Page 166 of Into the Dark

I focus my gaze on him and frown in a weird, slow-blinking confusion. “What?”

“Today. What day is it?” He smiles softly, except it’s flat.

Blankness. “Um.” I swallow, licking my tongue across my dry, papered-over lips. “Friday. No—Saturday.” The large clock on the wall reads ten minutes to one.

Yesterday I was happy. Yesterday I hadn’t murdered anyone. Yesterday I was still me.

“Spot-on. Good job,” he says. “Nothing too serious then.” Another of his practiced smiles. “I’m going to have a female officer come speak with you in just a minute, but let’s get you out of here first, okay? Let’s get you up off that floor.” He offers his hand to me, which I just stare at dumbly. When I don’t move, he speaks again—firmer this time, but with patience. “We really need to get you out of this room now, Alex,” he says softly.

Oh, yes. Of course. Because I murdered someone in it.

“I need you to give that to me now, okay?” he says, eyeing the knife still clutched in my right hand. He pulls a white handkerchief out of his pocket and wraps it around his hand. “Can you let go of it for me now?” An encouraging smile as he reaches down to take it from me.

I lift it up to him, but it takes a tremendous amount of effort to disengage my fingers, I find, as if it’s some extra limb I require that I can’t afford to lose.

“That’s it,” he says when I let go.

O’Connell takes the weapon and hands it behind him to some capable-looking man in uniform. He’s holding open a clear plastic bag like the ones they make you deposit liquids into at the airport, except much larger. He drops the knife into it, handle-down. O’Connell then drops the handkerchief into a second bag before reaching his hand back out to successfully lift me up from the floor. He angles his jacket around me to shield me from the other men in the room.

There are even more people in the kitchen now. Two kneel by the body of Kevin, one stands guard by the door, the other carries the evidence out of it, and then there’s O’Connell. Six men in my kitchen and not one of them is the one I need. Where is he? My legs weaken and my vision blurs, and O’Connell has to step in and put an arm around to steady me before he leads me toward the door.

I hear it before I register it. A voice from the hallway calling my name. A voice I do recognize. “Alex? Alex…?” it says, the people by the door stepping aside immediately.

Mark? Mark is here. How is Mark here? I suppose it makes sense he’s in my crime scene of a kitchen. Mark. I feel happier to see him than I ever have. He gives the body on the floor barely a glance as he comes toward me, O’Connell giving way to his definite authority.

Mark’s eyes seem to darken as he drinks in the sight of me. “Fucking hell…” he says.

When he puts an arm around me I almost fall into him, a rattled mess. It’s surprising how much the warmth and necessity of a human who knows me outside of all this disables me, actually. He isn’t who I want or need, but he’s here, and he knows me, and so in this moment, he’s exactly what I need. Numbness fills out my fingers and toes, my skin under some traumatized anesthetic as I cling on to him. When he pulls back to examine my damaged face, his look is careful and considered.

“I don’t…” I blink a few times and shake my head to clear my blurring vision. “How…are you here?”

Mark says the next words quietly. “Jake. He called me.”

I feel my body sag with relief just at the very mention of his name. Mark’s arm tightens around me. Christ, I’m so tired.

“He said that he was too far…that you needed—” He stops abruptly. “Alex, look at me. How is your head? There’s an ambulance on its way. You’re safe now, okay? Look at me—just at me.”

I don’t understand why they’re bothering with an ambulance. Kevin doesn’t need an ambulance. An ambulance isn’t going to help him now—I watched him die.

You didn’t just watch him die; you killed him, remember?

“I killed him.” I nod, my voice oddly calm.

Mark steps in close and wraps his other arm around me again, telling me to try not to speak. It occurs to me that maybe it’s because he doesn’t want me to incriminate myself. As if that would be possible. My hands are covered in Kevin’s blood. I just handed over the murder weapon. A cut-and-dry case if ever there was one.

“He’s dead. I killed him, Mark,” I say again. Just to be clear. In case anything isn’t.

He says nothing, walking me instead toward the door and out of the kitchen while ordering someone behind us to bring me some water.

A precipice. Either a loud, frenzied breakdown of panic or an all-consuming, quiet catatonia. This isn’t real. It can’t be. Nothing feels real. Until I see him, nothing is real. Yes. That’s what it is. My eyes close over, my lids too heavy all of a sudden. I’m exhausted. Bone-deep exhaustion.

I killed him. I killed a man.

My eyes flick wide-open again, wild and panicked.

My front door is splintered into a thousand pieces, glass and wood everywhere, all over the shoes lined up near the door: my bright-pink running trainers, Jake’s dark gray desert boots that he wore on our first date, my green Hunters, my black Hunters, a pair of battered trainers of Jake’s that he wore to cut the grass once.

Fred. He’ll be terrified when he gets home. He could cut himself on the glass or splinter his paw on the shattered wood chipping. I explain this to Mark, and he tells me not to worry about it because someone will take care of it. Then he shouts more orders at a pale, red-haired officer to go outside and look for my cat. Fred, I tell him. His name is Fred. It’s insane. All of it. It’s not real.