Her father seemed not to have heard her.
“Twenty years I looked over my shoulder,” he said.
“You said that already,” said Zoe. “Answer my question.”
But it was as if her father were talking to himself now.
“I was so careful,” he said. “Because I knew Stan would never stop looking for me.”
Zoe’s phone buzzed again, jittery as a bomb. She was about to read Jonah’s texts when something caught her attention out on the edge of the lake: the ice had begun to change.
Color was seeping in. It was darker than the time with Stan—more red than orange—and it spread slowly, like a sickness.
Her father was too obsessed with his hole to notice.
“But you can’t hide forever, can you?” he said. “I mean, you found me here. And this place—this place isn’t just off the grid, it’s never even heard of the freakin’ grid.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “So Stan found me. Tracked me down in Montana. And he saw, in two seconds, how desperate I was. How broke I was. How ashamed I was of just years and years and years of failure. I mean, I was good in a cave, but—let’s face it—I was always pretty useless aboveground.”
Zoe looked back to the hill.
X and Ripper were sweeping down it now. Ripper’s dark hair was swept up in a bun. Her bare neck was glinting.
Zoe’s father still hadn’t seen them.
“Why did you freak out about the Wallaces?” she said again. “Answer my question.”
X and Ripper came to the bottom of the hill, and, as if they’d planned it, leaped simultaneously over the reeds. They were close now. The red tide beneath the ice was just a few steps ahead of them, like a carpet unfurling.
“Answer my question!” Zoe shouted.
But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even look at her. He had to finish his story—he had to purge himself of it—just as he had to finish the hole that was opening at his feet.
“Stan had a couple of ideas for making money,” her father said. “They weren’t dangerous, they weren’t going to hurt anybody, but—I’m not gonna lie—they weren’t exactly legal. The first one worked and then the second one worked. Having a little money was amazing. Thrilling. I can’t even describe it. I bought Jonah that ladybug bed, even though he was too old for the thing. Remember? Then, the third time around, somebody did get hurt. An innocent person, I mean. She didn’t get hurt bad, but still. Stan called it ‘acceptable collateral damage.’”
Her father was still crying. He twisted the auger so hard it was as if he were punishing himself.
Zoe was crying now, too.
“Answer my question,” she said.
“Stan eventually ran out of ideas for making money,” her father said. “He told me it was my turn to think of something.”
Zoe was shaking again. She couldn’t control it. It was taking over her body like the red stain was taking over the ice.
She finally understood what her father was about to say, and she didn’t know if she could stand to hear it.
“I didn’t have any ideas,” he said. “But Stan had gotten—he’d gotten rabid, almost. He demanded I come up with something.”
The hole was deepening, widening. Sweat trickled down her father’s neck.
“I told him there was an old couple who lived on the lake,” he said.
The ice was changing faster, the red crawling toward them like a tide. Zoe’s phone was buzzing. Her father still wouldn’t look at her.
“I told him I thought they might have some money,” he said.
Her father dropped his head to the top of the auger, sobbing. He was oblivious to everything but his own misery.
“I feared for those people, I swear to god,” he said. “I told Stan I wanted no part of hurting Bert and Betty. But he went crazy on me—went absolutely ape-shit. You don’t say no to somebody like that. He threatened to tell your mother everything. Threatened to hurt you kids. Threatened to tell the world who I really was. I didn’t care if the world knew—the world never gave a crap about me—but I couldn’t let your mom and you kids down again. I figured I’d rather die than do that.” He paused. “So I started looking for a way to die.”
Her father straightened up now, and resumed drilling.
The hole was nearly finished.
“Bert and Betty didn’t have any money,” said Zoe. “Stan killed them for nothing! He killed them because of you!”
Her father gave the auger one last twist, then fell backward, bewildered.
Red water surged up through the hole, like blood.
twenty-one
X strode toward them, Ripper at his side. He was so close to his bounty that the Trembling had all but taken over his body and begun breathing for him. He never felt more inhuman, more monstrous, than in these moments. He was ashamed that Zoe would see him like this a second time. She’d see him shake and scream and spit vile oaths, all the tenderness she’d awoken in him suffocated by rage.
Could she really choose him? Over her own father?
X looked to her for a sign that she was still committed to their plan, but she was turned away. He couldn’t make himself believe that he deserved her. The sensation of being loved was still too alien and new. He wanted to trust it, wanted to wrap himself in it, wanted to give himself up to it entirely. But this anger coursing through him made him feel polluted. Unworthy. Undeserving of even the name she’d given him. Love felt like a blanket someone was bound to yank away. The warmer he got now, the colder he would be later.