Second Thoughts (33 page)

I wasn't
ready,
but I was prepared.

W
E TOOK MY
car—my
new
car, since the old one had been totaled—because I just wanted to drive once more while I had the chance. I insisted on stopping at Dad's for breakfast, driving by the lake where we'd spent so many afternoons over the summer, and basically taking as much time as I thought we could afford. What would happen would happen whenever we got there. I hoped I kept the senator waiting.

Technically he wasn't scheduled to arrive until this evening, and officially I was sure he wouldn't. No one but me knew he was already here, somewhere. I even knew what he'd be wearing. In fact, I'd known what Carter would wear today, too, before I'd seen him, which
was strange and disconcerting. I kept glancing at him with a weird sense of déjà vu.

For my own part, I'd intentionally picked out something different from what I'd predicted myself to be in. It was both a measure of control and a test. The first thing I'd done when I saw Carter this morning was re-check the vision. It reflected my change in attire.

My murder was still right on schedule.

Carter. He was the hardest part of the plan. As I pulled into the gun club's parking lot, I watched him out of the corner of my eye. His beautiful face was open, completely unaware, and totally relaxed. He tapped his fingers on the dash in time with the radio and then flexed his wrists back and forth, in anticipation of shooting. He caught me looking and smiled.

Not for the first time I considered simply turning around. Not going in. Saving us both from what was inside. I'd thought about it countless times before but the vision had never changed. And I knew why too. I'd
thought
about not showing up, but never actually believed I wouldn't come. If I didn't go through with this, it didn't mean I wouldn't die; it meant I might not be able to change it.

This was my best chance.

I was so sorry for what might happen, for Carter's part in it, but I had to believe he'd understand. He'd want me to take the chance, to do whatever I could to save myself. He'd said as much once before and I hoped it was true.

The slamming of our car doors was loud to me, a very final kind of sound not unlike a gunshot. I ran my fingers across the car's hood as my private goodbye while Carter picked up our gear bags, throwing them both over one shoulder. We fell in step next to each other as we headed toward the building. But before we went inside, before I never had the chance again, there was something I needed to say.

“Carter?”

I grabbed his hand so he'd stop and then tugged on it to make him come closer. I stepped right up to him, until we were touching, and he set down our bags to slip his arms around my waist. Perfect.

“What's up?”

“I have something to tell you.”

He frowned and I forced myself to laugh, to lighten the seriousness I hadn't been able to keep from my voice. To make him think I was playing.

I leaned in close and whispered, “I love you.”

With a grin, he bent to kiss me, just a light touch of his lips to mine. “Oh, yeah?”

“I'll
always
love you. You'll never forget that, right?”

He still thought I was playing. “Hm. I don't know. You'd better kiss me again to be sure.”

So I did. There, in a parking lot in New Hampshire, I kissed him for all I was worth. I didn't care who saw. In fact, I hoped
everyone
saw this girl who loved this boy more than anyone had a right to, beyond reason and maybe even sanity, and they'd remember too.

When we finally pulled apart, Carter laughed. It was deep and filled with joy, and if it was the last sound I ever heard, I knew I'd be content. “That was pretty convincing.” Grabbing our bags in one hand, he threw his other arm around my shoulder and led me toward the building, still smiling. “But you know,” he added casually, “if you
really
want me to remember, all you have to do is write it down.”

M
Y FIRST ROUND
was terrible and the second wasn't much better. For pretty valid reasons, I couldn't concentrate. The private range was too quiet and too loud at the same time. The whir of the motorized target track wound into my skull and vibrated in time with my nerves. The muted thumps of each shot seemed like explosions, reverberating through my arms and causing stars to bloom behind my eyes. My pulse
pounded just as loudly and my fingers shook, on the trigger and even worse when I stopped to reload.

I tried and failed not to look at the two-way mirror, hoping to see a shadow or hear a noise, any indication that the moment was near. Was Senator Astor there already? Had he been watching the entire time? There was a door into the observation room from our room, but there was a separate entrance into it from the club. He could come and go without our even knowing.

I became convinced the anticipation would kill me before anyone else had the chance.

Every time Carter spoke or moved even slightly in my direction, I flinched. And he noticed, both my crappy shooting and my tension. His rounds took about a third of the time of mine. He'd shoot, watch me finish, and then we'd reload together.

At the end of my third round, Carter joked, “Need help?” His voice was flirty and cute, and extra loud because he was still wearing sound gear, but I couldn't even smile. He reached up to pull back his ear protection. “Hey,” he said. “Babe, relax.”

Instead, I held my breath. He stepped away from his partition.

But it wasn't right. I realized his ear guards were still half on his head, only one ear exposed so he could hear me. In the vision, they weren't there. Were they? I began to forget the details or worry that they'd changed.

“Lainey,” he coaxed, “just relax.” He took another step, as if to come over to me, but instead turned to pick up his water bottle and take a drink. “It's hard right now, but you'll get the strength back. You're just out of practice.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. Of course he had no idea why I was so on edge.

“Relax,”
he repeated, adding a smile—one more beautiful, genuine smile—that punched its way into my heart. No matter what happened,
I'd have that. I savored the image, letting it burn itself into my memory.

And that was when I made my mistake.

For a few seconds, my thoughts slipped from what I was doing, turned from what was going to happen to the last beautiful curve of Carter's lips. In the middle of my reloading, I fumbled. A bullet slipped from my grip and tumbled to the floor with a soft, pretty
plink.
Automatically, I bent to retrieve it.

Before I even stood, the sound of a round chambering echoed through the small space. I straightened to find Carter facing me and my vision complete.

The gun fired and I fell to the ground.

D
ove
to the ground was probably a more accurate description of what I did.

I couldn't tell you which happened first, Carter pulling the trigger or me diving toward his feet, but I swear I'd never heard a sound louder than that gunshot. Even the air reverberated with it, shaking around me as my body slammed into the cool rubber floor and skidded toward my attacker.

The whistle of the bullet was the very noise of death, softly screaming just past my head, straight through the space where my heart had beat a second before, and into the wall of the shooting lane with a sickening thunk. A lock of hair, sheared from my pony tail, floated to the ground in front of me.

Propelling myself
toward
the gun was dangerous.
Crazy.
But backwards or sideways wouldn't have put me any closer to this: Carter, staring at the scene in front of him with mute horror. From my prone position, he was just a stretch away.

And if I didn't die trying, I
had
to get to him before his memories of what happened took any deeper a hold.

Or Daniel Astor tried again.

Carter was already in shock, eyes wide and glazed, and arms hanging at his sides. Just like in my vision, his ear guards were around his neck, and his cheeks were flushed. The gun dangled next to him, pointed at the floor, at
me.
I desperately reached my arm toward him before he could take another shot.

Finally, my fingers brushed skin, found purchase at his ankle, and I didn't hesitate. I Thought.

Even I was surprised by what happened next.

Carter looked down in confusion, as startled by my gentle touch as everything else. And then he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

A G
RIM
D
IVINER
'
S
visions are interesting things. They're not movies. They're moments. Just moments, the series of which show you a death's
story
but not the entire picture. So I hadn't known exactly how I'd react to the moment of
my
death, how it would play out at all, until it happened. I'd reacted, not predicted, which is probably the only reason I was still alive. If I'd known any more, my own thoughts would surely have changed the future—and my vision—entirely. In which case, I'd probably be lying on the floor, bleeding to death in Carter's arms.

Instead, I was sitting on the floor, Carter's unconscious body cradled in
my
arms, when Daniel Astor stepped out of the observation room and quietly closed the door behind him.

He bent to retrieve Carter's gun from where it had landed, after skidding across the room to the base of the mirrored wall. I cursed my stupid self for not retrieving it. At the same time, I noticed the senator was wearing gloves, deep black expensive leather ones that fit and moved like second skin. My own gun was useless, half-loaded and unprepared, on the shelf in the booth above my head.

“I'd like to say that was incredibly lucky, but I'm sure there was no luck involved,” he mused. “I must have underestimated your abilities.”
While he spoke, he checked the gun with practiced hands, and finding it satisfactory, trained it on me.

I stared at him for a while, working through my emotions—anger, terror, disgust—and getting my breathing under control. My heart still pounded, painful beats crashing somewhere close to my throat, and I was afraid I might throw up. Here he was, my own personal villain, but it was difficult to see him that way. He looked like he did any other day, handsome and business casual, in a blue button-down and slacks.

He looked, I thought, like my father.

And he
was
my uncle. Maybe, if things had been different, this weekend I'd have told him.
You really are
my
Uncle Dan.

He also, aside from the gun, wasn't behaving in typical villain fashion, whatever that was. Movies were my only villain education, but the senator wasn't sneering or ranting or recklessly brandishing his weapon while I devised a clever escape. In fact, he was calm and collected, as if we were just having a friendly chat, and I had no idea how I was going to get out of this. Finally I felt like I could speak without my voice shaking.

“You did underestimate me,” I replied. “But I was still lucky.”

He smiled his charming smile. “Perhaps. The more interesting question though is what have you done to my nephew? He's still breathing, so obviously you didn't kill him.”

“I…” I started and then stopped. What the hell was I doing? I was about to tell the villain
my
secrets, which is the opposite of what I was supposed to do.

But what
was
I supposed to do? I was still pretty sure he was going to kill me, and besides, if he wanted to, he could use his own abilities to get me to tell him anyway. I was surprised he hadn't yet. Or maybe he had and I just didn't recognize it. Either way, I went on.

“I didn't kill him. I'd
never,”
I breathed. “I killed his memory of what just happened. It knocked him unconscious.”

The unconscious part was unexpected. That hadn't happened before. Not with Ms. Kim and not with Amy. We'd practiced a dozen different times, Amy and I, and she admitted to a wicked headache after the fact, but the Thought had never knocked her out. My guess was that, in the same way I used to pass out all the time from resisting my gift, before I knew about the Sententia, Carter's brain had shut down in defense of the trauma.

Or, as I watched Senator Astor's eyes widen in disbelief, along with what I thought might have been a hint of delight, I realized maybe it was something else. Carter's memory had already
been
tampered with, and I had doubled the effect.

Softly Dan said, “Is that possibly true?”

I nodded. “You
really
underestimated me.” I couldn't help but taunt him a little, even if it was stupid.

“It won't happen again. To be sure, it won't happen again.” I was afraid that was the final threat, that he was going to kill me now, but instead he went on. “How?”

“I'm a Thought Mover, remember? You and Carter have been telling me that all along. I can kill thoughts too. Memories, after they happen but before they take hold. It's the opposite of what you do, when you plant a seed of forgetting.”

“Why didn't Carter tell me you could do that?”

“He doesn't know.”

“Interesting.” He tapped the fingers of one hand on his leg absently, while the other kept the gun pointed steadily in our direction. “It appears you're keeping many secrets in that lovely head of yours.”

“A few.” As hard as it had been to keep things from Carter, anything he knew, his uncle eventually would too. Knowing what I did now, I suspected Carter developed his habit of telling Dan everything through Dan's unspoken encouragement. What I didn't understand was: why hadn't he just compelled the information from
me?

“Share another with me then,” he said. “Why aren't you surprised to see me?”