Song of the Fireflies(61)
Author: J.A. Redmerski

I ran after her, and I could only wonder what the hell she was doing. I followed her to the ladies’ restroom facilities and without a thought, I barged right in. I didn’t give a damn if there were other people inside. I was worried about Bray. I was worried about what she was capable of.

The stall door shut with a vociferous bang! and seconds later I heard her throwing up. I wondered why she didn’t just throw up outside, but it was such an insignificant curiosity that I didn’t bother to ask.

“Baby, are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be OK.” She threw up a few more times and I went over to the sink to wet some paper towels for her.

Bray came out of the stall and I started wiping her face and mouth.

“What are we going to do?” The floodgates opened and she broke down in tears, pressing her arms against my chest. I wrapped one arm around her back and the other behind her head.

“I think three days is too long,” I said. “I think it’s time we went home.”

She looked up at me, and I kissed her forehead.

“I’m not going home,” she said softly. “I never planned to.”

I shook my head. “W-What are you saying? Bray, we have to go home. There are no other options.”

“I love you, Elias, but I’m not going home with you. I’m not going to jail.”

We were interrupted by a few screams inside the store and then I heard, “Everybody get on the floor!”

It was Caleb’s voice.

And that was how we ended up here. In this moment. Holed up in the back of a convenience store with cops surrounding the building.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Present Day

Elias

Caleb has been holding me, Bray, and five other people inside the store for the past two hours. The store clerk and two customers have been sitting in the candy bar aisle just feet from us. I can smell urine. I think the woman with the brown hair and wearing a long, flowered dress pissed on herself at some point. Bray and I haven’t moved from the wall in the hallway next to the restrooms.

My mind is overloaded with… with a little bit of everything. A part of me wants to feel absolutely numb to all of this, but it’s only a small part. The rest of me is fearful but focused. I have to stay focused to get Bray out of here unharmed. I don’t think Caleb will hurt us. I really don’t. But I’m still afraid of what he might do, how far he will go.

Tate never made it into the store when the cops swarmed the parking lot and jumped out of their cars, drawing their guns. Caleb told us that he had pushed Tate away when Tate tried to follow him inside. He didn’t want Tate to go down with him like this. Whatever that meant.

I still have a bad feeling sitting sour in my stomach. As if what’s already happened isn’t enough, I still feel like the worst is yet to come.

“Bray?” I try again to get her attention.

She doesn’t answer. She appears stoic. Vacant.

I try another approach, with Caleb at least. I feel like Caleb is the one I need to fix first. To keep Bray safe, I have to talk Caleb down. An hour ago, I tried to talk him into giving himself up, but it was useless, as I had a feeling it would be.

I push myself to my feet. The gun in Caleb’s hand is pointed right at me the second he notices.

I raise my hands out at my sides. “It’s just me.” He starts to lower the gun. “I just want to talk.”

“Five more minutes!” an officer’s voice on a loudspeaker calls out. “We’re sending him back in!”

He’s referring to the man—a cop of some sort—Caleb agreed to let in thirty minutes ago. He wanted to hear Caleb’s demands and I’m sure to assess the situation inside for the officers outside. Bray and I stayed by the restrooms, out of sight.

“Talk about what?” Caleb says acidly.

His eye has turned blue and purple over the past two hours, and it’s so swollen the skin is raised nearly an inch over what is normal.

“You say you’re not going to hurt anyone,” I begin, “so just let everyone go. Show them you mean it. You keep these people in here like this, they’re hostages.”

“So f**king what?” he says. The woman in the dress looks up at him but is afraid to meet his eyes. “They’re already gonna charge me with having hostages. Doesn’t matter now.”

“Then let them go. You didn’t intend to have hostages, so let them go. I’ll stay here with you. But let Bray go, too.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bray finally speaks from behind me.

I turn around to see her looking up at me from her sitting position on the floor. I leave Caleb carefully, backing my way away from him so that I’m not making any sudden movements, and I go straight over and kneel beside Bray.

“You need to get out of here,” I say.

“No. I don’t,” she says simply. “If I go out that door, I go straight to jail. I told you, baby, I’m not going to jail. And I meant it.”

My heart is racing. Time is running out, and all I can think about is what’s going to happen when it does. Every possible scenario has run through my mind like a wide-awake nightmare, each of them ending with Bray facedown in a pool of her own blood.

Five minutes later, the guy in the casual clothes who somehow still reeks of cop reenters the store with his hands raised above his head. And just like before, Caleb keeps the gun trained on him.

“Where is my brother?” Caleb asks.

“He’s still outside waiting for you,” the man says in a calm voice. “He’s worried about you, Caleb. He just wants you to come out of here safely so that you can go home.”

Caleb laughs. “Home? Are you f**king kidding me? You think I’m f**king stupid? I won’t see home for a long time.”

“No, you won’t,” the man says, still with both hands where Caleb can see them at all times. “But you will someday, and the longer you stay in here like this, the worse you make it for yourself, the farther away the prospect of seeing home becomes. What about these people?” He points at the male clerk and the two women sitting in the aisle. “They want to go home. They haven’t done anything to deserve this.”

I wonder why the man didn’t include Bray and me, why he’s acting as though we aren’t sitting here several feet away and as much a part of this as they are.

Just as I think that, the man looks at us, his dark eyes peer at us underneath dark, bushy eyebrows.