Page 63 of Cruel Dreams

Panting, I kneel next to him, pull off my jacket, and ball it under his head.

His lips work, but nothing comes out.

I press both hands against the gunshot wound. “You’re going to be okay,” I say, my voice steady. “You’ll be fine. Help’s coming. Hang in there.”

He tries to speak, and I lower my head hoping to hear what he’s saying.

The noise everyone is making, the sobbing, the wailing and keening, fade, and the only thing I hear is Max. “Tell Zarah I love her.”

He shudders his last breath, and his body goes lax.

Max isn’t the first person Ash has taken from me, and he won’t be the last.

Ash killed three other people besides Max that night. One died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and two hung on in the emergency room before succumbing to their wounds. He injured countless others, including Governor Guthrie.

In all the commotion, Mayor Huxley managed to breach the tree line that borders the governor’s mansion. An FBI agent stopped him, but it wasn’t much of a chase. Huxley had been too winded to keep running.

When Ash started shooting, Mel took cover under the desk, and after Denton disarmed him, she assisted the detectives and wrote down statements, offered blankets and coffee to the guests in shock, and helped any others who needed it.

I didn’t let go of Max’s body until a paramedic forced me to release him.

Quinn, Stella, and her two dogs were close enough to the library’s entrance they were able to run to safety, and I found them hiding in a small bathroom, the door locked. Stella was paralyzed with fear, pushing her face into the fur of one of the dogs.

She went crazy when she saw Max’s blood staining my shirt. She couldn’t stop sobbing, babbling as she patted me down searching for injuries. I asked Quinn to find Mel, and Mel asked a paramedic to examine her. He gave Stella a sedative, and I had to relive my sister’s breakdown all over again.

I ask Mel for some time, and she ushers Stella and Quinn into a sitting room the FBI turned into a refuge for guests too shaky to leave. Stella gives me only a few minutes of peace, and she finds me in the same bathroom where she and Quinn hid.

“Are you okay?” she asks, leaning against the doorjamb. Her pupils are dilated. Fear, maybe, or the sedative doing its job. Tears streak across her pale cheeks.

I don’t feel like talking, and her presence after I said I needed time alone irritates me. I should be leaning into her, accepting the support she wants to give me, always, but out of guilt, I push her away.

“His death is my fault.” I tamp down the grief. How in the hell am I supposed to tell Zarah?

“How can you say that?” she whispers. Exhaustion and the sedative slur her voice. She rests a hand on my arm, and her skin is warm through the thin cotton of my shirt.

“All of this is because of me. Five years of this bullshit because I wouldn’t listen, because I wouldn’t believe you.”

“It went deeper than that. You know it. I know it, now. It goes so much deeper than Ash disliking me.”

“Nothing you say will absolve me of the blame.” I dry my hands. They’re clean, but I can still feel Max’s warm blood as it pumped out of him, sticky on my skin.

“Zane—” Stella tries one more time, and I can’t handle it.

“Fuck off, Stella.”

She blanches, but despite her own pain, she holds her ground.

“Fuck. Off.”

Tears fill her eyes, and she whirls away.

It’s better this way. I blacken everything I touch.

Banks drives Mel and me to the Crowne, rehashing the evening and failing to stifle a grin. So many people lost their lives and it’s in poor taste to be so smug, but there’s no doubt that working with me, exposing his superior for burying the black box’s existence, will earn him major professional points. Even if I had to coerce him to do it.

Ash’s and Clayton’s arrests will cause a ripple effect for years to come.

The FBI hasn’t given her permission to go back to California, and Mel asks if she can stay at the Crowne while they sort through paperwork and statements. I don’t care who does what, and I tell her that.

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