Page 48

Surely I can reason with him. Even if we can’t stop fate, even if Alastair has to go back to Death Row, I need my moments with him. Real moments, not seconds and minutes in front of an audience talking to each other through the glass.
The last time I got to be close to him, I thought he was trying to kill me. Now, even if I only have moments, I need to feel his touch again. I need to know that what we had was real.
Chapter 16
I don’t stay to see what happens to Porscha. Until she screamed, I didn’t think she was real. I thought Fake Porscha was playing games with my head, and the person appearing from the rain was another figment of my imagination.
But she was real, and she bled. I could’ve finished her, but instead I let her stumble away bleeding. The wound was a glancing blow at best. I swung the axe so she would stay back. But it caught her neck, and instead of ending her I watched her gasp and hold her hand to the wound before stumbling away. I don’t think she deserves to die so quickly.
Now I’m hiding in the trees, waiting for my freedom to end.
Porscha got caught. I heard the reports on the truck’s radio before I abandoned it. Getting away from her as she bled seemed like the right choice, so I turned and left her on the road, hopping back into the stolen truck again. I fought with the mud for a minute and eventually the tires found some traction in the damn mud, giving me enough umph to let the truck move so I could drive away. Once it ran out of gas it was nothing more than a new prison cell, and staying in it meant I was waiting for my doom. I pulled off the highway onto a side road, barely asparse spot in the trees. Either way, it’s not instantly obvious, so it should buy me some time.
I’m just not sure it’s worth it.
“Where do we go from here?” Fake Porscha asks, sitting with me in the tree. I didn’t climb high, the ache in my leg keeping me from doing so, but I don’t think anything is going to eat me right away.
Is that a fear I should have? I don’t see water around here so there shouldn’t be any gaters lurking, and we’re no longer tucked into the swamplands. Some other creature might find me, but I doubt there’s anything else as fearsome out here as Porscha.
When I look over at her, Fake Porscha looks different. She looks sickly, kind of pale. Her eyes are hollow, and she sneers when I meet her gaze. “This is how you look.”
“I don’t look that bad,” I say, closing my eyes. I don’t look great, but I don’t look like I’m dying yet like the apparition does. “Saw myself in the rearview mirror.”
What happens now? There’s no one coming to save me, and even if I thought there was, what am I going to do? Porscha made the decision to walk down the highway and I made the decision to run. I keep replaying the moments in my head over and over, trying to decide if I made the right choice.
“I gave you everything, twice, and you do this?” she yells, her voice carrying over to me through the rain as I climb out of the car. “You run from me?”
“Porscha, let’s be real. There’s no reason to lie anymore” I tell her, wondering if I’m having a very in-depth conversation with myself. “I realized you never gave me anything.”
The closer she gets the more I can make out, and I realize she has a knife. Choosing to bring a weapon is a risky move since she kept me subdued ever since the prison. She had agun when we left, but I haven’t seen it since she was at the CGP. Where did it go?
“I gave you purpose,” she scoffs. “Without me you were just some foster kid struggling to belong. I showed you the light. I gave you purpose. You owe your life to me.”
Now I’m positive she’s real, because even in the darkest corners of my head I don’t believe I owe shit to Porscha. I’m violently against that idea. “You gave me pot laced with LSD and moved to heroin to keep my compliant. I don’t owe you anything except credit for fucking up my life. Save your lies for someone else.”
“You don’t believe me?” she taunts, stopping outside of my reach. Her knife is shorter than my axe, so I have the advantage for now. As I study her, I realize she doesn’t look wounded. That might work against me, but I have rage on my side to make up for my injured leg. “I gave you the best high of your life! You think there’s a greater thrill than killing?”
I shrug. To be quite honest, since I was arrested when I was eighteen, I can’t say I’ve had the chance to try something better. “I think the times I felt most alive was when I had two people who loved me for me. The drugs you gave me never came close to matching that.”
She snarls and steps closer, her eyes zeroing in when I lift the axe. It’ll be messy if I get my hands on her, but it’s going to give me an advantage over her knife. “I changed your life and this is how you repay me? Total betrayal?”
“You let me take the fall!” I seethe. “I always thought that body was a placeholder, but no one would care if I mentioned it, would they? You did a damn good job pretending to be dead.”
“Daphne did come in handy,” Porsche agrees.
Her nonsense quiets the rage in my head. That’s the second time she’s mentioned a name I don’t recognize that she thinks I should. “Who?”
If it’s a mistake bringing it up, she doesn’t let on. Instead she scoffs, narrowing her gaze. “I had the perfect escape plan, Alastair, if ever something went wrong. Then you had to go and fuck things up by being involved with my daughter.”
I narrow my eyes. “I met Jo before I ever met you. Had I listened to the Franks I would have gone out the day you showed up to work, or I would’ve picked an activity instead of hanging out in random neighborhoods to smoke. I saw Jo for days before I met you. I thought you looked familiar, because you reminded me of her.”
Porscha snorts, pushing away her dark hair from her eyes. The bangs are all over the place, the rain making them too long for her to see through. “You were too busy trying to protect my daughter, weren’t you? You should’ve let me finish the job I started. With her out of the way, none of this would have ever happened.”
I shake my head, reminded why I took the blame to begin with. “Jo deserved better than you. She deserved to think her mother was a victim instead of a murderer. You couldn’t even let her have that.”
I’m jolted out of my thoughts when I feel myself slipping from the branch. I can’t stay up here long, I just needed somewhere to sit and think for a while. I’m running low on options, and short of looking for another house to break into and possibly attack someone to steal what I need, the options look dismal.
Falling asleep right now is the wrong move. I’m exhausted, but if I sleep I’ll be caught unaware.