20. Marc
Marc
J ust do it, okay? The words echoed in Marc’s ears. Am I dead already?
That’s what he wondered when the slender figure who’d materialised in front of him with a gun began speaking with his ex-girlfriend’s voice.
And if I am dead, is this heaven or hell?
“I don’t understand.”
“Look, I know communication isn’t your strong point, but for once in your life, could you not act dumb?”
“Phae?”
“Not now, okay?”
If not now, then when? He’d be a corpse in five minutes.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Trying to avoid another funeral. You know I hate funerals.”
“Just do what she says,” Katie half screamed, half sobbed, leaning against a pillar for support.
“At least she knows how to follow a simple instruction,” Phae muttered, and then the shooting started again.
Marc didn’t take his eyes off Phae as he obeyed her order and crouched beside Katie. Yes, Phae had always had an edge to her, but this was a whole other level. How had she even gotten here? And more importantly, how did she plan on getting away?
She took something out of her backpack and pressed it over the spot where chain met pillar, then duct-taped what looked like a bag of saline over the top.
What was she doing? He tried asking, but she didn’t answer.
Probably didn’t even hear him over the noise of the gunfire. Who was shooting? Frank? Who else?
Then Phae was next to him, grabbing his hands and pressing them over his ears. The muffled boom shook him on his feet. Dirt splattered through the air, followed by the now-free end of the chain. Katie fell sideways, dazed, as it smacked her in the head.
“Shit! You okay?” Marc tried to pull her up, but she was limp.
“Get ready to run,” Phae ordered.
“What about Katie? She isn’t running anywhere.”
“If I suggested leaving her behind, would you be mad at me?”
“Are you kidding? We can’t leave her behind.”
“Hello? She kidnapped you?”
“Yes, but she’s not a bad person.”
In the middle of mayhem, Phae shot him a withering look, and it was just so…so her. Calm in a crisis, mildly annoyed that the world wasn’t running to her schedule. But in those eyes lurked a hardness that hadn’t been there before.
She’d changed.
So had he.
On the edge of Marc’s vision, a shadow moved past the now-perforated wall. Friend or foe? Before he could duck, or run, or yell, or even form a coherent thought, Phae raised her gun and fired. The shadow crumpled.
What the…?
“Did you…did you just kill a person?”
“I sure hope so.”
They’d both changed, but she’d changed more. When he stood and stared—because none of this felt real, did it?—she put a hand on her hip and glared right back.
“What did you want me to do? Invite him in to murder me and kidnap you? Was being abducted once already this week not enough?”
Phae scooped up Katie and draped her limp body over her shoulders, somehow managing to keep her gun hand free. Damn, Katie had to weigh as much as Phae did.
“Uh, do you want me to carry?—”
“Hush.”
Phae moved across the doorway, surveying a sliver of their exit route with each step, a tactic Booker had called “slicing the pie” when he’d been alive.
Not that Booker had used it to avoid mortal danger.
No, he used it to check the coast was clear after they smoked joints in the old barn.
Rex Roebuck would’ve tanned both their hides if he’d caught them with drugs.
“Cover us,” Phae instructed.
“Huh?”
She raised her gun hand and pointed to her ear, and only then did Marc notice the clear earpiece nestled inside it.
“Stay close behind me. Do not deviate. Do not ask stupid questions, and do not fucking fall. Got it?”
Was she crazy? Yup, she was definitely crazy.
But Marc had little choice other than to follow, his heart hammering, the noise deafening as they sprinted the short distance from the shed to the forest’s edge.
Marc was eighty percent sure Phae shot more than one person on the way.
He saw a body fall, but no way was he stopping to investigate, not when he risked a bullet between his eyes or worse, Phae’s ire for ignoring her instructions.
Marc stayed in her shadow until she dumped Katie in leafy detritus behind a sturdy tree trunk and took up a defensive position. At least, that’s what the former Navy SEAL who’d coached him for his last big movie role had called it.
“You okay?” Phae asked, still icy cool. As if this were all in a day’s work for her.
“Define ‘okay.’”
Marc’s breathing was ragged as he gasped for air, and he was six steps from a coronary. Was Katie still alive? He knelt to check, but his hands were shaking so much he couldn’t find a pulse, even if there was one.
“Are you physically uninjured?” Phae clarified.
“I think so.”
“You think? Can you make sure?”
Adrenaline pumped as Marc glanced at his body. Yes, there was blood, but it didn’t seem to be his. Where had it come from? Katie? A cut on her arm oozed scarlet, but that was a good sign, right? If she weren’t alive, she wouldn’t be bleeding.
Phae checked her magazine and then loaded a spare, still eerily calm. In a break in the gunfire, Marc heard groans drifting through the trees, a chorus of men singing their swansong.
“Can we leave now?” he asked. “They’re incapacitated, right?”
Injured, dying, waiting to meet their maker. Incapacitated.
“They’re regrouping.”
A chill ran through him.
“What? How do you know that?”
“We have a drone.”
“Then we have to get out of here right now. Before they come at us again.”
“There are too many of them, and they know the terrain.”
“So what do we do now? Tell me we have a plan?”
Phae didn’t answer, just kept scanning the wall of green. Once, Marc had seen the beauty in nature, but now every bush was a hiding place, every tree a shield. Katie stirred at his feet. Thank fuck for that. He crouched, stroking her hair as he helped her to sit up.
“Whaaa—”
“Keep her quiet,” Phae snapped.
“We’re all going to die.”
“Oh, please. Do you think I’m an amateur? I’ve been in far worse jams than this.”
“How should I know? You’ve been avoiding me for the past ten years.”
“Only because you decided to start a whole new life without consulting me first.”
“It was supposed to be a good thing. I wanted us to have financial stability.”
“We had financial stability. Didn’t I pay your rent? Your utilities?”
“I had college tuition.”
“Which I also offered to pay, but you said you’d handle it.”
“I thought I should contribute something.”
“Well, congratulations; you did. You contributed to our breakup.”
“You two…you two know each other?” Katie asked, coughing.
“That’s none of your damn business.”
“Seriously?” She tried to stand, but dizziness sent her sideways. Marc caught her before she hit the deck. “This…this is the place you choose for a fight? He’s right; we’re all gonna die.”
“Who brought Marc here, huh? It wasn’t me.” Phae pressed a hand to her ear. “This isn’t funny.” A pause. “It’s not . Go fuck a hand grenade.” Another pause. “ I do; want me to toss it over?”
Marc processed her words, stress slowing his thoughts and turning them to sludge. Wait, did Phae have a grenade? This wasn’t the woman he used to know. New Phae was insane. New Phae was also a little scary.
And new Phae was the only hope he had of getting out of Indonesia alive.