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Alix doesn’t react, not visibly. But I have to swallow twice to get the acid out of my throat. I hope to hell Herzog had a special effects guy on his payroll, someone who could make a fake corpse to fool Leo.
I know he didn’t.
“After you d—,” Leo says, and then he corrects himself before Alix can set the record straight once again. “After Ithoughtyou were dead, he sent me to the warehouse. He said I could work off my debt. A month for stealing and I’d be free. But he gave me another month when I fucked up a package of meth. And a month after that when I got the runs and couldn’t work. After that…after that, he didn’t make excuses anymore. He just kept me there. Just made me work.”
Alix knows her sentence was originally three days. She knows it stretched to three years and would have gone longer if she hadn’t saved herself.
But that’s the thing.
Shedidsave herself. She figured out a way to be free.
So when she looks at the pitiful creature chained to her table, when she sees her brother’s snot running into his mouth, when she sees his bony knees shaking above those stirrups like he’s got a fucking vibrator jammed up his ass, she has to wonder why she was strong enough to escape and Leo wasn’t. Why she killed Herzog and Leo packaged the motherfucker’s drugs. Why she’s walking the freeport like a royal fucking princess, and he’s pleading for his goddamn life.
Alix looks at me for the first time since I pulled the hood off her brother. “Let’s go,” she says. And she turns toward the exit.
Leo must be so surprised he forgets to plead until Alix’s hand is on the doorknob. “Don’t leave me here!” he begs.
Alix’s fingers tense.
“Please!” he cries.
She turns the knob beneath her palm. Opens the door. Juts her chin to tell me to go first.
“At least give me my fix!” Leo shouts. “Just a little something. Take the edge off. Please!”
The sound of his begging cuts off as the door snicks closed between us.
Alix stands in the hallway, her face drained. I thought I knew every one of her emotions. I thought I could read her like a shipping contract. But I don’t have a clue what she’s thinking now.
I’mthinking I need to clear the loading dock. Kelly and I agreed I’d take care of the white van. Drive it down to East Baltimore. Wipe it down for prints, take the stolen license plates, and leave the keys in the ignition. Torch the fucking plates after Amtrak gets me home.
The silence gets thicker. Heavier. The stitches in my left shoulder are starting to ache. Too bad I didn’t follow doctor’s orders and drink plenty of fluids, get a full night’s sleep.
She’s still standing there. Debating. Fighting a demon I’ll never truly understand.
I need to get to a computer. Check the news. Read my email. Jonas and Ansel Herzog won’t accept what happened tonight without a battle. Kelly and I, we went into enemy territory. We stole enemy goods—Leo and the two hundred pounds of Crash that Kelly’s presumably stowing away right now. We killed enemy soldiers.
The question isn’twhetherthere’ll be hell to pay. The question iswhen. And just how fucking bad it’ll be.
“Alix,” I finally say.
“I hate him.”
“I know.”
“I want him to suffer exactly the way I did. I want him to be that scared. That hurt. That alone.”
“I know.”
“I want him so broken he can’t imagine there’s a way out, so hopeless he doesn’t dream anymore when he sleeps.”
“Princess—”
“But he’s still my brother. I don’t want to, but I love him.”
She’s crying now, silent tears leaking out of her eyes, painting her cheeks silver in the overhead light.
“I love the little boy he was. I love the best friend I had for years. I love the other half of me, the one I thought was gone forever because of all of Herzog’s lies.” Her hand is moving, squeezing an invisible something, like she’s juicing a lemon or holding a beating heart.
