Chapter Text
At the Choosing Ceremony, they both take the rock, and they move into the big house where John the farmer lives. He’s been in the house by himself for a while, apparently, and he has unused bedrooms. Sara and Nathan take rooms next to each other, although he spends their first several days in town curled up on the floor next to her bed.
Slowly, they figure out how to live in the town. Sara likes a lot of the people here--she likes Kristi, the doctor, and Kenny, and Fatima when she comes down from Colony House or when Sara goes up there to visit. She likes Lauren Pratt, who bakes fantastic cookies even with limited ingredients, and she likes Lauren’s daughter, Megan, the only kid in town.
John takes care of the town’s farm animals--three cows, half a dozen goats, and about twenty chickens--and Nathan starts helping him with it right away. He’s always had a soft spot for animals.
Sara helps too, sometimes. She likes the animals well enough. And she likes John. She’s tense around him at first--Nathan is, too. Neither of them like the idea of being in a house with a man they know nothing about and knowing that they can’t leave without facing something even worse outside.
But it turns out that John is soft-spoken, a little gruff, but kind. The three of them play cards around the kitchen table in the evenings, curtains drawn against the pale figures outside. Sara can tell he likes having them around the house, especially Nathan. “My son was about your age,” he says one morning as they’re carrying feed corn from the storage shed near Colony House into the pen. “He used to help me tend to the animals, when we first came to town.”
Sara’s heart twists. She looks at Nathan, and finds him looking back at her just as sadly. John is pointedly not looking at either of them as he shovels corn into the feeding trough.
“Which one was his favorite?” Sara ventures after a long silence.
It’s the right thing to say. The older man smiles fondly and pats the head of one of the goats. “Alma.”
Working at the diner happens almost by accident. Sara and Nathan are having lunch with Father Khatri a couple of weeks after their arrival in town. Father Khatri is saying something about Boyd, which Sara is only half-listening to. She’s distracted by how Tian-Chen is hurrying back and forth between the oven and the counter, her face pinched. As Sara watches, Tian-Chen comes out of the kitchen with a big pot of noodles in her hands, and behind her, a teakettle starts to whistle.
Sara’s out of the booth before she even decides to move. “Here, let me take that,” she says, reaching for the pot of noodles. “You go get the kettle.”
Tian-Chen looks at her suspiciously for a second, then pushes the pot into her hands and hurries back into the kitchen.
Sara carries the pot of noodles over to the counter. She picks up the plastic ladle and gives it a stir. “Can I help with anything else?” she asks Tian-Chen when the older woman comes back out. “I already finished eating, it’s no trouble.”
Tian-Chen nods, says something in Cantonese, and gives Sara a stack of plates.
When Sara sits back down at their booth ten minutes later, Nathan’s laughing at her from behind his cup of tea. “She always does this,” he explains to Father Khatri. “She’s tried to bus our own table at a restaurant before.”
Sara shrugs, embarrassed. “I used to work at a restaurant. I like to help.”
Father Khatri smiles at her. “Between you and me,” he says, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “I think Tian-Chen appreciates it. She’s been swamped around here now that Kenny’s the deputy. If you showed up before the lunchtime rush tomorrow, I don’t think she’d send you away.”
So Sara does show up the next day, and the next, and the next, and Tian-Chen doesn't send her away.
It’s a manageable sort of life. The little ceramic snowman sits on the kitchen counter. Sara’s phone never rings. There’s an undercurrent of fear beneath everything--beneath collecting eggs from the chickens, beneath getting Kenny to teach her a few words of Cantonese, beneath hearing all about what Megan’s dolls have been up to--but Sara’s used to living with that.
What she’s not used to are the whispers. They recur frequently, pushing up against the back of her brain like a nagging thought, like something she’s trying to remember. Occasionally, she thinks she catches a fragment of a word, a syllable, but it’s never something she can hold onto. Trying to concentrate on them gives her headaches, like splinters behind her eyes.
She tells Nathan about the whispers, and he’s predictably worried but, like her, isn’t sure what to do. She tells a few other people, too--Lauren, Tian-Chen, Father Khatri--mostly because she wants to know if anyone else is hearing this. No one is. Lauren tells her to go ask Kristi for painkillers, which Sara doesn’t do. Surely they need their limited supply for more serious things than a little headache. Tian-Chen makes her extra-strong tea, which helps. Father Khatri says that a lot of people in this town experience strange signs, especially soon after they arrive, but to tell him right away if she ever starts hearing real words.
She starts trying to push the whispers out of her head when she hears them. For some reason, that makes the headaches even worse.
Sara and Nathan have been in town for about three weeks when a woman who lives at Colony House is killed.
Her name was Emma. Sara had met her once, when she’d helped bring some of the vegetables from Colony House down to the diner. She’d had pretty red hair and an easy laugh. Colony House uses a buddy system, but Emma had been down at the clinic earlier in the day and her buddy had thought she was staying there overnight, and Kristi and Gina had seen her go back up to Colony House a good hour before dark. So no one noticed she was gone until they found her body in the morning, halfway up the hill, where she must have passed out or fallen or just decided to sit down and wait for nightfall.
Sara doesn’t see the body, but she does see the blood all over the hill. It all seems very real, now.
She and Nathan and John go home after the funeral. Sara makes coffee, and they all sit around the table in silence for several long minutes, staring into their steaming cups.
“We need to get out,” Nathan finally says.
John chuckles, lifting his cup to his lips. “Groundbreaking, kid.”
“I know, I know, but let’s talk about it,” Nathan says. “I know Boyd and Kenny have that map where they’re tracking how everyone came in and how fast they were going, that’s good. But Kenny says nothing’s ever really come of it.”
“Not yet, anyway,” says Sara, because it’s what Boyd had said.
“They tried driving some cars out the exact same speed they were going when they came in a while back, before they started popping everyone’s tires,” John says. “Didn’t work.”
“Some people up at Colony House have set a trap for crows?” Sara suggests.
John scoffs. “What’re they going to do if they catch one?”
Sara shrugs. According to Fatima, they haven’t.
“What about the forest?” Nathan asks. “The animals came from there, right? Do we know what else there is?”
“Boyd did a lot of looking back before even my time,” John says. “Hard to find anything when we can’t go more than half a day’s journey out.”
“Right.” Nathan bites the inside of cheek. “Still, maybe we could be systematic about it. Go in teams, make sure we’ve swept everything we can reach.” He looks toward the curtains, drumming his fingers on the table.
John pushes his chair back and stands up. “Fool’s errand,” he says gruffly. “Gonna get yourselves killed if you try. Don’t try.” He leaves his coffee on the table and walks upstairs.
A few days later, Alma the goat is sick.
John is worried. “They don’t really get sick,” he mutters. “No other animals to catch things from, and we don’t let them graze in plants we don’t know.”
“Maybe she got bit by something,” Nathan suggests from where he’s crouched next to the lethargic goat, stroking behind her ears.
“That’s a problem too,” John says, scratching his beard. He heaves a heavy sigh. “I’ll sleep in the barn tonight, keep an eye on her.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Sara asks. She glances over at the barn, which is dark and looming and doesn’t look like a nice--or safe--place to spend the night.
“I’ll get the spare talisman from Boyd. I’ve done it before, when Rosie was having her kid. Everything was fine.”
“I’ll stay out with you,” Nathan offers, standing up.
“Me too,” Sara says, because she’d rather be with the two of them than in the house alone.
John shakes his head. “No, no, there’s no need for you kids to give up your beds. Might as well have some of us be well-rested in the morning.” He laughs, but it’s empty.
Nathan’s brow is furrowed in concern, but, after a glance at Sara, he nods. “Alright. I guess I’d rather not sleep on straw.”
John gets the talisman, and Sara and Nathan help him make sure the barn is secure and Alma is comfortable before heading home. As night falls Nathan goes upstairs to shower, and Sara sits at the kitchen table, chewing on her thumbnail and looking anxiously at the crack in the curtains.
Whispers are pushing at the back of her brain again. They have an especially urgent tone to them tonight, like raised voices in the other room.
And then she hears it, clear as anything. Something bad is going to happen, Sara.
Ice goes down her spine. She sits straight up. “What?” she says aloud. “What do you mean?”
You hear us?
“I hear you, I--who are you?”
Oh! It doesn’t sound like one voice, but like several people all talking over each other. It’s definitely in her head, but it’s also as clear as if whoever it was was in the room with her. Oh, we thought you’d never hear us.
“Who are you?”
We’re people who want to help. Or spirits who want to help, we suppose.
Sara pushes her chair away from the table and stands up. “What’s the bad thing that’s going to happen?” she asks. “That’s what you said first.”
You shouldn’t have let your friend sleep out in the barn.
Sara goes very still. Then she crosses to the window and pushes open the blind. It’s too dark to see anything more than the looming shape of the barn roof over the trees.
She takes a deep breath, trying to calm the panic rising in her stomach. “You’re lying to me,” she says. “You just want me to open the door to go check on him so the monsters can get in here.”
No, no, no, no! The voices sound panicked, talking over each other. No, don’t open the door. Then you and Nathan will both die.
“So what do you want me to do?” Sara snaps, frustrated.
We don’t want you to do anything, say the voices. We just wanted to let you know. We just wanted to warn you. We just want to help. We just want to help. We just want to…
“Sara?” Nathan comes into the room, drying his hair with a towel. “Are you talking to someone?”
The voices stop. Sara’s head hurts.
“No,” she says, pressing her fist against one of her eyes. “Just myself.”
“You okay?”
She nods, folding her arms across herself. “I’m worried about John.”
Nathan sighs. “Me too.” He reaches out, pulls her against his side. “But he’s got a talisman, and like he said, he’s done it before. He’s as safe as we are.”
“So, not safe,” Sara murmurs.
Nathan doesn’t answer, just squeezes her tighter.
She barely sleeps.
In the morning, she and Nathan leave the house together. “You okay?” he asks her again as they’re stepping out onto the porch.
“I’m okay,” Sara answers. She’s trying to shake off the bad feeling. She has no reason to believe the voices in her head. No reason to think John is anything other than fine.
Still, as they reach the spot on the road where Nathan splits off to go to the barn, she stands there instead of walking over to the diner. She’ll just watch him open the door. Just to make sure.
Nathan pulls open the door to the barn and steps inside.
Sara exhales. Her shoulders fall.
Then Nathan pushes the door open and comes stumbling out of the barn. There’s blood on his hands and the front of his shirt. “SOMEONE GET BOYD!” he yells.
Sara takes off in a run towards him and practically crashes into him. “What is it?” she asks, though she already knows the answer. She looks past him to the barn, and starts to move toward the half-open door.
Nathan grips her by both elbows, holding her firmly in place. “Don’t go in there,” he gets out.
“I want to--”
His grip tightens. “Don’t.” The blood on his hands is smearing onto her sleeves. His face is ashen, his eyes wild. He looks past her, up at the crowd of townsfolk that are beginning to gather around them. “GET BOYD,” he yells again, more insistently, and Sara hears running feet take off toward the sheriff’s station. “It’s John,” he says to her, his grip finally loosening. “He’s…he’s…” He closes his eyes, shakes his head like he’s trying to shake off the images. She can feel him starting to tremble.
She should have listened to the voices. She shouldn’t have let him fucking go in there.
Told you so, say the voices from last night, drifting through her consciousness. They sound sad.
Boyd runs over, pausing just long enough to make sure Nathan isn’t hurt before continuing on to the barn. Father Khatri comes right behind him, stopping to put his hand on Nathan’s arm and look into his eyes, then into Sara’s, like he’s trying to make sure neither of them are going to fall apart.
“Do you have any idea what happened?” Khatri asks.
Nathan shakes his head. “No, we…one of the goats was sick, he was going to stay out in the barn with her, but he had a talisman. He should have been fine.”
“Alright.” Khatri nods, looking over at the barn. “I’ll go help Boyd. You two can go home, if you want, wash the blood off.”
“No,” say both siblings at the same time. Nathan swallows. “I have to come make sure Alma’s okay. The goat. I didn’t even see.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sara says, but Nathan puts his hand on her arm.
“You don’t have to see him, Sara. Please.”
“He’s right,” says Khatri. “There’s no need to make it worse than it is.”
So Sara just stands there, by the fence, watching the half-open door of the barn.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asks the voices, angrily. “When I could have done something? How did you know? Why didn’t you stop it?”
We couldn’t do anything, say the voices. We never can. That’s why we need you to help us.
Alma is fine, as it turns out. She’s sitting in the middle of the gore, fur streaked with blood, and she isn’t even as sick as she was last night. The other animals are all fine, too, completely untouched.
They never find out exactly what happened. Clearly, somehow, John was persuaded to open the door. Maybe he thought the animals that were still outside were in danger. Maybe he heard people calling for help.
But John died alone--was ripped apart while he was still alive, alone--so they’ll never know for sure.
Nathan helps bury what’s left of him. They have the service. They go home and wash the blood off. Nathan is quiet and pale, and goes to bed early.
Sara closes the door to John’s room. Tomorrow, she’ll pack up his stuff, take it over to Tian-Chen for storage. Do the things that need to be done, because this is a place where people die, and spare rooms need to be kept open in case new people need them.
It all feels a lot more real now.
She hasn’t been asleep for more than an hour when she wakes to sounds coming from the room next door. Panicked, desperate crying, and then a sound that’s almost like a scream.
Sara shoots to her feet and runs out into the hallway, only processing that she maybe should be running away from the sound when she’s already standing in Nathan’s doorway.
But there is no monster in the room--just Nathan, thrashing in bed and crying out in his sleep.
“Nathan!” Sara kneels on the side of the bed and shakes his shoulder. “Nathan, wake up! Wake up!”
His eyes shoot open, and he scrambles away from her until his back hits the wall, looking around wildly.
“It’s okay!” Sara steps back, holding up her hands. “It’s okay, you’re okay. It was just a dream.”
His breathing is ragged and loud. He swallows, finally focusing on her. “I--Sara?”
She nods. “It’s okay.”
Nathan’s face is pale. He sits for another moment, very still, and then his posture crumples and he covers his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking.
“Oh, Nathan.” Sara climbs into the bed and pulls him into her arms. He buries his face in her shoulder, crying horrible, haunting sobs. She rubs his back. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“I don’t want you to die like that,” he gets out, muffled, his hands fisted in her shirt. “I don’t want us to die here.”
Sara holds him tighter. “We won’t,” she tells him, helplessly. “We won’t.”
The voices keep talking to her.
The monsters are going to be around your house tonight - make sure you and Nathan keep everything closed.
We’re worried about what will happen if people keep trying to catch the crows. They’re the monsters’ pets.
Thanks for listening to us, Sara. You have no idea how long it’s been since we had someone to talk to.
Sometimes she talks back to them, holds a conversation. At times, they’re frustratingly vague--they know where Boyd found the talismans, but don’t remember where they came from or if there are any more. They know what the monsters can do, but not who they are.
At other times, they’re frighteningly specific. They know when a fight is about to break out between Tom the bartender and Eric from Colony House. They know when some of the vegetables Tian-Chen is about to use in today’s soup have gone bad. They give her advice to pass on to Donna about bugs that have gotten into the green beans.
They tell her they’re spirits, trapped in this place, able to see everything but unable to affect the world around them and unable to be heard by anyone but Sara. Sara doesn’t trust them, of course. But if they’re working with the monsters, why would they tell Sara things that help her and her brother stay safe? The monsters want to kill them--wouldn’t the voices just want to kill them too?
And if she’s losing her mind, then how is so much of what they say true?
She tells Nathan about the voices. “Don’t listen to them,” he says as he shovels hay around in the cow pen.
“I have to, they’re in my head,” she snaps. She’s tired, and her head hurts.
Nathan stops what he’s doing and leans against the pitchfork. “I mean, don’t do what they say.”
The voices have been asking her to do things more and more lately. Just little things, like when they asked her to walk up to Colony House and pick a specific carrot from the vegetable patch. If she doesn’t do it, her headaches get worse. She figured that correlation out a few days ago.
She won’t tell Nathan that part.
“I’ve figured it out, you know,” he says, going back to the hay. “It’s punishing us.”
“What’s punishing us?” Sarah asks, startled.
“This whole place,” Nathan says, waving around them. “It’s brought us all here to punish us. That’s why everything keeps getting worse and worse. We just have to go along with it until it decides we’ve had enough.”
His casual tone is scaring her. She walks around so she’s in front of him, so he has to look at her. “And what have you supposedly done that it’s punishing you for?”
He shrugs and makes an aborted gesture around himself that she can’t interpret. Then he stabs the pitchfork more forcefully into the hay.
“Nathan.” She waits until he looks up. “What’s it punishing me for?”
This gives him pause. “Maybe I just dragged you into this.” He wipes the sweat off his brow.
“Well, we were only in that car because of me, so I think if anyone was doing the dragging it wasn’t you.”
“Maybe that’s what it’s punishing me for, for not coming to help you sooner.”
“That’s not fair,” Sara insists.
He gives her an incredulous look. “And this place is fair?”
Sara frowns, her lips pressed together tightly. She shakes her head. “Even if you’re right, you’re just going to sit there and go along with it?”
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Sara,” says Nathan, testy now. “I’m going to feed the animals and lock the doors at night. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”
He’s not supposed to do anything else, someone says in her ear. You are.
The demands get worse.
Cut your hand and smear some of your blood on that tree.
Dump the soup out in the back, we’re thirsty.
Everyone’s busy over at the farm this afternoon--sneak into the cemetery, dig up a body, and take a little bit of their skin.
She refuses to do that last one, tells the voices flat out that she’s not digging someone up. The headache gets worse and worse, until she’s curled up in a ball sobbing behind the diner, trying to be quiet so Tian-Chen won’t hear.
We’re sorry, Sara, we’re sorry. The voices are clamoring over each other past the pain. We’re not trying to hurt you.
“You are hurting me!” she sobs.
You’re the only one we can talk to, we have to get through to you, we’re sorry it hurts. We just want to help, you’re the only way we can do that. We don’t want anyone else to die.
“I want to help too,” Sara gets out. “I just don’t see how this is going to help.”
It will, it will, eventually it will. You have to trust us. Haven’t we shown you enough to get you to trust us? What more do we need to do?
She goes to church. She sits through the sermon--the voices get quiet, like they’re listening, too. A few people smile at her afterward and say they were glad to see her there, ask about how the diner is, how the animals are. She lingers long enough that Father Khatri comes up to her and gives her a warm smile. “Good to see you, Sara. Are you doing okay?”
Don’t say anything. He won’t understand.
Had that been one of the voices? Or had that just been her?
“Sara?” Father Khatri is looking at her with concern now. “Are you okay? Are you still hearing those whispers you used to hear?”
After a long, delayed moment, Sara shakes her head. “No whispers.”
“Good,” says Father Khatri. He pauses, clearly leaving space for her to say something else.
She should tell him, she had come here intending to, but now it feels wrong. He’s going to think she’s going crazy. And if he believes her, he’s going to tell her not to listen to the voices, like Nathan did. But what if they’re telling the truth? What if they are helping? What if she can help?
Church people have never helped her much before. What makes her think Father Khatri would be any different, really?
“Thanks for the sermon,” she says.
He dips his head. “You’re welcome. If you ever need anything, Sara, if you ever need someone to listen--I’m always here.”
“Thanks,” she says, but she already knows she won’t be coming back.
More time passes. It’s quiet, almost peaceful in town, but Sara’s beginning to feel like a rat clawing at the bars of her cage. The monsters seem frustrated--tapping on windows all night, calling out taunts, writing the names of people they’ve killed on the sides of buildings. Boyd rallies everyone into cleaning it off every morning, but still, no one’s getting much sleep.
Sara is tired of headaches. She’s tired of feeling helpless. She’s tired of being afraid. She’s scared of how thoroughly Nathan seems to have given up, his cheeks getting hollower and hollower, still waking up screaming.
And she wants. She wants to make it to Boston. She wants to see the ocean, and she wants to go for a drive, and she wants to start over like she thought she’d get a chance to, and she wants a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream so badly that she might kill someone for it.
She’s in the diner, sweeping between meals, when she hears a sudden Sara! in her head.
“What?” she whispers, gripping the broom handle.
It’s almost time, says the voice. Something huge is coming.
“Something good or bad?”
Both. If nothing is done, it will be bad. It will kill everyone.
Her heart is thudding in her chest. “What’s good about that?”
You could use this. We could use this. We could get everyone out.
“Everyone?”
Everyone who’s alive.
She exhales. “We can get them out?”
Yes. The voices sound impatient. But everything has to go exactly right. You have to do exactly what we say from here on out, or everyone is going to die and we’ll be stuck having to start all over. And we don’t want to do that.
“And I don’t want everyone to die,” Sara says.
If you listen to us, they won’t. Tomorrow, there will be two cars that come to town, on the same day. The first one will be an RV, with a family of four inside. If you sit out by the farmhouse, right around four in the afternoon, you can see them come. The people who are in those cars are going to cause all this to happen.
“All what?” Sara asks. No one answers.
That night, the people who live next door to the Pratts hear Megan and Lauren’s screams in the middle of the night.
After Sara hears the news, she goes into the storage room and shuts the door. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she hisses into the air, fists clenched at her sides.
It’s nothing, the voices say, sadly.
“It’s not nothing! Lauren was my friend! Her daughter was just a little kid!” Sara’s voice breaks, and she presses her fists against her eyes.
It’s nothing compared to what’s coming, Sara. That’s going to happen to everyone. Tian-Chen, Khatri, Kristi, Fatima, Boyd. Nathan. They’ll kill Nathan very soon.
Sara lowers her fists. Her blood is cold. “What?”
His time is very short, we’re afraid. When everything starts falling apart, he’ll be one of the first to die. They’ll take their time with him.
“Stop it!” Sara presses her hands over her ears. “Stop saying these things!”
But they’re true. You can’t avoid it. It’s coming. You can feel it coming, can’t you?
She can. She can feel it coming, she’s been able to feel it coming this whole time. She shakes her head, unable to speak. She reminds herself, again, that the voices could still be lying to her. She doesn’t think they’re lying to her.
You can save him. You can save everyone. But it’s very important that you listen to us carefully now, and do everything we tell you to do. The RV will arrive around 4.
All day, everyone is shocked and subdued. Nathan comes by the diner once he hears the news about the Pratts. He sits in a booth with Sara, holds her hand. She tries to seem like she’s okay, but she can’t manage much more than staring at her hands or staring out the window.
What she doesn’t want to tell her brother is that she can barely hear him over the clamor, the constant stream of chatter in her head. A lot of it, she can’t make out. The voices are restless, desperate. They keep reminding her that Nathan will die, and then Sara will die, and then everyone will die. They tell her about how Megan and Lauren died, fill her mind with horrible images she can’t let go of.
But they’re right, as usual, about the RV. Sara sits on the porch and watches it roll through, right on cue.
It comes around again, several times. One of the times, it pulls up next to her and the man driving asks her for directions. He and his wife look nice, if a little frazzled. She can hear kids talking in the back.
Don’t answer, the voices tell her immediately. He’s dangerous.
She doesn’t answer. Her head is a mess of static and fear anyway--she’s not sure she could form words right now if she tried.
She doesn’t remember why she walks over to the clinic. She’s standing in the grass, looking up at it, when Kenny comes running down the road, supporting a bleeding man Sara doesn’t recognize. She’s about to run up and see if he needs help, but the voices tell her to stay put.
Kenny crashes through the door, shouting for Kristi. Sara is still watching the door when pain like lightning shoots up her arm, and she gasps and doubles over. She stumbles back around the side of the clinic, bracing her back against the wall and staring down in shock and disbelief at the words burning and cutting themselves into her skin, bright and unmistakeable.
Kill him.
She knows without having to be told it means the man Kenny just brought in. The clamoring in her head is almost like screaming now, and the fear in their voices pulses through her entire body. He’s dangerous, he’s the reason for all this, he needs to die.
And, well, they’ve been right about everything else.
The letters fade away after a few minutes. Sara is left breathing heavily, tracing her fingertips along where the words were just a moment ago. The pain that’s been absent all day is beginning to spike behind her left eye.
Could she really do this? Could she really kill someone, even a stranger, even someone dangerous, with her own hands? Surely this isn’t something she can do.
Please, Sara, please, please, please, we need you, we can’t do anything without you, these people need you, it’s all up to you. Nathan needs you, he’s going to die if you don’t do this. Everyone’s going to die. You can help them. You can help them. You can--
“Can you just let me think?” Sara snaps.
And the voices stop. For the first time all day, she’s left with blessed silence.
She thinks about being hunted, about being afraid. Spending her whole life afraid.
She wants to get out of here. She wants to get Nathan out of here. She wants it so badly her hands are shaking with it.
Please, Sara.
“Okay.”
The clinic is never locked. She’ll just watch through the window until Gina leaves the room, and then she’ll slip inside. She’ll find something sharp. She’ll make it quick--do her best to hurt and scare the poor man as little as possible. She’ll save Nathan, save herself, save everyone.
She’s not sure if she has enough steel in her for what this will require. But she thinks she might.