Page 94 of Irreversible

My throat dries. I’ve got to get out of this window and hide before Harris and his partner make it around to this side of the perimeter. If I stay here any longer, I’ll have Gonzalez to deal with. Good news is it sounds like there are plenty of places to hunker down outside, as long as I pick one that’s already been searched.

Using the shelving as a ladder, I’m able to push my upper body up and out the window, watching for signs of anyone within my line of sight. From the look of the dumpsters, which are in serious need of emptying, I’m at the back of the building. After a precarious push-pull-shimmy maneuver—made more painful over a bed of gravel—I stand, pressing my back to a wall of old, white-painted brick.

In front of me, a tall wooden fence surrounds a square area, and from the rank, burnt smell, I’m guessing it houses an incinerator. We appear to be in the middle of nowhere. There are no visible roads, no buildings besides the numerous sheds and shipping containers that belong to whatever this place is. I have no fucking clue.

The tree line looms an acre away. An oasis, with a stretch of dry, brown grass in between. It feels like a taunt—you can hide here, but good luck making it that far without being seen.

The crunch of footsteps alerts me to the presence of one of the men searching the perimeter. My nerves tingle, but panicking will do me no good, and I’d be a fool to try to make it to the trees in time. My options basically consist of taking him down and hoping his partner isn’t nearby, or finding a place to hide, fast.

When he walks through the gate of the fenced area, I know he won’t be in there long. That leaves only one place to go, and it’s one they may not thoroughly search.

Several seconds later, I’m buried among bags of stinking, rotting garbage. Not ideal, but it’s better than being dead. Probably.

I’m going to have to wait these fuckers out, possibly until nightfall, and hope this place isn’t well-lit. Then I’ll sneak away, find a road, and get the hell out.

But when my stomach curdles again, it has nothing to do with the stench surrounding me. Because once I leave here, there will be nothing I can do to help Everly until I get back with reinforcements. She’ll be on her own, and I?—

“How the hell did this happen?” That’s Harris, standing right outside my dumpster. “We’ve never had a problem with security.”

“It was that fucking cop. I knew keeping him around for so long was going to be trouble.”

Well, I guess that answers the question of how much they know about me.

There’s the sound of someone rifling around garbage bags in a dumpster nearby. Flies buzz above me. Bile rises in my throat. My muscles coil, prepared to fight amid the garbage. Maybe Ican vomit on them as a distraction; that seems legitimate right about now.

“Had a bad feeling about that motherfucker. How’d he get out?”

“He was working with the bitch in the room next to him. The hot one.”

“Damn, I hope she doesn’t have a bullet in her brain yet. I was hoping to get a piece of that before she’s finally offed. Been waiting for them to be done with her.”

From the depths of the dumpster, I seethe. I’m truly considering my odds of popping out of this pile of trash, catching them off guard, and snapping their goddamn necks before anyone has a chance to pull a gun on me.

Then the sound of footsteps moves away.

“Come on, man. He ain’t in there. Let’s check the other buildings, so we can say we did.”

“Yeah. He’s probably reached the road already. It’s been at least fifteen minutes since he knocked Oxley out. Maybe more.”

A laugh. “Wouldn’t want to be him right now. That guy is so fucked.”

Oxley…He must mean Roger.

Shit, I should have killed that bastard, rather than running the risk of him causing trouble later. It might have taken extra time, but I could have taken him, then picked off everyone else in this godforsaken place, one by one. Then I’d find that hourglass-wielding motherfucker they answer to, lock him in one of those cages in the basement, and take my time before dropping him in the incinerator where he belongs.

It’s kind of funny how easy it’s been to go from being an enforcer of justice to what the guys on the force would refer to as vigilantism, but from the moment I decided I wasn’t waiting any longer for them to take their heads out of their asses, it wasalways the plan. To wipe this organization off the face of the earth myself.

I didn’t care if it was a suicide mission.

I’m fucking over it.

Hell, a couple months ago, I would have blown this place sky-high—taken them all out in one fell swoop—without much thought of innocents getting caught in the crossfire, as long as these assholes were gone.

And now…

Now, rather than taking the opportunity to smash these motherfuckers like the cockroaches they are, I’m running the risk of letting Sara’s killers get away while I go off to bring backhelp,of all things. It’s a waste of time, when I could take care of this on my own, the messy way.

But all that time spent talking to the girl in the next room shifted my plans. The innocents are more than nameless, faceless casualties. And then there’s Everly, who knows me down to the depths of my festering soul.

---