here? It was almost half an hour early. I wouldn’t complain, though. There was still work to do finding Trina, and I was itching to get started.
I messaged back, “BRT.” Then to Ben, “It’s go time!” And then on an impulse, to my mom, “I love you, Mom.”
She sent back heart emojis and hug emojis so fast it seemed automated. I smiled at her, grabbed my brown paper bag, and sneaked in through the front door of my own house.
It wasn’t locked.
The room inside was dark and so much smaller than I remembered it. The construction crew had hauled off most of their mess, but they’d left behind the disaster that was my life.
My bed was still propped against the wall, all my clothes piled up beside it. Someone had salvaged my toiletries and set them up neatly in a row, but the sad collection of old soap bottles and the long-feathered toothbrush only emphasized how sad it all was.
This is what I was fighting for?
Something like dread landed on my shoulders and slammed into my back and chest, knocking the wind out of me.
“Cass?” I called softly in the dim light. There was nowhere to hide, but I tried again. “Cass?”
Her voice came from the dark bathroom. “In here.”
I pushed the door all the way open, but she wasn’t in there. She answered when the door squeaked, though. “You have the gun?”
“Where—?” I started to ask, but my eyes went up to the vent in the ceiling. The construction crew had done their job. The ceiling was intact, with a brand-new vent in place of the mess Cass had left last time.
And she was on the other side.
I told you I never saw her again.