can make their choices, and all that’ll do is demonstrate that they never deserved my respect in the first place.”
He paused, eyeing me. “Of course, now I’m wondering if you include yourself in that statement. I thought you were ‘at my disposal.’ Changed your mind?”
The words were a trap, laid and set. A test. Waiting for a word that would justify finishing what he’d started with that knife.
A trap. A test. The thought jiggled loose a memory: the videos Aaron—my first boyfriend—and I had made, not far from these walls. When you had a public figure who always dodged and denied any issue, you couldn’t use your own words to take them down. You had to let them provide the evidence you needed. Give them an opening—a couple guys walking around a store or into an event hand-in-hand, for example—and watch them hang themselves with their own narrow-mindedness. Then post the record online for everyone to see.
“Not at all,” I made myself say. “I’m only concerned about maintaining what we have here. It’s been going well, so far. But you’re right; of course you can handle whatever comes up.”
At the same time, my mind was spinning. I couldn’t just shame Nathan, of course. If I was going to set him up for a fall, he had to fall all the way. So far he could never come back. Or the moment he recovered we’d be right back here.
Despite the surge of elation that had come with the inspiration, despite everything he’d just said, my stomach knotted. This was still a person’s death I was contemplating. I’d never wanted to be responsible for that.
I’d never wanted a lot of things. I’d sure as hell never wanted to see the world brought to its knees by a deadly virus. But here we were. I was ashamed of how much I’d looked the other way before, but that didn’t mean I could go right back to being the crusader I once was. It wasn’t a choice between bowing to Nathan’s standard and reverting to the ones I’d once held. It was in the middle ground I’d succeeded in this changed world. Trading morality against survival. I didn’t have to give up my morals completely. I could still draw lines I wouldn’t cross. I just had to make a few... adjustments. Find a balance between doing right and making sure I was still around to do anything at all. That was the ingenuity Michael had complimented me on.
I would be nothing but fair. I wouldn’t force anything on him. I’d simply set the pieces in place, and let Nathan dictate the terms of his own destruction.
What could I use—what mattered to him? The car? I didn’t have the mechanical skills to manipulate that. My gaze shifted to the delivery van, but it posed the same problem.
Nathan flipped the closed blade in his hand, brandishing it like a scepter, and I recalled my earlier thought. A kingdom out of kindling.
When I was fifteen, a store down the street from our house had gone up in flames. Burned to a skeleton before the firefighters could put it out. An older construction, boards and nails. “It might as well have been made of kindling,” Mom had said.
I raised my chin.
“I’ll put in the radio request now,” I told Nathan. “We’ll squeeze everything out of this city we can get.”
“That’s the spirit,” he said, but his smile was cold. Still, he let me walk away. Without a clue that he’d just set his own downfall into motion.
Nathan had the keys to the store’s padlocks, of course, but I’d never told him I’d found the keys to the front door when I was scoping the place out. The deadbolt slid over with a thunk, and in I went. In the faint lingering sunlight of the dusk, I lugged most of the jugs and tanks of fuel into the temporary holding place I’d picked across the street. Placed the few I was leaving and several empty jugs I’d grabbed at the station at the front of the stacks so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious how much was gone behind them. The guns and ammo I left where they were. If things
He paused, eyeing me. “Of course, now I’m wondering if you include yourself in that statement. I thought you were ‘at my disposal.’ Changed your mind?”
The words were a trap, laid and set. A test. Waiting for a word that would justify finishing what he’d started with that knife.
A trap. A test. The thought jiggled loose a memory: the videos Aaron—my first boyfriend—and I had made, not far from these walls. When you had a public figure who always dodged and denied any issue, you couldn’t use your own words to take them down. You had to let them provide the evidence you needed. Give them an opening—a couple guys walking around a store or into an event hand-in-hand, for example—and watch them hang themselves with their own narrow-mindedness. Then post the record online for everyone to see.
“Not at all,” I made myself say. “I’m only concerned about maintaining what we have here. It’s been going well, so far. But you’re right; of course you can handle whatever comes up.”
At the same time, my mind was spinning. I couldn’t just shame Nathan, of course. If I was going to set him up for a fall, he had to fall all the way. So far he could never come back. Or the moment he recovered we’d be right back here.
Despite the surge of elation that had come with the inspiration, despite everything he’d just said, my stomach knotted. This was still a person’s death I was contemplating. I’d never wanted to be responsible for that.
I’d never wanted a lot of things. I’d sure as hell never wanted to see the world brought to its knees by a deadly virus. But here we were. I was ashamed of how much I’d looked the other way before, but that didn’t mean I could go right back to being the crusader I once was. It wasn’t a choice between bowing to Nathan’s standard and reverting to the ones I’d once held. It was in the middle ground I’d succeeded in this changed world. Trading morality against survival. I didn’t have to give up my morals completely. I could still draw lines I wouldn’t cross. I just had to make a few... adjustments. Find a balance between doing right and making sure I was still around to do anything at all. That was the ingenuity Michael had complimented me on.
I would be nothing but fair. I wouldn’t force anything on him. I’d simply set the pieces in place, and let Nathan dictate the terms of his own destruction.
What could I use—what mattered to him? The car? I didn’t have the mechanical skills to manipulate that. My gaze shifted to the delivery van, but it posed the same problem.
Nathan flipped the closed blade in his hand, brandishing it like a scepter, and I recalled my earlier thought. A kingdom out of kindling.
When I was fifteen, a store down the street from our house had gone up in flames. Burned to a skeleton before the firefighters could put it out. An older construction, boards and nails. “It might as well have been made of kindling,” Mom had said.
I raised my chin.
“I’ll put in the radio request now,” I told Nathan. “We’ll squeeze everything out of this city we can get.”
“That’s the spirit,” he said, but his smile was cold. Still, he let me walk away. Without a clue that he’d just set his own downfall into motion.
Nathan had the keys to the store’s padlocks, of course, but I’d never told him I’d found the keys to the front door when I was scoping the place out. The deadbolt slid over with a thunk, and in I went. In the faint lingering sunlight of the dusk, I lugged most of the jugs and tanks of fuel into the temporary holding place I’d picked across the street. Placed the few I was leaving and several empty jugs I’d grabbed at the station at the front of the stacks so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious how much was gone behind them. The guns and ammo I left where they were. If things
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