“Yeah, your promises aren’t holding any weight at the moment.” My head throbbed along with my heart, and nausea crept up from my stomach to the back of my throat. “What kind of stuff did I say?”
“Nothing important,” she said quietly, her eyes refusing to meet with mine.
“Sure.” I flavored the word with enough sarcasm to drown a horse. “That’s why he kept coming back for more. That’s why you’re shacked up with him now.”
I could tell by the way her eyes widened that she knew exactly what I meant. I nodded, knowing that my deductive skills were still in full effect – just like they always were. My chest tightened, and the nasty taste in the back of my mouth worsened. My temples throbbed, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything around me.
“Evan, please…” Her voice trailed off.
My feet stumbled slightly; I regained my balance, and faced her fully.
“Please what?” I yelled. My arm rose up, and the Beretta in my hand found its barrel pointed in her direction again. “What exactly do you want? More information?”
“No! I don’t want anything, please – just let me go!”
“Let me go! Please, just let me go!”
“Not until you tell us what we want to know!”
“There weren’t any more units! Ours was the only one!”
“We found two others near you, so I know you lie.”
A blow to my head rattles in my skull.
“I wasn’t privy to…to any…information…”
“You’re an officer!”
I grunt as a sack full of hard, lumpy objects makes contact with my stomach again. It moves around to my kidneys with another blow, and then the lower half of my chest, knocking the wind from me and causing me to vomit onto the sand…
“Let you go,” I said, my voice dropping to a near whisper. “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do.”
The noise in the small room was deafening.
I dropped to my knees, and the cold cement floor sent a shockwave through my body as she slumped to the floor against the wall. I looked to her face and the neat hole in the center of her forehead, willing the impossible.
“Fuck…no…”
My mouth and throat felt as though they were filled with sand, and I coughed to try to rid myself of it. I could feel it – taste it – but when I touched my fingers to my tongue, there was nothing there. I couldn’t swallow, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe, either.
“What the fuck did you do?”
I coughed again, and the coughing turned into choking. Choking sobs that were completely uncontrollable filled the air as my Beretta dropped to the floor with a clang. I scrambled for it quickly, cradling it against my body.
“Why did you do it?” I screamed at the slumped figure in front of me. “Why did you listen to him? Why?”
There was no answer.
There would never be an answer.
Like so many other questions, I’d never know the real answer.
My fingers reached out and touched hers, as if somehow that would make any difference. It didn’t, and though they were still warm, I knew they would be cold soon enough.
“I told you it was going to end this way,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”
Too many whys.