With the gun still trained on us, Natalie said, “Let him go.”
She never took her eyes off me.
“I don’t think so, sweetheart,” Zuker said.
“Let him go, and you can have me.”
I shouted, “No!”
Zuker drove the muzzle of the gun into the side of my neck. “Shut up.” Then to Natalie he said, “Why should I trust you?”
“If I cared more about myself than him,” she said, “I wouldn’t have revealed myself.”
Natalie kept her eyes on me. I wanted to protest. There was no way I would allow this exchange, but something in her look told me to keep still, at least for now. I thought about it. She was almost willing me to obey, to just let this play out the way she wanted.
Maybe, I thought, she wasn’t here alone. Maybe there were others. Maybe she had a plan.
“Okay then,” Zuker said, still hiding behind my body. “Put your gun down and I’ll let him go.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Oh?”
“We bring him out to his car. You put him in the driver’s seat. The moment he pulls away, I put the gun down.”
Zuker seemed to be thinking that over. “I put him in the car. You drop your weapon and he drives off.”
Natalie nodded again, still looking directly at me, almost willing me to obey. “Deal,” she said.
We started toward the front of the house. Natalie kept her distance, staying about thirty yards back from us. I wondered whether Cookie or Benedict or some other member of Fresh Start was nearby. Maybe they were waiting by the car, armed, ready to take Zuker out with a single bullet.
When we reached the car, Zuker took an angle so that the vehicle and my body were still shielding him. “Open the door,” he told me.
I hesitated.
He pressed the gun against my neck. “Open the door.”
I looked back at Natalie. She gave me a confident smile that reached into my chest and crushed it like an eggshell. As I slipped into the driver’s seat, I realized with mounting horror what she was doing.
There was no plan to save us both.
There were no other Fresh Start members who were going to intercede. There was no one hiding, waiting to pounce. Natalie had kept my attention, had offered up this hope in her eyes, so I wouldn’t fight back, so I wouldn’t make the sacrifice she was about to make for me.
To hell with that.
The car started up. Natalie began to lower her weapon. I had a second, no more, to make my move. It was suicide. I knew that. I knew that there was no way the two of us could survive this. That had been her thinking. One of us had to die. In the end, Jed and Benedict and Cookie had been right. I had messed up. I had stubbornly followed some love-conquers-all inner mantra, and now here we were, exactly where I was warned we would be, with Natalie facing death.
I wouldn’t let that happen.
Once I was in the car, Natalie stopped walking and turned her attention to Danny Zuker. Zuker, understanding that it was his turn, moved the gun away from my neck. He changed hands so that the weapon was too far away from me, sitting as I was, to make any kind of foolish move.
“Your turn,” Zuker said.
Natalie put her weapon on the ground.
Time was up. I had spent the seconds planning my exact move, the exact calculation, the element of surprise, all of it. Now I didn’t hesitate. Zuker would have time, I was fairly sure, to take a shot at me. That didn’t matter. He was going to have to defend himself. If he did that by shooting me, it would give Natalie the time to either run or, more likely, pick her own gun back off the ground and shoot.
No choice for me now. I wasn’t driving off, that was for sure.
Without warning, my left hand shot up high. I don’t think he expected that. Zuker had figured that if I did anything, I’d go for the gun. I grabbed his hair hard and pulled him toward me. As I predicted, Danny swung the gun in my direction.
With my left hand, I pulled his face closer to mine. He expected my right to go for the gun.
It didn’t.
Instead, using the right hand, I jammed the cyanide pill Jed had given me into Zuker’s mouth. His eyes widened in terror as he realized what I had done. That made him hesitate—the realization that there was cyanide in his mouth and that if he didn’t get it out, he was a dead man. He tried to spit it out but my hand was there. He bit down hard, making me scream out, but my hand stayed still. At the same time he fired the gun at my head.
I ducked away.
The bullet hit my shoulder. More agony.
Danny started to convulse, taking aim for another shot. But he never got that one off. Natalie’s first bullet caught him in the back of the head. She fired twice more, but there was no need.
I fell back, my hand on my throbbing shoulder, trying to stop the blood. I waited for her to come over to me.
But she didn’t. She stayed where she was.
I had never seen anything more beautiful and crushing than the expression on her face. A tear ran down her cheek. She just slowly shook her head.
“Natalie?”
“I have to go,” she said.
My eyes went wide. “No.” Now, finally, I could hear the sirens. I was losing blood and feeling faint. None of that mattered. “Let me go with you. Please.”
Natalie winced. Her tears came heavier now. “I can’t live if something happens to you. Do you get that? It’s why I ran the first time. I can live with you heartbroken. I can’t live with you dead.”
“I’m not alive without you.”
The sirens were growing closer.
“I have to go,” she said, through her tears.
“No . . .”
“I will always love you, Jake. Always.”
“Then be with me.” I could hear the plea in my voice.
“I can’t. You know that. Don’t follow me. Don’t look for me. Keep your promise this time.”
I shook my head. “Not a chance,” I said.
She turned and started back up the hill.
“Natalie!” I called out.
But the woman I loved just kept walking out of my life. Again.
Chapter 36
ONE YEAR LATER
A student in the back of the room raises his hand. “Professor Weiss?”
“Yes, Kennedy?” I say.
That’s my name now. Paul Weiss. I teach at a large university in New Mexico. I can’t say the name of it for security reasons. With all the dead bodies at the lake, the powers that be realized that I’d be best off in witness protection. So here I am, out in the west. The altitude still gets to me sometimes, but overall I like it out here. That surprises me. I always thought I’d be an East Coast guy, but life is about making adjustments, I guess.