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Randall didn’t seem so sure though.

“But if he’s the one who did Galleti…” Randall reasoned, “doesn’t that put him on our side?”

A moment of uncomfortable silence followed. “Ask him how he did it,” sneered Holden, finally. “Ask anyone.”

Marcus’s expression turned deadly serious. There was no anger, no resentment, no indignation. It was the absence of all that. It was a void of nothingness.

Holden stood abruptly and grabbed the keys to the truck without asking. Then he stepped away from the table, motioning to Randall, who reluctantly followed.

“Lay low,” he repeated again, looking at me directly. “We’ll call you when we’re ready.”

I had a hundred questions. Maybe a thousand. Right now though, I couldn’t even find my own voice.

Holden spun in the direction of the exit. Before leaving he stopped beside Marcus and gave his shoulder a condescending pat.

“You should probably tell her,” he said, before walking off. “Don’t you think?”

Thirty-One

ANDREA

For lack of anything better to do, we walked back to the hotel. Marcus didn’t talk. I didn’t pry. It wasn’t until we’d reached the elevator that he even looked at me again, his eyes full of something like… regret.

“Marcus…” I breathed. “What is it?”

The tall Ranger stood silent, as the car climbed through the hotel’s floors. The doors slid open. Before he stepped through, I took his hand.

“You can tell me, you know.”

He let out a long breath, still looking forward, still deciding. Finally he pulled me through, and the doors closed behind us.

“You remind me of someone,” he said thickly.

The was no one else around. His words were swallowed up by the empty, crazily-carpeted hallway.

“Who?”

“A girl I loved,” he said somberly. “A girl I would’ve married.”

He stepped away. I followed. A few doors later, he produced the room’s keycard from his pocket. He held it in his hand for a few seconds, just staring down at it. Not doing anything.

“Here. Let me…”

I took it from him, and inserted it into the lock. Finally we were inside, with the door latching behind us.

Everything looked the same as it had last night. The curtains were still drawn, from where he and Randall had closed them. The room was cool and dim. Mostly dark.

“I had a fiancé,” Marcus began suddenly. “She looked almost exactly like you. She sounded like you. She smiled like you…”

He sank heavily to the bed, shoulders slumped. It was one the saddest thing I’d ever seen! I was already choked up. Terrified of what he might say next, but he said nothing.

“W—What happened?” I eventually had to ask.

“She died.”

He said the words tersely, almost vengefully. In the span of an instant, the sorrow was all but gone.

“She died because of me.”