Page 71 of Last Hand

“She was supposed to make it out, too,” he says.

Milo doesn’t answer, he glances over, eyes asking for a bailout. I don’t make him say it. I stride up, plant myself over Nathan, and grab him by the collar.

He’s heavier than he looks, all dead weight. I drag him upright, ignoring the way his shoes slip in the mud and her body falls from his arms. “Enough,” I snap. “She died getting Fallon out. Don’t waste it.”

Nathan stares right through me. He’s running on fumes, pupils blown wide, lips peeled back in a snarl or maybe a cry.His fingers keep reaching for Rebecca, like if he doesn’t hold her, she’ll vanish for good. He doesn’t hear a thing I say.

So I slap him. Open palm, loud enough to make everyone around stop to look. His head snaps sideways, cheek blooming red, eyes wild.

“Listen to me,” I snarl, close enough he can smell my sweat, my blood. “You can’t bury her here. You live to remember her. You stay, you’re just another corpse for someone else to bag since we don’t know if Mikhail had sent for anyone else.”

He blinks, finally. I see the calculation flicker behind his eyes, the father in him crawling toward the surface.

I let go, he doesn’t stand on his own. He drops back to his knees, face in his hands.

Christ. The old man was always stubborn. Sometimes you have to hit a man twice.

So I do.

The second slap is softer, more a tap than a blow, it’s enough to shatter what’s left. Nathan buckles, shoulders heaving, and he sags into my legs, sobbing so hard it shakes both of us.

He doesn’t even try to hide it. Doesn’t care. Just shudders and howls, ugly and loud.

Milo kneels beside him, head bowed, watching the dirt like it might offer absolution. Santos stands off to the side, posture straight, eyes lowered. Even the wind’s gone silent.

Nathan’s sobs taper off, replaced by dry, ragged gasps when Milo peers around before looking at me. “Fallon?” he mouths, and I nod toward the cars. He rises, moving toward them.

EIGHTEEN

Milo

Leone said he put Fallon in the car; I open the door and find it empty. Moving to the next car, it’s the same. I peer around and Leone, catching sight of me, points to the correct one and I wander over. For one second, everything holds: the headlights cut through the night, the forest’s pulse on pause. Then—one blink, and the rear door’s flung open, empty.

“Where the fuck—Fallon!” My voice is way too loud for 4:00 AM. Subtlety’s dead and buried. I spin in a full circle, half-expecting her to materialize from the smoky air.

She doesn’t.

Instead, Leone’s now wrestling Nathan, who’s half-collapsed and trying to crawl toward Rebecca, who’s being scooped up by one of Santos’s guys and Rocco. I catch sight of a blur—a pale, raw-footed comet racing into the trees.

“Fallon!” I yell, and Leone drops Nathan like a sack of wet laundry, looks at me, and I point toward her. His gaze follows my hand, and we both tear after her, my shoes chewing up wet leaves, my breath ghosting into the air. “Fallon!” I shout. “Where are you going?”

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look back. What the fuck is she doing?

The woods close in. I can barely see more than ten feet without the flashlight, still I don’t dare slow down. I catch snatches of movement up ahead, the flash of long blonde hair, the pale crescent of a bare shoulder. She’s fast.

She finally stops. Not because she’s winded, because there’s this massive, gnarled thing—a tree that looks like it’s been dead since the dawn of time. The trunk split open, a black cavity staring back at her. Fallon’s kneeling at the base, hands pressed to the ground, whispering into the hollow, making me pause at what she is doing.

Leone pulls up beside me, panting. “What’s she doing?”

“Either summoning Satan, or she’s lost it for good,” I mutter, and we both stand there, two idiots with no clue if we should intervene or just catch our breaths while waiting for her to explain what she is doing.

Then a hand emerges from the hollow. Small, grubby, shaking. Then another. Fallon pulls, and there’s a child, maybe four or five, with wild blonde hair tangled with spiderwebs, eyes blinking like she’s never seen light before. Fallon tucks her under one arm and reaches back in. Another girl, identical down to the dirty face, wriggles out and clings to Fallon’s side.

“Jesus Christ,” I say shocked. I’m not sure what I thought she was doing, but pulling kids from a dead tree wasn’t it.

Fallon stands, a kid on each side, and looks at us with these huge, hollow eyes. “This is Anya and Mila,” she says. “My sisters.”

The words whack me in the face. I didn’t even know Rebecca had any more kids besides Fallon and Emma.

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