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I raise the knife.
Coop’s still squeezing, still kissing, still apologizing. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I expect Coop’s body to put up a fight, as if he’s made of more than just skin and tissue. Yet the knife plunges into his side with ease, surprising him into stillness.
“Quincy.”
There’s shock in that single word. Shock and betrayal and, I suspect, a little admiration.
His hands don’t fall from my neck until I remove the knife. Blood spews from the wound, sticky and hot. Coop tries to pull away from me, but I’m too fast. The knife goes in again, this time in the center of his stomach.
I twist it and Coop’s body spasms. Flecks of blood and spittle fly from his mouth.
He puts his hands on mine, trying to remove the blade. I grit my teeth, grunt, hold the knife in place. When Coop’s grip weakens, I give the blade a final twist.
“Quincy,” he says again, blood bubbling at the back of his throat.
I give a single nod, making sure he sees it before his eyes roll back in his head. I want him to know that I’m more than a survivor, more than the fighter he always imagined me to be.
I’m his creation, forged from blood and pain and the cold steel of a blade.
I’m a fucking Final Girl.
FOUR MONTHS AFTER PINE COTTAGE
Beige wasn’t Tina’s color. It washed her out, fabric and skin almost indistinguishable from each other. Other than her pallor, she looked good. Same taut features. Same prickly body language. Only her hair was different. It was shorter, and deep brown instead of raven black.
“You’ll look like a different person when you get out,” Quincy told her.
“We’ll see,” Tina said. “Fifteen months is a long time.”
They both knew it could be shorter than that. Or not. It was an unusual situation. Anything was possible. Although Quincy was surprised by the length of the sentence, Tina wasn’t. It’s amazing the ways police can get you when you’re pretending to be someone else. Criminal impersonation. Identity theft. A dozen different types of fraud. The charges against Tina were so varied, stretching across several states, that Jeff warned she could spend up to two years in jail.
Quincy hoped it was less. Tina had been through enough, although she swore it was all worth it.
Some of it might have been. Mostly the part about clearing Joe Hannen’s name. His innocence had been proclaimed to the world, which is what she wanted all along.
Yet Tina had almost died, thanks to Him, the new person whose name Quincy could no longer utter. The bullet He fired missed Tina’s left lung by a few millimeters. It missed her heart by even less. The blood loss was enough to give doctors some concern, but all in all she recovered nicely. She healed up just in time to be sent to prison.
“You know you don’t have to do this,” Quincy said, not for the first time. “Just say the word and I’ll confess to everything.”
She looked around the visiting room, which was packed with other women in beige and their guests. Hushed conversations rose from the neighboring tables, in all manner of languages. Through the grate-covered window, Quincy saw dirty snow drifting against a tall security fence, looped at the top with barbed wire. She honestly didn’t know how Tina could stand it there, even though she was assured it wasn’t that bad. Tina told her it reminded her of Blackthorn.
“It’s not like your confession would get me out of here any faster,” she said. “Besides, you were right. I made you do that to Rocky Ruiz.”
Rocky emerged from his coma at roughly the same time Quincy was shoving that knife into Him for the final time. Rocky’s memory was hazy, though, less from the beating and more from the fact that he was strung out on crack when it happened. But he knew he had been attacked. Against Quincy’s wishes, Tina confessed to it. Rocky didn’t argue, and Detective Hernandez didn’t press the issue. Jeff suggested a plea deal, with Tina to serve time concurrently for both the assault and the fraud.
“You didn’t make me do anything,” Quincy said. “My choices are mine.”
That much was true. It was the repercussions of those choices that she couldn’t control.
“Have they found the real Samantha yet?” Tina asked. “I’ve been asking the guards for news.”
“Nope,” Quincy said, capping the word with a popping sound. “They’re still looking for her body.”
Once it became clear that Samantha Boyd had been murdered, police in Florida went all out trying to recover her body. Quincy had spent the past four months monitoring the news as authorities searched swamps, dredged lakes, dug up dirt lots. But Florida was a big state, and the odds were slim that she’d ever be found.
Quincy concluded that maybe it was for the best. Until they found Sam’s body, it would feel like there was another Final Girl out in the world. That it wasn’t now just her.