Page 104 of The Triangle

“We can’t get to her, man. We have to go forward,” I tell him, with quite a bit more disappointment and regret than I’d like to be feeling.

“Fuck you,” he says, pushing me off.

For so, so many years Danny was Christine’s protector. Her lodestar. But Christine is graduated well past the point of needing him in that way. She’s well past the point of needing anyone in that way. And it’s that almost superheroic self-sufficiency she possesses that I’m counting on to save her now.

“She’ll figure it out, bru. You can’t help her none if you’re dead on the fokken ground. We need guns, man.”

He looks at me, a tortured anger in his eyes. I feel his frustration. But he knows I’m right. It’s a miserable feeling to be relegated to the last option rather than the best option, but that’s where we find ourselves.

“Stay down!” he shouts to her. “Don’t try to run this way until we’ve neutralized some shit!”

Danny has never served in the military. I don’t know where he inherited all of his military speak. Movies and television, probably.

Americans, man.

“Yeah,” Christine calls back, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Thanks,” she adds.

Dear Christine. Same as she ever was.

She’s going to be fine.

I hope. I deeply and desperately do. We’ll find out soon enough.

“Let’s go,” I say, dragging Danny with me in the opposite direction as we watch Christine disappear from our view.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO - CHRISTINE

I’m not a complainer. I’m really not. I’m a total go-with-the-flow kinda girl. You have to be in my business. So when the hellfire cuts me off from the guys, I deal. I do. In fact, I think Danny takes this the hardest.

I do not wince, either. I’m not a wincer. But as I run through the shattered glass house, back the way we came, back through all that chaos that we just crept our way out of—I feel like I deserve some complaining and wincing time.

Because my feet are bare. And I’m running through glass shards. And my partners in crime are together and I’m not with them. And there’s this small army after me, and I’m stuck in this weird maze house, and I have no gun.

So thirty seconds to… you know, process this bullshit would be nice.

What the fuck is happening?

I’m past the gallery. I kinda just ran straight through it without stopping because I figure, fuck it, right? They’re either there or they’re not and I certainly can’t stay in that tiny hallway just hoping for a rescue.

So now I’m at the top of the stairs, peeking out in the great room where the piano is—was. I mean, it’s still there but like, three legs have been blown off with automatic weapon fire and that hundred-thousand-dollar Steinway might as well be firewood at this point.

And I can see them out there. Skulking in the moonlight between trees. Every once in a while, I catch sight of a laser cutting through the branches.

Who the fuck uses a laser sight in stealth mode, anyway?

No one professional.

Or they’re not actually in stealth mode.

Because they’re here to scare us.

Except they did just try to kill us, so just what the fuck is happening?

I wait there in the stairwell for thirty eternal seconds, watching them. And then I make a decision. And I step out. Feet crunching over the glass shards. Eyes locked on the forest, waiting for one of them to see me. The other side of the room so far away.

They don’t see me. They don’t even look my way. They think this part of the house is secure and what they’re mostly doing is regrouping and heading down the hill towards the lake.

Did they come in by boat? Swim in like a SEAL team?