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Back Trinity Sight Save as PDF
Chapters (41)
  1. PART ONE
  2. ONE
  3. TWO
  4. THREE
  5. FOUR
  6. FIVE
  7. SIX
  8. SEVEN
  9. EIGHT
  10. NINE
  11. TEN
  12. ELEVEN
  13. TWELVE
  14. THIRTEEN
  15. FOURTEEN
  16. FIFTEEN
  17. PART TWO
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. PART THREE
  33. THIRTY
  34. THIRTY-ONE
  35. THIRTY-TWO
  36. THIRTY-THREE
  37. THIRTY-FOUR
  38. THIRTY-FIVE
  39. THIRTY-SIX
  40. THIRTY-SEVEN
  41. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Calliope unrolled Susana’s gun from her makeshift pouch and disengaged the safety. She was sweating, although the storm clouds had made the hazy air cold, and the gun was slick in her palms. From the driver’s side, she heard a scuffling against the blacktop, boots against asphalt. Calliope’s stomach clutched. She steadied her quavering hand as she stepped around the back of the truck, and faced Amy, stomach to the ground, her blond hair loose around her face, a hand over her mouth, a man in an olive-green jumpsuit crouched atop her, his stubbled face pressed against hers, a knife at her neck. A pack of Camels beside her on the blacktop. The man’s jumpsuit was open. He was whispering something in Amy’s ear, and she was shaking her head, crying. He scratched the side of her face with the knife; Calliope saw the blood. She pointed the gun at his head. She braced herself. What if she accidentally hit Amy? She’d never fired a gun. She’d refused to go with Andres to the shooting range, refused to let Phoenix even practice with a BB gun and soda cans.

They didn’t hear Calliope standing there. Amy was grasping the belt of her jeans at the hips, the man whispering furiously into her ear, his hand tightening at her mouth, the knife digging into her neck. What was Calliope waiting for? She needed to shoot before he hurt her friend. She meant to pull the trigger—

His olive-green body slumped forward, his head slamming onto the road, his hands slack. Blood pooled at his head, staining the ground around him. Amy screamed, pushed him off, and scrambled out of the blood. Calliope stared at her hands. She hadn’t pulled the trigger. She hadn’t killed him. She was poised to pull the trigger, but she hadn’t. She’d hesitated. She hadn’t saved her friend.

Then who had?

Still pointing the gun in front of her, Calliope whipped around to search the road behind them. A hundred feet away, a man holding a rifle.

NINE

NINE

CHANCE

The man walked toward them, rifle slung over his shoulder with a leather strap. Calliope called out to Eunjoo in the underbrush, “Stay hidden, chica. Don’t move.” To Amy, “Are you hurt?” Amy made a shrilling noise like a chipmunk, part sob, part inscrutable. “Pick up the knife. That man might have saved us, but he could be as insane as the rest of them.” Three days ago, Calliope had been planning tenure and compiling notes for her dissertation. Her anthropology department was throwing a baby shower. Now she felt like she’d stepped into a horror show, and she knew what kinds of things happened to women in horror films after the cliffhanger.