Page 123 of The Triangle

And then the final question comes to me like a slap in the face.

That’s when the choppy lake goes still, and the hazy fog lifts, and the thunderheads surrounding me back away.

“Do you ever feel like… crushing pretty things?”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE - DANNY

When I look at Christine I see her sitting in the grass back at that foster home, poking the blue beetle with the stick.

I need to know what makes it so pretty.

She’s been staring at me this whole time. Minutes, probably. That feel like years. Time has a way of doing that. Going fast and slow whenever it wants.

It’s not supposed to be blue.

But now she’s looking at Alec and Lars.

Two pretty, blue beetles.

It’s a mutant. That’s why it’s blue.

I’m running towards her before I even realize I’ve moved. Time is funny like that. Because it’s not a number, it’s a series of events. It’s motion, and I’m in motion. It’s forward motion, and I’m moving forward.

But she’s stuck in the past.

It shouldn’t be possible. Not in this light. Just the moon hanging low overhead. There shouldn’t be time. Me rushing towards her, frantic and afraid.

But none of that matters. Because I see what I see.

Her finger tightens and then the bullets scream out of her rifle in a spray of hellfire.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX – CHRISTINE

Danny barrels into me, but it’s too late.

Who can you trust?

That’s the final question I have in my head when the instincts take over.

When the world has conspired against you for so long you lose all sense of self and purpose, who can you trust?

The full weight of Danny’s two-hundred-plus pound body made up of nothing but muscle slams into my chest. I hit the ground so hard, the stitches in the back of my head split open and…

Life leaves me.

I choke on its absence. Trying to inhale as Danny gropes and grabs for the rifle. I don’t even have enough left to fight him for it.

I have lost all sense of self and purpose.

And then I’m still. My eyes closed. My head swimming in those flickering dots you see when you’re about to lose consciousness.

It feels so good, too. So right. So much like home I want to embrace that darkness. Be that emptiness. Die right here and now and never think of anything ever again…

“Christine!” He slaps me across the face. “Breathe!”

I gasp, sucking in air. My throat burning, my chest screaming with fire. My eyes stinging with tears because I’m crying.

“Look at me!” He’s sitting on my legs, leaning over my chest, hands flat against my cheeks on either side of my face as he presses his forehead to mine.