Page 142 of Antihero

Wait—he felt one hard edge.

Worming the zip tie from his pocket took enormous effort. Back and forth, back and forth until he fought it free.

Jimmy had fallen with his torso lopped across his hip, his right hand nearly touching his left shoe. Evan joined wrist to ankle in the unforgiving embrace of the zip tie and then jab-kicked him with both heels to roll him away from the car.

Buzzing filled his ears now, his mouth, his head, the dermis beneath his skin. The air tasted of dumpster. Warmth tugged him down, down, down.

Five seconds, maybe six.

He rolled onto his back. Utterly spent.

The sky was nothing but overlapping swirls of dreariness.

A silhouette broke it, staring down at him.

He could not muster the energy to be scared.

Shoving his elbows into the mud, he tried to push himself up, got only as far as a slight tilt of his torso.

It was done then. He was done.

He blinked against the rain. The silhouette was slender, feminine.

It crouched.

As he collapsed, Anca caught him. He looked up at her, sprawled in her lap with his head lolling à la pietà—heh, funny—but there was no time for symbolism. It came on then, the fall of the samurai blade, slicing the curtain between him and the abyss. No more seconds. No more planning. No more control. Just abject terror at what was to come when he would not be there to meet it.

“Listen.” Around his torpid tongue, it came out lessun. “’M gonna go out … not safe … can’t let them … in car … just haveta…”

She gazed down. Behind her the sun glowed through the blanketing gloom, suffusing her backlit head with a nimbus glow. Her mouth seemed to move. The afterimpression of her words lingered, the last thing he had to carry with him into the waiting nothingness.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t leave you.”

52Scrape, Rattle, Scrape

Scrape, rattle, scrape.

Scrape, rattle, scrape.

Anca held Evan in her lap.

She lacked the strength to pull him into the car, so she sat with him in the rain. She was drenched through as if she’d jumped into the ocean. The rain had washed them both clean before stopping as abruptly as it had arrived.

Two of the men lay unconscious and the boy was spent, crying into the earth, face crusted with mud. That was fine by her.

Scrape, rattle, scrape.

Scrape, rattle, scrape.

Exhausted, she leaned to peer around the front of the Mercedes.

The giant man was belly-crawling toward her, forearm over forearm, hauling himself from the beach onto the road. Behind him he was dragging—could it be? was that possibly?—an anchor.

She felt shockingly calm.

Setting Evan down gently, she rose.

Scrape, rattle, scrape.