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He's got the Phase One in his hand now, turning toward me. "Obviously," he says. And it comes out snappish—clipped at the edges, a little mean. He doesn't like to be reminded of his ignorance.

"The tripods are over there."

His expression goes from irritated to something hotter. A slow-burning annoyance that climbs up through his jaw and settles behind his eyes. He shoots me a look that says, Don't push me.

I stand up and walk toward him quietly. "I can help you," I offer. "If you⁠—"

He slaps me. Hard and fast across the face, open-palmed, and I spin in place because I am not ready for that. I reach out for something to steady myself, and my fingertips find the edge of a shelf, and I taste copper, and I think, That's dumb, Savannah. That was so incredibly dumb.

Marcus grabs my hair with one hand and yanks my head back, leaning in close to my ear, and his voice when it comes is low and thick and absolutely certain of itself.

"I know how to set up a fucking tripod, you stupid bitch."

"Of course you do," I say. "Here." I reach for the camera in his other hand. "I'll hold it for you."

He tightens his grip on my hair, shakes my head, and pushes me away. I stumble sideways, only barely managing to keep myself upright.

He sets the camera down on a table, then turns toward the tripods stacked in the corner.

I wait. One step. Two steps. Three. Each step he puts between us, a second. And I'm counting, and I know that I'll never get to ten.

But that's OK.

I traded in my seconds for pounds.

When he's four steps away I dart, and the still air in the room moves with me—enough that Marcus turns back, his hand still curled like he might reach for me again.

But he's a half-second too slow and I'm already at the table, fingers finding the grip of the Phase One.

And that camera is eleven pounds of medium-format Danish engineering and it fits my palm like it was cast there, and I swing.

The Phase One connects with the side of Marcus's head and I feel his temple give way under eleven pounds of steel and glass—not crack, not split, give—like stepping through pond ice, that sick wet collapse of something that was solid a half-second ago and isn't anymore. Hot blood hits my wrist before the sound even catches up. A spray, not a trickle. Painting my forearm in a stripe so warm it feels alive.

I swing again before he falls. Catch him across the cheekbone on the downstroke and the camera's lens housing punches through skin and I hear something break that isn't the camera.

Marcus hits the concrete floor and I go down with him.

I'm on top of him and I'm hitting him, and I'm hitting him, and I'm hitting him, and I can't stop.

The camera rises and falls and rises and falls and each time it lands the sound is wetter than the last—thick, meaty, wrong—and I'm screaming but I don't know what I'm screaming, I don't know if it's words or just noise pouring out of me like something ruptured, and my arms are shaking so hard the blows aren't even accurate anymore, they're landing on his jaw, his ear, the floor beside his head, and I'm sobbing, and swinging, and sobbing, and swinging, and I can't feel my hands and I can't stop.

But eventually my body quits on me. The screaming turns into nothin' but ragged, hiccuping gasps that don't pull in any air and I'm shaking so hard the camera slips in my grip, slick with blood that isn't mine, and my fingers just… give out.

The sound of the camera dropping to the floor shatters reality for me.

And then, in the same instant, it rushes back in.

Coldness fills me as I slide off him, scootin' backwards. Scramblin' away like I'm horrified and not the actual cause of the dead body on the floor.

When my back hits the stone wall, there's nowhere left to go.

So I just pull my legs up to my chest and bury my face in my knees.

And I just… cry.

CHAPTER 9

Cash stares at me for a moment. Just stares. His face is white, his mouth is nothin' but a flat line, and his eyes are bloodshot, runnin' on fumes and fury.