Chapter 12
Dustin drove to Boulder with his phone propped against the steering wheel, searching “Sarah Meadows Colorado” while trying not to die in a car crash.
The irony wasn't lost on him.
Another thing that was rapidly becoming clear to him was how impossible the task he’d set himself was.
None of this was helpful.
Including her middle name didn't help any, either.
He wasn't getting anywhere. He didn't know what Sarah looked like, what she'd be doing at Riverside Park, or how the universe planned to kill her.
It could be a maintenance truck or a falling branch. Hell, it could be an allergic reaction to a bee sting. For all Dustin knew, the poor girl was going to choke on a hot dog.
And all Dustin could do was to wander around the park like a creep, staring at every woman who looked vaguely twenty-three, waiting for one of them to start dying.
Great plan. Excellent plan. No flaws whatsoever.
The drive took three hours. Dustin stopped once for gas and an energy drink that tasted like gummy bears. The can had Xtreme Doug on it, frozen mid-thumbs-up, and Dustin turned it around so he didn't have to look at it.
He thought about checking his social media accounts.
He didn't.
Dustin pulled into the Riverside Park parking lot just after 2 PM.
He was almost two hours early, which gave him plenty of time to scout the area, identify potential hazards and possibly figure out which of the dozens of women in this park was scheduled to die at 3:47.
Unfortunately, the park was bigger than he'd expected.
Walking paths wound through clusters of trees and open meadows.
A playground sat near the entrance, crawling with kids.
Joggers passed in both directions. Near the east side, a maintenance crew was doing something with trucks and equipment—leaf blowers and a wood chipper.
That wasn’t ominous at all.
Dustin tore his gaze away from the workers and started walking.
By 2:30, he'd done two full loops of the park. He'd counted fourteen women who looked vaguely twenty-three. Sadly none of them had worn a neon sign saying “KILL ME, I’M SARAH!”
By 3:00, he'd narrowed it down to seven possibilities based on nothing but gut instinct and the fact that they seemed to be staying in the park rather than passing through.
By 3:15, he was losing his mind.
Every woman was a potential Sarah. Every tree looked like it was about to drop a branch on someone.
Every person walking near the maintenance area sent his heart rate spiking.
He couldn't protect someone if he didn't know who she was, and he couldn't figure out who she was by staring at strangers like a serial killer.
3:30.
Seventeen minutes.
Dustin stood near the maintenance area, watching a woman jog past with a ponytail and earbuds. Was that her? She looked about the right age. But so did the woman walking a golden retriever. So did the woman reading on a blanket in the grass thirty feet away.
This was impossible. This was never going to work. He'd driven three hours and he was going to stand here and watch someone die because he couldn't figure out which someone—
3:42.
Five minutes.
Dustin's chest was tight. He was scanning faces, paths, the maintenance trucks with their engines idling, the workers moving equipment. He was about to yell out Sarah’s name like a lunatic when—
Greg appeared.
One second there was just a path winding past the maintenance area, a few pedestrians walking by. The next second, Greg was standing at the edge of the path, clipboard in hand, watching a woman approach from the opposite direction.
She was young. Twenty-three, maybe. Dark hair pulled back in a messy bun.
Earbuds in, phone in hand, attention fixed on the screen in front of her.
Walking at a steady pace directly toward the maintenance area, completely oblivious to the truck that was starting to reverse across the path ahead of her.
Greg looked up.
Their eyes met across the park.
Greg's face went through several expressions in rapid succession: surprise, dismay, the realization that he had just made a terrible mistake.
Gotcha, Dustin thought.
He ran toward Sarah.
Greg saw Dustin coming.
Oh no.
Oh no oh no oh no.
He was going to ruin everything.
Greg knew what was supposed to happen. Sarah was walking steadily forward, eyes on her phone, music loud enough in her earbuds that she couldn't hear the truck's warning beeps. The driver was watching his side mirror, focused on not hitting equipment. Neither of them could see the collision coming.
In approximately thirty seconds, Sarah would walk directly into the truck's path. The driver wouldn't see her until it was too late.
Except Dustin was sprinting across the park like a man possessed.
He was going to mess with the natural order of things again.
Greg couldn’t let him.
He moved to intercept.
Dustin was fast. Reckless. Driven, so fucking driven, by something Greg didn't fully understand—spite or grief or some desperate need to prove that death could be beaten.
Greg stepped into his path just as the truck's reverse lights flickered on, just as Sarah walked closer to the point of no return.
“Stop!” Greg yelled at Dustin.
Dustin didn't stop.
He slammed into Greg at full speed. Greg's clipboard flew from his hand. The impact should have knocked them both down, but Dustin's momentum was too strong, too wild. He drove forward through the collision, carrying Greg with him, and they hit Sarah together.
All three of them went down in a tangle of limbs.
Sarah screamed. The truck roared past, close enough that Greg felt the heat of its engine, the rush of displaced air. Close enough that if any of them had still been standing—
Greg shuddered.
Sarah continued to scream.
This was fair. From her perspective, a strange man had just launched himself at her from across the park and tackled her to the ground.
Dustin was trying to get up, but Greg had grabbed his arm, his jacket, anything to hold him back, and he was still holding on as if he didn’t understand that it was over.
Meanwhile Sarah was scrambling away from them both with wild eyes.
“What the FUCK!” She stared at Dustin. “What is WRONG with you?”
Dustin finally wrenched his arm free from Greg's grip and pushed himself to his knees. He was breathing hard, but at the same time, he could feel the smile taking over his face.
He’d done it.
He’d won.
“The truck,” he gasped. “It was going to hit you.”
“What?”
“The truck.” He pointed. The maintenance truck had stopped twenty feet away, the driver climbing out with a confused expression. “It was backing up and you were walking right into it.”
Sarah looked at the truck, and then she looked at the path she'd been walking on. Her face cycled through confusion, fear, and something approaching horrified understanding.
“I didn't...” She touched her earbuds, still dangling around her neck. “I didn't hear it.”
“I know. That's why I—”
“But you were fighting someone.” She was staring at him with wide eyes. “I saw you. You were grabbing at something, you were—” She gestured at the empty air where Greg was still crouched, invisible to her, breathing hard.
Dustin glanced at Greg. Greg stared back, disheveled and defeated.
“Muscle spasm,” Dustin said. “I get those sometimes.” He rolled his shoulders. “Anyway, you're welcome.” He stood, brushing grass off his jeans. “Maybe turn your music down next time.”
He turned and walked away before she could ask any more questions.
Greg followed.
They ended up near the edge of the park, away from the paths, under a tree that provided the illusion of privacy. Dustin turned to face Greg, chest still heaving. “You tried to stop me.”
Greg had retrieved his clipboard. He held it against his chest, the only solid thing in a world that had just shifted beneath his feet. Of course Dustin didn’t understand. If he understood, he wouldn’t have acted so recklessly.
Greg glared at the mortal. “I was doing my job. I was trying to do my job until you interfered.”
“You would have let her die.” Dustin's voice was flat. “You would have held me down and let that truck kill a twenty-three-year-old girl.”
“It was her time. The file said so!”
“Fuck your file.”
Greg tried not to flinch but did anyway.
“You don't understand.” Exasperation crept into his voice. “Death isn't cruelty. It's not random. It's sacred. It's what gives life meaning. Without endings, nothing would matter. Every moment is precious because it's finite.”
“Are you seriously giving me a TED talk right now?”
“I'm trying to explain.”
“Explain what?” Dustin stepped closer. Greg stepped back—and his back hit the tree. “Are you going to repeat that bullshit about how death is beautiful and meaningful and part of the natural order? How you don't cause death, you just guide people through it?”
“That's—yes. That's exactly—”
“So what was cutting my parachute lines?”
Greg's mouth opened. Nothing came out. He was acutely aware of the bark pressing into his shoulder blades. Of how close Dustin was standing.
For a moment, he forgot how words worked.
“What was tackling me just now?” Dustin pressed. “You weren't guiding anyone. You were trying to make sure that truck finished the job. That's not witnessing death. That's causing it.”
Was that…? What was that flash of metal? Was Dustin’s tongue pierced?
Greg shook his head to shake himself out of his stupor.
Dustin misunderstood the gesture. “Don’t just shake your head. Fucking talk to me.”
“I was following orders.”
“Oh, that again.” Dustin laughed, harsh and humorless. “That's a great defense. Very original. Never been used by terrible people throughout history.”
“Morrith said—”
“I don't give a shit what Morrith said.” Dustin’s hand hit the bark above Greg’s head. “You keep telling me the file said it was her time. You know what else the file said? That it was my time. Three days ago. And yet here I am.”
Greg had no answer for that.
He had no thought in his head at all.
Except that yes, Dustin’s tongue was definitely pierced. And he had gold flecks in his eyes.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I—” Greg caught himself. “Of course I’m listening. But I don’t know what’s disrupting the natural order of things.”
“The natural order.” Dustin scoffed. “That girl was going to die because some guy in a truck wasn't paying attention. That's it. That's your sacred natural order. A distracted driver and a girl with her music too loud. Twenty-three years of life, gone, because of that.”
“You can't reduce the natural order to—”
“I'm not reducing anything. I'm telling you what I saw.” Something flickered across Dustin’s face. An emotion Greg couldn’t place. He buried it fast. “You want to tell me death is meaningful? That it's beautiful? That it's some kind of gift?”
Greg thought about his training. The speeches he'd memorized. The sacred duty of guiding souls through transition, of honoring the profound weight of mortality. He thought about how deeply he believed in the meaning of endings, the poetry of finite existence.
He opened his mouth to explain all of it.
“You don't know anything,” Dustin said.
He turned and walked away.
Greg stood under the tree for a long time, clipboard clutched to his chest, feeling oddly bereft.
Dustin made it to his truck before his hands started shaking.
He sat in the driver's seat, door still open, and pressed his palms against the steering wheel until the trembling stopped. It took longer than he wanted to admit.
Sarah Meadows was alive. That was something. That was everything, actually.
He’d done something that meant something.
He’d saved someone.
And he’d do it again.
Dustin pulled out his phone and looked at the photos he'd taken of the clipboard. The list of names. The scheduled deaths.
Marco Adelmo Reyes-Ybarra. Sixty-seven. St. Anthony's Hospital, Denver. Tomorrow, 11:23 AM.
Jessica Maria Torres. Nineteen. Highway I-25, mile marker 114. Thursday, 8:15 PM.
These two were supposed to die, according to some cosmic bureaucracy that couldn't even get one BASE jumper killed properly.
Dustin started his truck.
Greg walked back to the maintenance area.
He didn't know why. The collection had failed. There was nothing left for him here except the echo of everything Dustin had said and the uncomfortable weight of questions he couldn't answer.
Sarah Meadows was still in the park. She'd moved to a bench near the playground, phone pressed to her ear. She was talking to someone—a friend, maybe, or her mom. She was probably telling them about the crazy guy who'd tackled her. Her hands were shaking slightly.
But she was still alive. Breathing and talking and existing in a world that had tried to end her twenty minutes ago.
Out of nowhere, Greg felt a message arrive on his clipboard.
He looked down.
Collection status: Sarah Meadows?
Greg stared at the words.
Grigoreth. Report.
He should respond. He should explain what happened, file the appropriate documentation, and submit to whatever consequences awaited.
Instead he put the clipboard under his arm and didn't write back.
Across the park, Sarah Meadows laughed at something the person on the phone said. The sound carried on the wind—bright and startled and joyful.
Greg turned and left the park.