Six Years

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.

I miss Lanford, of course. I miss my old life. Benedict and I still stay in touch, even though we shouldn’t. We use an e-mail drop box and never hit the send button. We created an e-mail account with AOL (old-school). We write each other messages and just leave them in the draft section. Periodically we go in and check it.

The big news in Benedict’s life is that the drug cartel that was after him is gone. They were wiped out in some kind of turf battle. In short, he is free at last to return to Marie-Anne, but when he last checked her Facebook status, it had changed from “in a relationship” to “married.” There were photographs of her wedding to Kevin all over both their Facebook pages.

I’m urging him to tell her the truth anyway. He says he won’t. He says he doesn’t want to mess up her life.

But life is messy, I told him.

Deep thought, right?