Ghost Hand (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 28, This is David

"What?—David isn't here," I stammered.

"Let me talk to David," the Dark Man insisted, as if he hadn't heard me.

"Let me talk to Emma," I demanded back, cold realization flooding my body. Somehow the Dark Man thought I was with David. He was expecting to talk to David.

"Hand me the phone," Marcus said, next to me. He'd moved to my branch, and I hadn't even been aware of it.

"Let me talk to Emma so I know she's alive," I said into the phone.

"You have two minutes to put David on, or she won't be," the Dark Man replied.

"No. Listen. David isn't here. I've never even met him."

"Olivia, let me have the phone," Marcus ordered, trying to pull it from my ear.

"Let go of me," I shoved his hands away. "Please," I begged the Dark Man, "don't hurt her. She doesn't know anything."

"You have one minute remaining," the Dark Man said.

"Olivia," Marcus insisted, this time actually prying the phone out of my hand. He put it to his ear, looking at me, his eyes pleading for something. I had no idea what.

"This is David," he said.

This is David.

I stared at him, watched the lines of his face change as he listened to whatever the Dark Man was saying. The truth was written in his eyes like it had never been before. This was not some lie to save Emma or buy us time. This is David. Not Marcus. David. He was David. Had always been David, the one who'd been captured by the CAMFers and barely escaped with his life. He'd seen the list with his own name on it. It was my Marcus who'd grown up in the foster care system, and been turned over to the CAMFers by the police, and didn't trust anyone. David hadn't disappeared again; he'd just become someone else.

I glanced up at Jason and saw the weird mixture of hurt and resignation melding in his eyes. He hadn't known either. Nose looked stunned too, but not Yale. When I looked at him he looked away. He had been with Marcus—or did I call him David now?—from almost the beginning. Yale had known Marcus was lying to the rest of us all this time. And if Marcus had lied about his PSS and his identity, what else had he lied about?

"No, that's not—" Marcus-now-David said into the phone, his voice strained.

He listened for a moment, his face tense, and I was close enough to hear the sinuous rise and fall of the Dark Man's voice, though I couldn't make out the words.

"You don't need or want her," Marcus said calmly, firmly, "and we both know it."

I couldn't think of him as David. He was Marcus to me, and I couldn't just suddenly turn that off. "Let her go," he was saying into the phone. "She's useless to you."

More listening. Pain flickering across his face, then pure fury. "Fuck you!" he screamed into the phone, a vein bulging in his forehead.

I tried to reach out and take the phone back, but he turned, blocking my grab. He was losing it. He was going to get Emma killed.

"No!" he said, more calmly, though barely. "You don't need them. This is between you and me. No one else."

Another short pause, while I sat numbly next to him in a tree.

"That's not going to happen, and you know it," he said.

The Dark Man replied. Short. One sentence.