Page 16 of Uncontrolled

“Are you positive I should be here?” I ask Allie for the tenth time since we left her apartment.

At the base of the shoddy wooden staircase, I let her go around me and lead the way up to Talia’s in-law suite above the garage at her parents’ house. Allie doesn’t answer my question, though she heard me.

Talia may be her best friend, but there’s no love lost between the two of us. I’m fairly certain she won’t be welcoming me with open arms.

Then again, she has good reason to hate me. She knows what I did to Allie. I can give them both all the excuses, except I’m not an idiot and neither are they. I did wrong. I made bad choices. I almost cost both of them their lives.

And the biggest reason Talia makes me so uncomfortable is because I don’t know if it’s possible to re-earn her trust.

Allie swivels around to see if I’m following, and embarrassment raises my hackles. I break free of my thoughts and trudge up the stairs.

“You okay?” Allie asks as I draw up behind her.

“Yeah,” I say, forcing myself to smile as if us being here is absolutely natural.

“Be brave,” Allie teases. “Talia doesn’t bite.”

“Have you met her?” I mumble and her laugh makes me feel marginally better.

Allie knocks and a moment later, the door swings open. Talia’s already halfway across the living room before we start inside.

Thumbtacked to the wall above her small desk are pieces of paper covered in scribbled notes. A laptop sits on the desk, the screen bright, showing what on first impression is some sort of website about cryptid creatures. Scrunched and discarded notebook pages litter the carpet underneath it, the ripped edges of spiral bound paper scattered like snowflakes.

On the desk rest two empty coffee mugs. Another, half full, sits on a warmer, the light glowing red. Talia hooks the handle and slugs a mouthful from it before falling into her desk chair.

“Okay,” she says without looking at us. “I’ve been working on this non-stop since you called me last night, so forgive me if things seem disorganized.”

“You didn’t sleep?” Allie asks.

“No time,” Talia says, her voice low. I’m not sure she meant to answer at all. “I didn’t want to step on your toes, but once you gave me the go ahead…”

I stare in wonder at the pages and pages of information. Some of them are printouts of mug shots, others are selfies clearly cribbed from social media accounts. People in the foregrounds are circled, arrows drawn to profiles beside them, swaths of permanent marker and question marks over the blurriest of the unfocused shots. She’s tacked a dozen printed photos to the wall. A few have scribbled names or cities or odd details, a TV show they’re a fan of or some other random fact.

“You did all this in the last twelve hours?” I ask.

At the desk, Talia spins to me. I watch her in my peripheral vision though my attention is on the work she’s done.

“Oh,” Talia says, the excitement dropping from her mood. “You.”

“Me,” I say distractedly. My focus sticks on a single picture.

“What is it?” Allie asks.

I point.

He’s smiling in the photograph, and instantly, I’m transported to the cabin. Allie and I were on the run. I’d been trying to cajole an excuse to sneak away and use the phone Jamison gave me, the one I still have, to hear what sort of accident ended with Allie’s aunt dead. Allie and I had trudged through a swamp to a cabin. There, we found the man in the photo posing as a resurrectionist.

The man who eventually shot Allie in the chest.

I’d wrestled the gun from him, firing twice until he dropped and stopped moving, neither Allie nor I aware yet his first bullet struck her.

Another memory flashes. In it, I hear Allie’s desperate inhales, gurgled and wet. I remember the rattle of her last exhale, too long. I remember the way I shook as I drew the blood from my arm how she told me, as I gave her the boost she needed to hasten her return to me, as I realized Jamison would be there in minutes, as I gathered her limp deadweight and decided to run.

I chose her.

My teeth bite into my lip as I force myself to examine the picture. I’d never killed anyone before him. He was the first. But he wasn’t the last.

My throat clicks as I swallow.

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