Chapter 32- Jade
Dominic doesn't see it coming.
He has turned toward me. Phoenix is still on the floor. Dominic's gun is rising. In the part of my brain that has gone very quiet and very fast, I register the dead guard two feet to my left.
I move.
My legs buckle and I go down hard on one knee. My hands find the guard's weapon on the floor beside him — it came free when he fell — and bring it up with both hands. I’ve never held a gun before but I’ve seen plenty of movies.
Dominic spins around.
He sees the gun in my hands and he brings up his weapon fast.
I fire before I can think about it.
The shot goes wide and catches his shoulder. He staggers into the nearest pallet, one hand going to the wound, blood spreading dark through his jacket. We both go still in the ringing aftermath.
Then he laughs.
Low and genuine, like I've done something that amuses him. When he raises his face his pale eyes are almost bright.
"You missed," he says.
"I wasn't aiming for your heart."
The laugh dies. He straightens off the pallet and raises his weapon again, slower now, compensating for the shoulder. I watch him do it and I don't look away and I don't wait.
I fire again.
Center mass. Dominic looks down at his chest with an expression I will never forget, not pain, not anger, just surprise. Like a man who never once considered that things might not go his way.
"You—" he starts.
His knees go. Then the rest of him follows, slowly, the way tall things fall, and he hits the floor and stays there.
I stand over him with the gun still raised and my hands shaking so hard I can feel it in my shoulders and my face.
The warehouse is very quiet around us. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead.
The chain taps against itself in its patient rhythm, indifferent to everything that has just happened beneath it.
Dominic is still breathing. Shallow and wet, a sound that has no business coming from a human chest, and his are open and fixed on the ceiling above him. Blood pools beneath him on the concrete, spreading slowly outward, dark and deliberate.
I lower myself until I'm crouching over him, close enough to see the scar above his left eyebrow and the broken capillaries in his eyes. He turns his head and looks at me. The brightness that was there a moment ago is already going out.
"Your brother tried to rape me," I say. My voice comes out cold in a way I didn't know I was capable of. "And you used me as bait to try to kill the man I love."
His lips move. No sound comes out.
"You should have let it go."
His eyes go glassy. The wet sound of his breathing catches once, twice, and then stops, and the warehouse holds that silence for a long while.
I drop the gun. It makes a loud clinking sound. My whole body is shaking, a deep uncontrollable tremor that starts somewhere in my core and works outward. My legs give out and I sit down hard on the floor beside the gun and look at my hands, at the blood on them that isn't mine.
Phoenix comes closer.
He comes down to the floor beside me and pulls me into him. His arms go around me tightly and he kisses my head. He's bleeding, his lip split open from where Dominic hit him, and I can smell blood and sweat and the cold outdoor air still clinging to his jacket from the parking lot two blocks away.
"Jade." His voice is low and rough. "Look at me."
I can't. Dominic's body is three feet away and my eyes keep going there.
"I killed him."
"You saved us."
"I killed him." The words come out of me strange and flat, like they belong to someone else's mouth. "Phoenix, I did that."
He pulls back just far enough to cup my face in both hands, his thumbs against my cheekbones, tilting my head up until I have no choice but to look at him. His eyes are very dark and very steady and there is something in them that has been there since the moment he walked through that door.
"You did what you had to do," he says. "He had a gun pointed at my head. He was going to kill us both."
"I'm a killer now."
"You're a survivor." His breath is warm against my face. "You're my survivor."
Something in my chest cracks open.
The sob comes up before I can stop it. I am so tired of holding things in that I simply let it come, all of it, the fear and the pain. Every last thing, comes out of me in the ugly way that grief does when it has been compressed for too long.
Phoenix holds me through all of it. He doesn't try to stop it or hurry it or tell me it's going to be okay.
He just wraps himself around me and lets me fall apart completely.
His hand is in my hair, his mouth is against my temple, his arms form a circle around me to prevent everything from getting through.
When the worst of it passes I become aware of the warehouse again.
I lift my head and look at Phoenix.
Something is different. I can feel it before I can name it, in the way he's looking at me.
We have been through things together before, things that changed the shape of us, but this is something else.
This is the thing on the other side of all of it, the place you arrive at when you have both gone as far as you can possibly go and come out the other side still holding on.
Both of us have blood on our hands now. The understanding of that moves through me quietly, settling into something that doesn't feel like a burden.
It feels like solid ground.
"We need to go," Phoenix says quietly. "Before someone comes."
He stands and reaches down for me and I take his hand and let him pull me up. My legs hold. My ribs ache with every breath and my face is swollen and my wrists are raw. I am still here and so is he and that is enough.
Phoenix crouches over Dominic's body and searches his jacket pockets. When he finds the phone he holds it up briefly, then pockets it and pulls out his own to call his father.
"Dominic is dead,” he says. “I have his phone. I need you to run everything on it, every server, every account, every backup location for the recording. All of it. Tonight." A pause. "I don't care what it takes. Find them all."
He hangs up and looks at me. Then he tucks the phone into his own jacket and holds out his hand.
I take it.
We walk toward the door together, past the guard Phoenix shot and the overturned chair and the rope. The night air hits me when we step outside, and I pull in a long breath of it and let it out slowly.
I don't look back.