Page 61 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
But somewhere between the stockroom and the concourse, and after his lips met mine, something fundamental shifted. Gone is the woman shaking in the storage room. In her place is a woman with a carbon composite hockey stick and a plan.
This woman is furious.
Furious at the men who broke into a locked mall to hurt someone and thought they could add me to the list. Deal with the rest. I have spent five years putting those words in the mouths of villains. Not once did I consider what it feels like to be the rest. To be the thing that gets dealt with.
I don’t like the way it feels—but if they think the rest is going to go quietly, they have fundamentally miscalculated.
Holy furious protagonist, Batman.
We move through the concourse with flashlights off, navigating by the pulse of emergency lights getting weaker by the hour, the generator bleeding out somewhere in the building’s guts. The mall in near-darkness is a different creature. The mannequins in Nordic Threads are frozen behind metal shutters, their faceless heads tilted at angles that were chic twelve hours ago but are now deeply unsettling. Every corridor branches into shadow, and every shadow has depth.
Beckett moves ahead—two steps, maybe three. Confident. Always glancing back to see if I’m behind him. Of course I am.
Stop watching him move. This is a thriller, not a romance.
Feels a little like a romance though, doesn’t it? Just asking for a friend.
We pass Blake’s Café. Untouched since we left it. We keep walking, nearing the fountain where this all started, and soon after, the dead-end hall leading to the electronics store comes into view.
Then, from the east corridor, a crash.
We freeze. Beckett’s hand comes up. Stop. The hockey stick is in my hands, and my hands are steady. I am the act-three protagonist, and the act-three protagonist does not panic, she acts. She is the night. She is the danger. She is…
Okay, a little scared. Because the crash sounded like metal on glass. Almost like…it might be accidental. Too sloppy. These guys feel professional, methodical.
“That wasn’t them,” I say on a whisp of breath.
Beckett’s jaw pulses. “Let’s find out.”
We move toward the sound. Through the dead zone. Twelve steps of absolute blackness. Beckett’s hand finds my elbow, guiding me through, warm and certain and gone the moment we emerge into the wan light.
Sutton Sweets comes into sight. The gate is half down. And from inside, the barely audible sound of…chewing?
Someone is in there. Eating.
And then I spot him. Behind the display counter, where rows of truffles and chocolates sit tucked in for the night, the outline of a shape. And for one irrational, sleep-deprived, adrenaline-soaked second, my brain says Velociraptor. No, don’t be crazy!—human. Male. Large. Hunched on the floor with a half-eaten caramel apple and the expression of a man who has hit his literal rock bottom.
Cole Thompson.
His eyes go animal wide. The caramel apple freezes halfway to his mouth, which hangs open a moment before his gaze finds Beckett.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he says. He scrambles to his feet, legitimate fear surging in his eyes as Beckett rounds the counter. “I locked you in the—you were supposed to stay?—”
“In the closet you shoved me into? Nope, I crawled through the ceiling. Surprise.”
Cole’s hands fly up in defense, his feet working backward, away from Beckett. “I was trying to protect you?—”
“By trapping me in here with your loan sharks?”
Cole’s face goes gray. “They’re here?”
“Yeah, all three of them.” Beckett has stopped in front of Cole, and I’m remembering his promise. Was it a promise? I can’t remember. “Three hundred thousand dollars, Cole?”
“What do you want me to say, Beckett?” His voice breaks. “I’m in over my head. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I’ve got a few ideas of what you could have done.” Beckett cocks his head, his words coming out hard. “What you could have done is not frame me. You could have reached out—to me, to anyone on the team, to Coach—instead of gambling away three hundred thousand dollars. You could have accepted my help today instead of, say, locking me in a closet?—”
“I know!” Cole is standing now. Even in the dark, I can see what the past six months have done to him. He looks gaunt. Hollowed. “I know I messed up. I know I screwed up your life. I know.”
