Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy - Blake Crouch [200]
"What are you talking about?"
"I’m talking about the knife, Violet. I’m talking about Matthew. About you killing him while he sleeps."
"No."
"No?"
"I can’t, Luther."
"Matthew reminds me of a dear, departed friend."
"Luther, please."
"My mentor. A man named Orson, who, very much like Matthew, escaped into homelessness to find himself."
"I do not have that in me."
"Well, that is very bad news for Andy and little Max. Andy you there?"
"Violet?" Andy’s voice.
"Andy."
"Luther, please," Andy said.
"Would everyone stop begging me already? I didn’t bring you into this, Andy, for you to plead for me not to do what has to be done."
"Then what?"
"I just thought you might advise Violet. You’ve been in this situation before, right? You’ve murdered an innocent to save yourself and others. Tell us, Andy, did it change you?"
"Fuck you, Luther."
"Tell us, Andy, did it change you?"
"Fuck you."
The wail of a baby filled Violet’s earpiece.
"Andy stop!" she whispered.
"Yes, Luther, it changed me."
"For the better?"
"Hardly."
"You still think about them?"
"Sometimes."
"And this pains you?"
"They were some of the worst moments in a life filled with bad ones."
"That’s because you’re weak, Andy. I never understood what Orson saw in you. You should’ve emerged from that experience stronger. Harder. A pure human being."
"So that’s what you’re holding yourself out as, Luther? A pure human being?"
"Violet," Luther said as she wept softly into the sleeve of her tracksuit. "Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not rushing you. We’re going to leave you now, so you can have this moment. Please believe me when I say that it can be revolutionary. Life-changing. If you let it be. If you’re strong enough."
"And if I don’t?"
"Aren’t we past the threats, my love?"
Andy screamed something and then the line went dead.
She could hear the freezing rain coming down again, feel the shudder of her heart against the filthy floor. She lay there in the dark and the cold. Waiting. For something to change. For reality to break through and end this nightmare.
But the rain kept falling and the fire dwindling and the cold sinking in.
After awhile, she came to her feet. The knife blade reflected the firelight. She stared at it, then picked it up.
"Throw some wood on the fire," Matthew grumbled from his cardboard box.
"Sure."
Violet walked over to the scrap wood heap, grabbed several pieces of crown molding flaking off dark paint, and tossed them into the oil drum.
"You were talking to yourself," Matthew said.
Violet moved slowly across the floor to the foot of the cardboard box and squatted down by the opening. As the new flames licked up out of the drum, she saw Matthew in the lowlight sprawled under sheets of old newspaper, lying on his back, his eyes open, blinking slowly—glassy from the wine.
"How do you live like this, Matthew?" she whispered.
"Always wanted to live in nature," he said. "Someplace pretty, you know? Now I do. This is my wilderness. I think the concrete barrens are beautiful like the desert is. Empty and quiet. Those abandoned buildings, that water tower...they’re my mountains. Sometimes, in the evening in the summertime, I’ll just go walking through the ruins. It reaches some part of me. Some itch I was never able to scratch."
"Don’t you miss your family?"
She saw his Adam’s apple roll. "The man I was when I was home was nothing I was proud of. So compromised." The corners of his eyes shone with wetness. He looked at Vi. "It’s hard, isn’t it?"
"Yeah."
She gripped the knife behind her back.
"Is it supposed to be so hard you think?"
She couldn’t see anything through the sheet of tears. "And sometimes harder."
Vi could feel the momentum building inside of her, the adrenaline push, lifting her toward something.
"I want to think," Matthew said, "that there’s some benefit to this road I’m on, you know? That I