Page 188 of Mud

“Follow him, Rose. Keep him in your line of sight at all times. Do you understand?”

Of course, I don’t understand! That’s the man I love—I don’t understand anything!

“Yes.”

The line went dead.

Three men with guns in their hands had been hiding around me, near the walls and behind doors, and one underneath a bench in the darkness. They came out and slipped into the first tower in perfect silence.

I followed, shaking from head to toe, my mind still unable to grasp the concept ofrealright now.

Keep him in your line of sight at all times.

Maybe I should have askedwhy.

Maybe I should have saidno.

Maybe I shouldn’t have followed those men inside the building, and down the corridor, turning corner after corner until we were in front of a staircase at the end leading down.

I stopped as I watched the shadows hiding in the doors of the classrooms along the sides of the corridor. Taland’s footsteps were barely noticeable as he walked down those stairs, going Iris knew where.

His name was at the tip of my tongue. I wanted to call out to him, tell him to come back here, that people were after him—-agents, I bet, dressed in all black, with hats on their heads and guns in their hands.

Just come back to me right now!

Instead, I went ahead, moved forward, to the agents, to the stairs, while the world around me went to hell. All of it went to hell at the same time.

A wonder I hadn’t collapsed yet.

The stairs were made of wood, and they led somewhere dark, somewhere I had never been before. Somewhere Taland shouldn’t have been now.

Behind me came the agents, silent as ghosts, their footsteps mirroring mine. I wanted to turn and tell them to give me a moment, that I would follow because Hill told me to keep an eye on him, that’s all. They didn’t need to come so close to any of us with those damn guns—just stay away from us, freaks!

But a second before I gathered the courage to turn around and whisper the words, I heard.

I heard a voice coming as if from very far away, from whatever device the agent walking behind me had close to him, a voice that I wasn’t supposed to hear.

“Shoot on sight.”

I froze.

The men behind me froze, too.

“Sir, we don’t have a confirmation—” the agent whispered back, but he was cut off again by a voice that could have been Hill, or maybe someone else.

“The moment he steps into the Strongroom, shoot to kill. That’s an order.”

I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking in those moments because I wasn’t. I couldn’t tell you what I was feeling, either, other than these instincts that took control of me before I knew what the hell I’d decided to do.

I moved forward, continued to walk and my step didn’t falter, as if I wasn’t going to lead these men to Taland at all. As if I wasn’t going to be there to witness the whole thing with my own eyes.

That’s what Hill had brought me here for—as witness.

He didn’t need me to confirm anything for him. He’d already decided to kill Taland, but I was to be there as the witness, and to this day, I still had no cluewhy.To this day, I didn’t understand why he’d chosen to involvemein this sick, twisted game of his.

And to this day, I couldn’t bring myself to wish anything had been different because, if it had, I would have never met Taland. I’d rather die than regret any moment I’d ever spent with him.

I went through doors, trying to see in the dark, trying to hear his footsteps again, refusing to think that Taland was really the guy Hill thought he was. Refusing to acknowledge what it meant that Taland really was the guy he’d sentme here to spy on, that he was a criminal, that he was going to try to steal something from the Strongroom of this school.

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