“Oh.” He sat back down, satisfied. “As long as he dies in the end.”
I snorted.
“So, was that another secret?” he asked.
“Yeah, sorry. I forgot about that one. Speaking of which, would you like to talk about the elephant in the room?”
“I guess we could since he’s unconscious.”
“Not that elephant.”
“Well, we already talked about how you sent me to prison, then tried to trap me in a hell dimension.”
“I did no such thing,” I said, then chilled when I realized he was teasing me. “No. The other elephant. I’m pretty much out of secrets.” I crinkled my nose in thought. “Yep. I think that’s the last of them. The big ones, anyway. Just don’t ask me about that time I was in college and there was this thing that I thought was a fake eyeball. You won’t eat for a month.”
“You trapped a god,” he said, unfazed by the eyeball incident. I tried to be glad one of us was.
“You’re in awe of me, right? It’s okay. It happens.”
“You’re fucking amazing.”
Pride swelled inside me.
“Or insane. The jury’s still out.”
Figured. “You’re not getting out of it. Whatever your two secrets are, they cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be worse than mine were.”
“Okay, but how were my secrets an elephant in the room? I was perfectly content, sitting here drinking a brewski—”
I burst out laughing. “Did you just say brewski?”
“—watching my wife molest an unconscious nineteen-year-old.”
“It’s like you were speaking a foreign language.”
“We’re going to have to rebuild the park,” he said, his desperation growing.
“I think we can afford it. And stop trying to change the subject.”
He grinned, and I almost fell for it, but for the barest hint of a moment, it faltered. “How about I tell you tomorrow?”
I rose onto an elbow. “Or you could tell me today.”
After a very long pause, he went back to studying his brewski. “I have another gift, if you’d call it that. I’ve always just accepted it. It’s come in handy a few times in my life.”
“Seriously?” That didn’t sound so bad.
“I can—I can tell when someone is slated for hell. Marked, if you will, like you can do.”
“Wow, that’s cool. I think,” I said, twirling a strand of Osh’s hair in my fingers.
“I can see it the minute I meet a person. If he or she is or is not going to hell. If they’ve committed the act that will put them there yet or not. Because I can see exactly when it happens, exactly when they get sentenced to hell, to the very second they make the decision that will get them sentenced there.”
I sat up and crossed my legs on the bed. “Are you saying I’m slated for hell?”
“Hon, you slate. You don’t get slated.”
“Oh, right. So that’s good for me, because daaaay-um. I could be in trouble.” After a moment of thought, I asked him, “Okay, so who is it? Who’s going to the fiery pits to suffer in agony for all eternity?”
He rubbed one hand over his eyes and, again, I got worried. When he lowered his hands and his eyes were shimmering with a suspicious wetness, I got very worried.
“Reyes?”
“Before I tell you, I just want you to know, we’re on it. We’re being proactive and—we’re trying to stop his murder.”
I slowed my heartbeat to better hear him. To stop the sudden rush of blood to my ears. To still my heavy breathing. “Reyes?”
“It’s your uncle Bob.”
I couldn’t move. I sat paralyzed on Garrett’s bed, trying to remember how to restart my heart. I’d probably need that sooner or later.
“When he arrested me for murder, I saw that he was slated to go to hell for an act he would commit about nine years after I met him. An act he committed two years ago, while I was still in prison.”
My mind reeled, trying to grasp his words, but they fell away before they reached me. I couldn’t quite wrap my fingers, or mind, around them.
“But when I met him, I remembered him. I remembered that I met another kid when I was going to high school. Grant Guerin. He hadn’t committed the act that would send him to hell, either, but I still saw it. He was going to kill a detective. He was going to kill your uncle Bob.”
Garrett walked in then and could sense the atmosphere instantly.
“I’m telling her,” he told him.
Garrett cursed under his breath. “I thought we were going to wait until we found the little shit.”
Reyes shrugged.
“Charles, look, we’ll find the guy. Guerin doesn’t stand a chance. We’ll stop him. We’ve been keeping a tail on your uncle, hoping there’s some early interaction with the guy that sets off a chain of events, but nothing so far.”
“Why can’t you just find him?”
“They got him on tape making a drug deal. When they went to arrest him, he bolted.”
“Why wasn’t he slated for hell then?”
“It’s not as easy to get into hell as one might think. It’s all about doing harm unto others. Up to the point when he kills your uncle, he’d never harmed anyone but himself.”
“Why can’t you find him?” Panic was setting in.
“We will,” Garrett said. “He went underground, but he’ll resurface.”
“When? How much time do we have? You said you know the exact second when it will happen.”
Reyes bit down. “We have less than a week.”
“Why Uncle Bob?” I crawled to my feet and started to pace. “Why does he kill him? What happens?”
“Your uncle finds him and is about to arrest him.”
“And?”
Garrett stepped closer. “Charley, you don’t want to know the details.”
“I do, actually. Reyes?”
“When your uncle finds him, the guy ambushes him. He hits him over the head.”
“And Uncle Bob dies from that?”
“Yes,” Garrett said quickly. Too quickly.
“What happens?”
“He doesn’t die, but he’s unconscious,” Reyes said. “So the guy panics and—” He closed his eyes and turned from me. “He finishes your uncle off with acid and bleach.”