I hadn’t even thought of you guys yet, to be honest. Hadn’t thought about anything bigger than that little stretch of road. That was the whole world right then. The world was gone and it was just that road and the truck and Mathias. That’s all that was left.
People won’t understand that.
Kimberly Crepeaux was sitting in the backseat, the legs of her orange prison pants soaked. If the water bothered her, she didn’t show it. Barrett looked at her and tried to tell her that she was wrong, that he did understand. He couldn’t seem to find his voice, though, and then he remembered that was the point, that he was just supposed to listen. Don’t think, don’t speak, just listen. That was his job.
All we would have had to do was drag them down to the tidal flats and let the current do what it does, she told him. Instead, we went back to that camp, and that pond. We waded out until it was up to my neck and then he swam a little farther, dragging her out toward the raft. Then he let her go. She sank pretty easily. I remember you could see some blood in the water, but it was gone fast.
Barrett was trying to concentrate but her words were becoming hard to follow. She wasn’t making any sense. Even the way she was sitting didn’t make sense; the floor of the car was above her head, and that was confusing.
He knew that she had to be cold, but she didn’t show it, didn’t react even as the water rose, covering the baggy orange prison pants and plastering them against her legs. The water was murky with silt and mud. A broken cattail floated right past her, an empty beer can behind it, but Kimberly didn’t so much as glance at them. Her eyes were locked on Barrett’s, even as the water rose and flattened the baggy prison orange against her, giving her body shape, like a slowly developing photograph.
The rest of it, I don’t know about. What he did after, and what happened to the truck, I don’t know. I can’t even make guesses about that stuff, no matter how many ways you try to get me to.
He didn’t know how she kept talking through the cold. There wasn’t so much as a tremble to her fine-boned jaw as she spoke. The water rose higher, and her breasts showed beneath the wet fabric, small and taut as closed fists, and then the water reached the base of her throat, and her thin red lips parted in a smile. Her lips were the only touch of color on her pale face other than the splash of freckles across her nose and high on her cheeks, like flecks of rust.
Barrett didn’t like that smile.
That is how it happened, Kimberly told him. Can we stop now?
Barrett wanted to tell her to stop smiling. Why was she smiling?
When she moved for him, it was without so much as a tensed muscle of warning. Just a flash of motion in the water and the silver glint of something in her hand as she lunged for his belly. He felt the sharp bite of pain when the knife found him. For an instant he was face-to-face with Kimberly, her smiling lips so close to his that he could feel her breath on his mouth. Then he looked down and saw the handle of the knife.
She’d buried the long, glistening blade in the middle of his chest. He knew his life would end quickly, and he opened his mouth to scream, but cold, dank water filled it before he could make a sound.