“You got it uploaded and everything?” I whisper as Flip closes his laptop.
“Uploaded. Broadcasted. It’s done.” He looks over at me, the blue digital glow from the servers illuminating his tired face.
“Oh my God.” I cover my mouth with my hoodie sleeves.
“And you got all the images in there without them being too obvious?” Michelle asks, rubbing her exposed arms to stay warm. They must keep the air-conditioning on full blast in here to cool off all the equipment.
“Yes, ma’am.” Flip stands up and stretches. “Folks are gonna have some real wild dreams tonight.”
I launch myself at him and wrap my arms around his middle. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You have no idea …” I ramble as Flip awkwardly pats me on the back.
“I hope it works, hon. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get the hell outta here before nightfall.”
Michelle stands up and smooths her hands over her black pencil skirt, which I can see now is actually a little loose on her. She’s probably lost weight since she bought it from all the stress.
I let go of Flip and attack her with my gratitude next.
Hugging me right back, Michelle says, “You gonna be okay tonight? If you need a place to stay …”
“I’ll be all right. I wanna stay nearby in case something happens.”
What I mean is, I’m going to spend the night locked in the trunk of a car outside the police station, praying that my boyfriend escapes before they execute him.
I look over at the Jones brothers, who are sitting against a shelving unit full of servers on the other side of the room. Their eyes are closed, and their heads are propped against one another’s.
“Y’all go ahead,” I say, nodding toward my sleeping friends. “I seriously can’t thank you enough.”
“You sure?” Michelle asks, holding me at arm’s length.
I nod. “I’m sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Those words remind me of the last person I said that to just a few hours ago. The place where my heart used to be aches in response.
“Yes, you will.” She smiles, but it looks all wrong on her.
As Michelle and Flip tiptoe out of the capitol’s server room, I walk over to Quint and gently shake his shoulder.
“Wake up, guys. It’s done. Time to go.”
“Hmm?” Quint smacks his lips without opening his eyes.
“We gotta go. We’ve been in here for, like, two hours. The guards are probably already lookin’ for us.”
Lamar sits up with a yawn. “Did you do it?”
“I think so. Come on!”
The boys grumble but slowly pull themselves to their feet.
I grab my duffel bag off the floor and toss it over my shoulder before pressing my ear to the door. When I don’t hear anything, I open it just a crack.
“You get what you need, Ms. Ling?” The voice of the male security guard echoes through the rotunda.
“Yes, thank you. There was no way we could have made it to the station to upload our footage in time with the roads being the way they are,” Michelle replies with her patented, matter-of-fact reporter voice.
“Happy to help.”
“That was a great interview, by the way,” the female guard adds.
“Thank you. My stand-in, Ms. McCartney, will be along shortly. She just had to … use the restroom.”
“I think we’re good,” I whisper to Quint and Lamar as I open the second-story door and tiptoe out into the wide hallway.
There’s significantly less light coming in from the windows in the main entryway than when we got here, increasing my sense of urgency.
I’ve seen this place at night. If we want to live to see morning, we need to find a place to hide before dark.
We should be talking, I think as we near the end of the hall. We’re being too quiet. They’re gonna know something’s up.
I turn to say something to Quint, anything, but the words shrivel up and die in my mouth when I notice that his brother is no longer following us.
I swing my head in all directions and find him just before he disappears through a door.
A massive wooden door with the words Office of the Governor painted on the frosted-glass window in white and gold letters.
“Lamar!” I whisper.
“Shit!” Quint hisses.
We follow him as quietly as possible but freeze when voices ring out from the atrium behind us.
“Governor! We didn’t expect you back until tomorrow morning. How was your outing?”
“Pretty damn good, Officuh. Pretty damn good. I suspect those old bastards let me win, but a win’s a win in my book.”
“Spoken like a true politician,” a third voice that I don’t recognize jokes, causing everyone to laugh.
Quint and I glance at each other in horror and dash inside the governor’s office to grab Lamar. The lights are on inside, illuminating what looks like a time capsule from the 1900s. The front room must be a lobby. It’s filled with heavy wooden furniture upholstered in navy blues and deep reds, regal-looking carpet, brass light fixtures, and oil paintings of ducks and dogs and old white men.
Through the open door across from the entrance is Governor Steele’s office. His land yacht of a wooden desk is parked in the back, in front of a navy-blue curtain with the golden seal of Georgia in the center. But I’m more interested in the person standing in front of his desk, relieving himself all over Governor Steele’s rug.
“Lamar! What the hell you doin’?” Quint snaps as I shield my eyes. “We gotta go! Now!”
“I just needed to stop by the little boy’s room on the way,” Lamar says with a chuckle.
“Well, put your pecker away, and let’s go! Are you fuckin’ crazy?”
I hear the zip of Lamar’s fly and lower my hand.
“Calm down. I was just leavin’ a little surprise for this asshole to find when he gets back from his—”
Lamar’s eyes go wide as we hear the creak of the main door. He bolts, diving behind the governor’s desk, as Quint and I duck behind a pair of leather wing chairs.
“Tell the SWAT team I’m gonna hafta move the execution to tomorrow mornin’. I’ve got a meetin’ with Tim Hollis in the aftuhnoon to discuss some sponsuhship opportunities,” a familiar old-South accent announces as he walks into the lobby.
“The CEO of Burger Palace?” the other male voice I heard in the atrium asks.
“The one and only. Good man. Shit golfuh.” The governor chuckles as they walk through the door into the main office. “I convinced that son-of-a-bitch to pay five billion dolluhs to be the official sponsuh of the Green Mile execution event!”
“No fucking way.”
“Yes, suh! That’s why I need that hundred-year-old bottle of scotch. You and I gon’ celebrate tonight! We’re gonna rename Plaza Park Burger Palace Park and use drones to film the executions from all angles. We’ll have aerial shots of the bodies fallin’ in the holes. It’s gonna be glorious.”
My stomach turns, and my palms get so sweaty one of them slides off the leather chair, causing me to almost lose my balance. Quint glares at me in warning.
“You’ll get national coverage for sure,” the other man says.
I can see him now as they walk right through the wet spot that Lamar left on the rug. He’s dressed in all black, like a bodyguard.
The governor clicks his tongue and shoots a finger gun at the man. “Bingo. The only thing left to figyuh out is whether it’ll be bettuh to paint King Burger on the lawn or use a projector to make him all animated-like.”
“I think the real question is, where are you gonna hang all your deer heads once you move into the White House?”
Governor Steele chuckles as he comes around the side of the desk. “Once we move into the White House. I’m gonna make you head of the Secret Service, my friend.”
I reach out and grab Quint’s arm, the ghost of my heart slamming against my ribs as the governor opens his top drawer and takes out a bottle of liquor. Shutting it, he looks down at his overstuffed chair with a frown.
“Now, why in the hell is my chair pulled out?”
“Hey, Beau?” his security guy asks, pulling a gun from his side holster. “You didn’t leave your lights on last night when you left, did you?”
I clutch Quint’s arm tighter as the governor’s bodyguard pushes him out of the way and points the barrel of his gun at the cavernous opening under his desk.
Please don’t let them find him, I pray. Please, God. He’s just a kid. Please, please, please don’t let them—
Suddenly, I feel a kiss on my cheek, so quick I think I might have imagined it, before the arm that I was clutching slips out of my grasp. I look up from my crouched position and reach for Quint, but my fingers grasp nothing but the last breath he exhaled before he disappeared around the front of his chair.
No! Quint!
“Death to sheep!” he cries, running for the door.
And then there’s a bang so loud I almost scream.
And a thump.
And a deep, guttural groan.
I clutch the chair for support and hold in my cries as Quint slaps at the floor, trying to drag himself into the lobby.
“What in the hell?” the governor shouts, clutching his chest.
“Goddamn it, Beau! I told you we gotta stop allowing tours!”
I bite my lip as their footsteps approach and screw my burning eyes shut as the men stand beside my oldest friend.
BLAM!
Then … nothing.
“Nice job, Jenkins. You really were Special Forces, huh?”
“Green Berets, sir.”
Governor Steele slaps him on the back. “Come on. Now, I really need a drink. I’ll have Edna and the cleaning crew take care of that.”
The two men leave as I cling to the chair like it’s a loved one, silently crying into the Italian leather, my fingers wedged between the brass rivets.
But it doesn’t hold me back.
My face contorts against the wet hide as pain slices me from ear to ear, stretching my mouth in a wordless scream.
Loss.
Loss.
Loss.
Loss.
Every week, every day, another one. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try to save them, I can’t.
Powerless.
Weak.
Worthless.
Stupid.
And now, Wes is going to be executed tomorrow for saving the life of someone who died anyway.
Pointless.
Meaningless.
Hopeless.
Death.
Slowly, the sound of agony, high-pitched and constant, breaks through the fog of silence in the room. It feels like mine. Sharp. Brittle. Unending. Unrelenting.
But it’s coming from under the desk.
I want to go to him. Hold him like a mother. Shush him and tell him it’s going to be all right.
But I can’t.
Because it’s not.
And it never will be again.
“Get up,” I bark, standing from my hiding spot.
Quint’s body is laid out in the middle of the doorway between the lobby and the office, a maroon blanket covering his back and seeping into the carpet all around him.
Lamar sniffles, but then he begins sobbing even louder.
He always does this. He gets in trouble, and then Quint takes the punishment. How many times did Quint get a whooping from their drunk old man for something that Lamar had done, and how many more times did Lamar get in trouble, knowing Quint would show up just in time to take the fall?
Selfish.
Spoiled.
Ungrateful.
Brat.
Stomping over the desk, I pull the chair out even further, prepared to scream at Lamar—to unleash the pain and rage and helplessness and injustice bottled up inside of me—but the boy I find huddled under there, hugging his knees and weeping into his elbows, looks so much like his brother at that age that I slump to the floor and crawl inside with him.
Wrapping my arms around Lamar’s shuddering body, I realize how small he still is. How young.
“Shh,” I whisper, rocking him back and forth. “Shh …”
“I killed him,” Lamar whispers back. “I killed him, Rain.”
“No,” I choke out, his short, unkempt dreadlocks soaking up my tears. “They killed him, baby. They kill everybody. It doesn’t matter what you do.” My voice disappears on a sob as I realize that I was right all along.
None of this matters.
And we’re all gonna die.