Page 68 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

But no, he thought, coming to a stop, listening. It wasn’t a bird. Someone was screaming.

Angeline.

He ran with everything he had toward the sound, pounding on the rough stone pavers, calling her name, following the sound of her screaming, the chimes of her phone.

The world around him swam, colors punching. For a blissful moment, he imagined he was inRed World, none of it real. He was immortal, and the consequences of his actions were virtual: no matter what he stole, or who he killed, or what kind of prizes he banked,it was only real in that universe where everyone was just a player in his game.

But no, he felt the unyielding concrete against his feet, the damp rough stone of the outdoor corridor brush his shoulder. Hard surfaces, no give.

When he found Angeline, she was standing at an open door, Tavo holding her back from entering the room. He came up behind them and grabbed her away from Tavo, and she fell into him weeping. “OhmygodohmygodMavohmygod.”

“What the fuck? What did you do to her?” he yelled at Tavo, holding her tight.

But Tavo just shook his head, staring, like he couldn’t speak. His face was ashen, eyes wild with confusion.

Mav followed his gaze to the concrete floor of the utility closet and saw what they saw.

Alex.

Head bloodied, misshapen, neck unnaturally bent, ghost-white. Broken. Maverick could barely take in the sight, felt the world tilt and fade around him. Alex. Gone.

Not Alex. Not anymore.

23

ANGELINE

“Help me get him out of there.”

Mav’s voice sounded as if he was on the other side of thick glass, desperate, pleading, muffled beneath the roaring in her ears and the chaos of her thoughts. There was a stunned feeling that had her limbs heavy; she could barely process the scene, what was happening. She leaned against the rough, cold wall, badly needing to sit or lie down. Bile burned its way up her throat.

“We should leave him,” said Tavo faintly. “We need to call the police.”

His words seemed to come out very slowly and hover on the air.

She wanted to agree but couldn’t seem to find her voice. As much as she didn’t want to leave Alex, her friend, lying broken in a utility closet, alone on the wet stone floor in the dark, that was undeniably the right thing to do. The other day she had watched him eat a slice of pizza with gusto. She punched him playfully on his bony but fully alive shoulder, listened to him laugh at some joke she had made about Mav.

“Fuck no, we’re not calling the police,” said Mav, angry.

No,scared. She knew that pitch, boyish, wobbly.

“Do you have any idea what kind of a shitshow we’re talking about here?” he went on. “We’re in a foreign country. I barely made it out of Mexico, man.”

Tavo blinked at him, his brow knitting.

“You’rein a foreign country,” said Tavo. “This is my home.”

There was a truth in that, and it made Gustavo seem other to her all of a sudden, not part of what was happening here, maybe not an ally. Maybe there had always been something other about him. He didn’t grow up with the guys. He’d met Maverick at NYU. She watched him now: he seemed like a stranger.

“Shut up and help me,” barked Mav.

The three of them just stared at each other for a long moment, Tavo’s eyes were wide with grief, confusion, shock. Angeline had no frame of reference here, no ideawhatto do. She never thought she’d be a person who froze in an emergency. But here she was, a statue. Still, already beneath the shock and terror, other thoughts had started to churn.Who did this? Why?

Then, the texts she’d read scrolled back on the screen of her mind. The BoxOfficePlus deal. Which Alex wanted and Maverick did not. The confrontation Alex had planned. Lucia’s concern that he wasn’t safe.

And then, horribly, unbelievably, Maverick and Tavo were lifting Alex in the rug that had been missing from his room, using it like a stretcher. And Alex looked so small, like a boy with knobby knees and skinny arms, but the two of them struggled with the weight as they edged down the long hallway. And Angeline thought about Lucia and their baby andohmygodthis is a dream, and it isn’t happening.Please, please, please.

“What are youdoing?” she hissed, finding her voice. “Where are you taking him?”