Chapter 3
Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill to Die On
FIONA
“You understand what you have to do?” my dad asks for the tenth time, his blue eyes pinning me in place.
I sigh and do my best to avoid fidgeting under his gaze.
“Yes. We’ve been over it.” I look at my watch.
It’s Saturday night, and we’re sitting inside a storage unit.
We’ve been here for the past couple of hours, going over the plan for tonight.
The roll-down door is closed, the unit is lit by a single bare bulb, and the air is stifling.
Sweat has been dripping down the small of my back for at least the past hour, and I want to get out of here.
The space is beginning to feel claustrophobic.
The storage unit isn’t in my dad’s name. Apparently, it ‘belongs to a neighbor.’ I’m not sure how or why my dad has a key, and when I asked, he changed the subject. But this is where he’s been building me a bomb over the past several days.
“Go over it again, Fiona,” he grumbles.
I know he’s worried, so I do. I describe positioning the charges around the column and connecting the detonating cord to the blasting caps.
I reiterate that I understand how far away I need to be standing and that, regardless of how far it is, I need something covering me, just in case.
I explain how I’m getting to and from the mountain.
He simply nods throughout. When I finish this time, he’s apparently satisfied that I’m not going to blow myself up, since he begins packing up the bomb.
“Alright. So I’ll drop you back at home, and then I’ll go out.”
“Yup.”
“Don’t screw this up, Fiona,” he says gruffly.
“Dad, I won’t. This is a whole lot easier than spending a Saturday night in the ICU. There won’t even be any blood.”
“I hope not. Let’s go.” He grabs the package off the makeshift workbench as I lift the door to the storage unit. Metal clatters against metal as the door rolls up, then back down. My dad slaps the lock on it, and we head for his station wagon.
“Wait… Carson? Is that you? What the hell are you doing here?” Tre asks. His face is in shadow, but somehow I can make out his cloudy grey eyes and the crowbar he’s holding over his right shoulder.
Damn. I spend half a second trying to come up with a convincing lie.
Something that will send him on his merry way.
But there’s nothing. Besides, he’s clearly here for exactly the same reason I am.
Only he brought a crowbar to a bomb fight.
One part of my brain is muttering, ‘Dumbass,’ at the same time another part is interjecting to say, ‘Not everyone has a dad who can build them a bomb.’ Tre does, though.
Rich is just as capable of whipping something up as my dad, not that he ever would.
He’s even more of an asshole than Tre is.
“I’m just out for a walk. Thought I’d enjoy the construction site in the middle of the night. Take it all in,” I say, rolling my eyes. “What does it look like I’m doing, Dickie?”
He steps to the side without replying, looking behind me. My body tenses—stupid fight-or-flight response—as he looks back and forth between me and the support column, which now has a bomb affixed to it. Several seconds pass before realization dawns in his eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing with a bomb?” Tre is looking at me like he’s never seen me before. And maybe he hasn’t.
I shrug and turn back to the support column, kneeling to check my work. “You should probably—”
A hand clamps down on my shoulder. Without thinking, I twist as I stand, putting myself inside of his reach, then I place both hands on his chest and shove. “Don’t touch me, Dickie!” I shout as he steps back.
His heel catches on a rock and turns the step into a stumble as he falls backward, landing on one side with his elbow beneath him.
The mountain’s slope changes the fall into a tumble in a series of hard grunts and flat thuds, accompanied by the hiss of pebbles and dirt shaken loose from the impact.
Next thing I know, Tre is about twenty-five feet downslope—unmoving—and I’m not sure if he’s breathing.
Shit, shit, shit!
I run toward him, my feet slipping, sending streams of dirt flowing ahead of me.
Please let him be alive. Please let him be alive, I think over and over in the few seconds it takes to reach him.
I slide to a stop next to him and drop to my knees.
There’s an owl hooting in the distance as I reach for his wrist to find a pulse.
If this asshole fell down a hill and died… I don’t finish the thought.
Tre groans and mumbles something unintelligible just as I feel the steady beat of his pulse thrumming beneath my fingertips. He mumbles something again.
“What?” I ask, worry making my voice sharp.
“Great horned.”
“Great what? Tre, do you know where you are?”
“The owl. It’s a great horned owl. Don’t you hear it?”
I drop his wrist. “Are you okay?” He’d better be, because I didn’t bring a phone with me tonight, and I can’t carry him off this mountain alone.
I’d have to leave to get help, and I don’t want to have to explain to Ewan or my dad that Tre stumbled over me setting up a bomb, and then I pushed him down the mountain.
Well. Really, he tripped and fell. This is all his fault.
“You called me Tre,” he says as his eyes open and immediately find mine.
“Yeah. Well. It won’t happen again.” I turn to head to the support column, where the bomb is waiting, seeming to absorb the darkness.
“Hey, a little help?” Tre demands before I get more than a step away. His hand is extended toward me when I look back.
I huff. I’m tempted to leave him lying on his back, staring at the sky.
But I don’t. I return to his side, reaching down, locking my hand around his in an arm-wrestling grip.
His skin is warm against mine as I pull him to his feet.
He rises with a groan, and suddenly he’s way too close.
I try to step away, to put some distance between us, but his hand is still locked around mine, and he doesn’t let me.
“Let. Go. Dickie,” I grate out.
“Ah, yes. There’s the Fiona Carson I know and love so well,” he murmurs, his grey eyes crinkling at the corners, looking almost silver in the darkness. He releases my hand without warning, and now I’m the one stumbling backward, scrambling to keep my footing.
“God. You’re such an asshole!” I wipe my hand on my jeans before stalking up the hill once I’ve managed to get my feet under me. I hear his footsteps behind me. “Touch me again and I’ll break your fucking wrist,” I snap without looking.
“I wasn’t going to… Sorry,” he says, sounding embarrassed. He follows me in silence but doesn’t try to touch me. “I thought you were pro-development,” Tre comments as we near the support column.
“Yeah. Because, unlike you, I’m not a dumbass. Speaking of, you should probably leave. Unless you want to be implicated in this. I’ll give you an hour to get somewhere else if you want.”
“Why would I do that?” he asks, making no move to leave.
“Because everyone is going to think you did this.” I restrain myself to only implying the ‘duh’ at the end of the sentence.
“I don’t know how to build a bomb.”
“Yeah. Me neither.”
“Clearly.”
“If you don’t go, people will assume this was you,” I warn again, watching him.
He shrugs, his blond hair glinting in the starlight as the wind breezes over it. If he weren’t such a prick, he’d almost be attractive.
“Whatever,” I grouse. The bomb is positioned exactly how my dad told me it needed to be, with the six linear cutting charges spaced equidistant around the column.
I’ve duct-taped the bars that house the charges to the column several inches above the ground, and there are spacers between the bars and the column to allow enough distance for the jets to form and cut through the steel upon detonation.
According to my dad—and he would know, having spent years doing this—if I set it up correctly, the damage should be limited almost exclusively to the target. It won’t even crater the ground.
I connect the detonating cord to the blasting caps, and then begin unwinding it as I walk backward. All that’s left now is to clear the blast zone and light the cord.
“How’d you learn to do this?” Tre asks, shadowing my footsteps.
“MacGyver.”
“No. Seriously.”
“Seriously. You should really leave,” I try for the third time.
“No. I think I’ll stay and watch the fireworks.”
I sigh. “It’s not that kind of bomb, Dickie.”
Tre raises his eyebrows and gestures toward the column as if to suggest I show him what type of bomb it is.
I ignore him and unwind the cord to nearly its full length before taking shelter behind one of the bulldozers sitting on the construction site, with Tre still glued to my side. We’re about five hundred feet from the support column when I pull a lighter from my pocket.
“A lighter? I thought that was only in Looney Tunes,” Tre scoffs.
I don’t bother providing an explanation.
My dad and I talked it over at length. We thought it’d make the most sense to have the detonation be as manual as possible.
Since he’s one of a small number of people in town who could build a bomb like this, we figured it was best to leave no doubt that he couldn’t have been the one to set it off.
“Cover your ears,” I say as I raise the lighter.
The flame races up the cord, toward the bomb, in a way that does look surprisingly like the cartoons.
A moment later, a sharp, concussive blast rips through the night, echoing off the mountain.
Even in town, they’re sure to have heard something.
It might take them until morning to figure out what, but I don’t want to wait around to find out.
A few seconds later, the breeze brings acrid smoke wafting toward us, and I drop my hands from my ears at the same time Tre does.
I step out from behind the bulldozer to find the support column lying on its side, a jagged line cut through it.
“Cool,” I murmur as Tre looks at me in disbelief. “Well. See you around, I guess,” I say, before sauntering off toward one of the old hiking trails that travel across the mountain.
“Where are you going?” Tre calls from behind me.
“Home.”
“The road is that way!”
I stop and slowly turn back to him. “Did you seriously drive here? In your own car? God. You really are a dumbass, Dickie. Good luck with that.”
“Yeah? How’d you get here?”
“Magic,” I say, resuming my walk to the tree line.
As it turns out, ‘magic’ is actually an old mountain bike that, prior to tonight, has sat unused in my dad’s garage for fifteen years.
Fortunately, going home is a lot easier than coming out here was.
For one, the ride is mostly downhill. For another, I’m no longer carrying enough explosives to take down a support column.
But twenty miles on a bike—through mountain trails at night—is nothing to scoff at.
Luckily, the headlamp I snagged from my dad’s workbench provides enough light to stop me from riding straight into a tree.
It’s slow going, though, and by the time I make it back to the house, I’m huffing and puffing and sheened in sweat.
I put the bike back in the garage before making my way into the house via the back door.
My truck remains parked in the driveway, but my dad’s car is gone.
He must still be in town somewhere, making himself seen.
It’s a bit after two in the morning though, so I have no idea where he is, or if he’s planning on coming home tonight.
Not that it’s any of my business. My dad was nice enough to let me move into my old room when I came back to town, and I’m not in any great hurry to find a place of my own.
So, as much as possible, I do my best to suppress my innate nosiness.
Ewan says minding other people’s business is why I became a doctor, and as much as I’d like to tell him he’s wrong, I’m not sure I can.
It’s two-fifty by the time I step out of the shower, wet hair dripping down my back, and the house is still empty. I briefly wonder if my dad is dating again, since it doesn’t seem like he’s going to make it home tonight. I’ll have to ask Ewan and see what he knows.
I return to worrying about whether Tre will keep his mouth shut as I climb into my cold sheets and switch off the bedside lamp.
He’s never struck me as the brightest crayon in the box, and I wonder how badly I fucked up by letting him catch me at the construction site tonight.
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure I know the answer, and the answer is pretty damn badly.
I promised my dad I’d be able to get away with this, and I’m less and less certain I’ll be able to keep that promise with each passing minute.
Short of offing Tre—and as much as I hate him, he hasn’t done anything to deserve that—I just have to cross my fingers and hope.
Falling asleep to that thought isn’t pleasant.