Page 25

twenty-three

Not All Heroes Wield Shovels

Tate

N oah takes her time washing and drying her hair, even though she knows Silas is waiting for us in the car, and I know she doesn't care what it looks like.

She does it just to piss me off. And just to piss her off, I do my best not to react and appear to wait patiently.

She finally sets the hair dryer aside, her formally blonde-turned-red hair almost as dark as mine now. It looks good on her; it makes her sad green eyes and freckles pop.

She looks as pale as she did when I rolled her over last night and saw the puke crusted onto her face and bruised neck. I've seen it every time I've closed my eyes since—a new mental polaroid to join the collective of still images that will forever haunt me.

I look away, trying to shake the image from my mind now, but I land on the tub and remember holding her against me under the cold spray of the shower instead of in the warm bath the night before, and the way she looked up at me, the despair in her tone when she realized she was still alive, and even worse, stuck with me .

And when I try to shake that image, I'm standing on wet carpet instead, and it's my sister lying under bloody water.

"Okay, let's go," I say, dipping out of the bathroom. "He's just going to come up here and drag you out if we don't come down soon."

"But you won't?" Noah asks.

"I don't want to hurt you," I tell her. "You said not to touch you, so I'm not touching you."

"Yeah, okay, Tate," she says, rolling her eyes as she brushes past me.

Like I'm lying.

But I'm not lying. I'm not touching her, just like she asked. And it's hard…because I really want to touch her. I want to hold her and kiss her, I want to run my fingers through her hair and comfort her.

I can make it better. If she'll let me. She always lets me.

"You can't bring your phone," I say as she grabs her purse. "Or any of your old cards or anything."

"Fine," she says, and tosses it onto the ground. "Let's just go then."

"I wouldn't have killed you, Noah," I tell her as she puts on her jacket and walks out the door.

"What are you talking about?"

"Last year. I wasn't going to kill you. I mean, I wanted to, but I couldn't. I don't want to live in a world where you don't exist."

"But you don't really want this either, do you?" she asks as we descend the staircase. "You want me to go to prison for the rest of my life. "

I bite my lip, attempting again to pull nonexistent lip rings through my teeth.

"It's complicated." And I think I did okay explaining it to her when I thought she was just sleeping, but I'm not sure how to do that now. "But I do love you."

Forgetting I'd told her I wouldn't touch her, I reach for her hand, but she quickly jerks it away.

"That's not love, Tate," she says. "It's obsession, maybe, but it's not love. You told me yourself last night. When you love someone, you don't want them to hurt."

I consider arguing. Sometimes, you love someone so much, it makes you question who you are, and you need to hurt them—it's self-preservation. At least, that's what I thought before. That's what I thought both times Noah left, but I never really had to see with my own eyes how she hurt either time. I never saw Noah sad.

I saw her sad last night.

We reach the bottom of the staircase just as the older lady who owns the place comes out the back door and around the corner of the main house. I pull my hood up over my head before she reaches us.

"Is everything okay here?" she asks, looking the two of us over. Her hand hovers above her hip, and I get the distinct feeling that we must have missed at least one of her guns in our sweep.

"Yeah, we're fine," Noah says. "We're just going to get something to eat."

"Are you sure?" the woman asks. What was her name? Jodie, right? "You don't look fine. "

"Yeah, I just partied a little too hard last night," she says. "I need some hangover food. We should talk tomorrow, though, I um…I've been meaning to call you and ask when we can get back to work."

"Well, I was hoping we'd be open tomorrow," Jodie says. "But I got a call from the police station, and it turns out that finger is a DNA match for a man who's gone missing not too far from here. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Noah?"

Oh, fuck.

She called her Noah. She knows. How the fuck does she know?

But Noah is too sick and tired to notice. And she's been hearing her name—her real name—for days now from mine and Silas's lips. "Why would I know anything about that?" she asks.

Just as quickly as Jodie pulls her handgun, I push Noah behind me and step in front of her with my hands up.

"Jodie, what are you doing?!" Noah cries out, still unaware of her mistake.

"Both of you…" Jodie starts. "Don't move. I'm calling the police."

She fumbles with her left hand to get her phone from her pocket without looking away from us and without lowering the gun. It's a difficult task; she's going to have to do one or the other sooner or later, and then I'm going to have to charge her. It's my only option.

But then I see Silas behind her, slowly creeping from the wooded area between the house and the back alley .

"Why would you call the police? I didn't hurt anyone; I swear."

Noah's shouting allows him to move a little faster, and I watch him grab a shovel leaning against the side of the house.

"She knows who you are, Noah," I say calmly. "She said your name."

"I did my research after the police called," she says. "I started looking for runaways in the Pacific Northwest around the time you showed up; didn't realize that I'd never really looked at you long enough to realize that you were Noah Barlowe. Of course, you were pretty beat up when you showed up. I didn't realize you'd been hiding him all this time; now that…that is a fucking surprise."

"I didn't—" Noah tries to step around me, and I grab her by the shirt and pull her back.

"Don't move!" Jodie shouts. "Don't fucking move, or I will shoot you."

She finally gets the phone from her pocket just as Silas closes in on her.

"Noah really didn't do anything," I say loudly to distract her. "She never hurt anyone, and she wasn't hiding me. All of it was—"

Before I can finish the sentence, Silas swings the shovel, and the woman drops to the ground in the gravel. Silas effortlessly lifts her and tosses her over his shoulder, the shovel in his other hand, and carries her behind the house and out of view.

"Silas, wait!" Noah shouts. "Tate, is she dead?"

"No, she's probably just unconscious," I say. "But she will be. "

"Silas!" She races after him toward the house.

"Stop yelling!" I bend down and pick up the gun, tucking the discarded weapon into the back of my waistband before chasing after her. The back door to the house is open, and the woman lies unconscious on the living room floor.

Noah follows him around the kitchen, pleading with him, trying to catch his eye as he opens drawers and cabinets, searching for a knife. I have the gun, of course, but guns are loud.

Knives are quiet. And artistic. A personal touch matters; not everyone can do that.

"Silas, please!" she cries. "Don't kill her. You don't have to kill her."

"Noah," I say. "Baby, we do have to kill her. It's the only way we're going to get out of here."

"I'm not talking to you!" she screams back at me. "I'm talking to the person who actually gives a shit about me!"

The woman at my feet stirs, and I quickly pull out the gun and hit her over the head with it.

"Tate, no!" Noah screams as the woman slips out of consciousness, falling limp onto the floor again.

"What?"

I shrug, throwing my hands up. I really don't know what the fuck she wants from me.

Silas pulls a knife roll bag from the top of the fridge and unfurls it on the island.

I'm glad he's the one who's going to do it. She always forgives him. I'm sure he realizes that, too.

"Silas, no! Silas, please don't! Please! "

She drops to the ground and wraps her body around one of his legs. "Please, stop, Silas," she sobs. "Please, don't kill her. She took care of me. She was like…a mom."

"Tate, get her out of here," Silas says. "She doesn't need to see this."

I wrap my arms around her middle and pull her off him, but she screams and fights against my hold. "No, Tate! Let me go."

"I'm sorry," I tell her as I drag her backward through the door. She digs her heels in, still struggling against me, and headbutts me pretty good in the nose. "Fuck! We don't have any other options, Noah. This is the only way we'll get out of here."

"No, it's not," she cries, gripping the doorframe as I attempt to pull her back outside. "Tate, please. Please don't do this. Please don't let him. I won't forgive you. Ever. Not for this."

"Let go, Noah."

"You don't love me!" she yells. "I fucking knew it. If you loved me—even a little bit—you wouldn't do this. You wouldn't kill the only person on Earth who's shown me kindness. You fucking despise me." As Silas kneels over her with the knife in his hand, Noah finally gives up, sobbing as she releases the doorframe. "I can't wait until the day comes when you finally let me go."

Even Silas freezes.

"And you! You killed my mom, Silas."

"I only did that to save you," he says. "I'm doing this because I have to do this to save you."

"This isn't saving me!" she shouts. "This is killing me! "

"Fuck!" he yells back. "What the fuck are we supposed to do, Noah? Huh? We're kind of fucked here."

"We'll…tie her up," I suggest. "We could tie her up really tight and leave her here. Someone would find her eventually, right? But it would be a while; she lives alone. We'll be long gone by the time someone comes around."

Noah nods. "Yeah, she has a boyfriend, but he works nights. He'd probably find her tomorrow."

"Okay, so…I'll check the garage for some rope, and…you stay here in case she wakes up. Silas?"

"Yeah." Silas pauses, scratching the back of his head with the knife hand. "Yeah, fine."

"There are zip ties in the kitchen," Noah says weakly.

"Okay," I say. "That'll help. You go get some zip ties."

"Thank you," she says. But it's painful for her; I can tell. She hates thanking me, she hates that she has to be nice to me for this.

She just fucking hates my ass.

"See?" Desperate to touch her, I thread my fingers through her hair, rubbing that spot of smooth skin behind her ear with my thumb. Maybe it's manipulative; maybe I'm taking advantage of the fact that I know she wouldn't risk snapping at me right now for touching her, but I think she used to like that. I lean in and kiss her on the mouth, not really concerned with whether or not she hates it. "I do love you, Noah. I'm doing this for you, baby."

She says nothing, looking at Silas instead .

I could make her crawl for this. Would that be too much, given the gravity of the situation, or would she find it cute in the end? If nothing else, it'd be on-brand.

"We might get caught over this, sweetheart," Silas says. "We could go to prison for the rest of our lives. You realize that, right?"

"No," Noah says. "Not me. I won't go."

But she says it like a threat.