Liquid Smoke

SIXTY-EIGHT

I drove east on the highway, then south without a road, until we were out in the middle of the dark desert. Keene was still unconscious in the passenger seat. I opened the door and threw him to the ground.

He rolled over with a grunt, his left thigh decorated with a wide swath of dark blood. I pulled out the garbage bags I’d lined the interior of the rental car with and tossed them in a pile next to him.

His eyes opened slowly.

I fired the Sig Sauer Carter had obtained for me about a foot from Keene’s left ear. He jerked and rolled hard to his right. He came face up again, dirt and sand now caked in the bleeding gash above his eye.

“You killed Darcy,” I said and fired again at the ground, this time to his right. My voice sounded unusually loud in the silent and lonely desert.

He yelled and rolled in the opposite direction. He pushed up on his hands and sat up, his breathing ragged.

“You left my father to rot in prison,” I said.

Keene tensed, waiting for another shot. I surprised him with a roundhouse kick to the jaw and felt the bone snap as I drove my foot through the kick. He fell to the side, his hands coming to his face.

I dropped to my knees and pulled him up. He grunted, and a weird smile came over his busted-up face. Even knowing he was near the end of his life, Keene was arrogant.

I held onto his shirt, our faces two feet apart. “And you killed the only person who has ever really mattered to me.”

The tears welled up in my eyes. I looked away for a moment, angry that I was showing him how much he had hurt me and that I couldn’t get a handle on my emotions. I waited, willing my control to return.

I took a deep breath and looked at him through my blurred, salty vision.

I don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe that I would drag it out, make him tell me more things that I wanted to know. But we were beyond that.

I tugged on his shirt and brought our faces together, shoving the gun against the middle of his sternum. He was gasping but too weak to pull away. He coughed, and the sound echoed across the desert floor.

And yet the uncomfortable smile remained on his face, letting me know that no matter what was about to happen, he had still won part of the battle.

For a second, I thought about ending it. Leaving it all and walking away. Be the stronger person. Do the right thing, like Liz had said.

But I no longer had a grasp on the difference between right and wrong. It all melted into one big mountain of hurt and pain and emptiness.

The smile on his face grew a fraction.

I squeezed the trigger and emptied the gun into Landon Keene’s chest.