Page 356 of Rage

“The only poison around here isyou.”

He laughs more. The audacity of this fucker. I hate him. I hate him.I hate him.

I step closer. “You killed him.” A fat, lone tear slides from my eye.

“I’ve killed a lot of people, honey, you’re gonna have to be more specific than that.”

I hate him.

“Rhett.”

“You’re talking about that pretty boy from last year?”

I nod, not trusting my voice for once today.

Whitman lets out a long sigh, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. “Of fucking course you’re talking about that bitch kid.” He looks directly at me, and from this distance, I can see his face now. He doesn’t look well, and that gives me a bit of hope as well as some sick satisfaction.

“You riddled his body with fucking bullets.”

“Yeah, that’s usually what happens when you gun someone down, sweetheart.” His voice is a knife in my heart.I hate him.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Why did I kill the kid? Well, that’s an easy answer. Sandman wanted it to happen, and when boss says jump, you ask how high.”

“Why?”

“I don’t ask boss questions. It ain’t my place to question. The kid had to die.”

The kid had to die.

The kid had to die.

The kid had to die.

Tears blur my vision. I can barely see Whitman, who has somehow closed the distance between us. He’s barely an arm’s length away now. I swallow thickly.

“It’s best you keep going, girl. Don’t make me doi something you don’t want me doing.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what? Murdering the love of my life?”

He laughs. Again. “What are you? Like eighteen? He wasn’t the love of your life. Fucking dramatic ass teenagers. Move on.”

I raise my arm and the gun touches his chest. My finger doesn’t twitch, my muscles steady in their decision.

Whitman doesn’t pale. He doesn’t move or say anything new. His eyes just bore into mine as his lips turn up. Does he want meto kill him? Is this what he wants? Why isn’t he grabbing my arm and snapping it in half?

“I see you’ve got yourself some questions.”

I only nod.

“Well, you ain’t gonna be getting any answers from me,” he steps impossibly closer, burying the gun into his chest even more. “So. Do. It.”

I pull the trigger.

A loudbangshocks through the alley as vibrations race from my hand to my wrist to my arm and shoulder. Whitman’s eyes widen before quickly looking down at his chest. His hands grasp the barrel of my weapon, forcing it down. He doesn’t use much force, however. He can’t.

I shot him square in the chest.

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