Already Dead by Jaye Ford Read Free Book Online Page B

one, you know? I should go eeny-meeny-miny-moe and say quicksand or funnel-webspiders, whatever. I mean, what does it matter? You’re never going to get a choice, right?’
    They were questions but they were rhetorical and she hoped that didn’t piss him off because the talking was helping. Her, not him. Making her focus on finding words, forming whole sentences, making a point, avoiding the shitty options he was giving her.
    â€˜But every time she asks, I do this whole mental evaluation of which death would be worse. I imagine the shark and what it’d be like to be torn to pieces underwater, shaken and mauled by a killing machine, your own blood turning the water red around you. And then I pitch that against the image of being stalked by a huge cat, a tiger say, run down and ripped to shreds on the plains of Africa. You know what I mean?’
    â€˜Shark,’ he said. ‘Definitely shark.’
    She glanced at him. He was serious. ‘Oh yeah?’
    â€˜A big one. White pointer. One bite and I’m dead. Quick. That’s how I want it.’
    She couldn’t bring herself to picture it. Or change the subject. ‘Snake or spider?’
    He cocked his head. ‘Spider. I hate snakes.’
    â€˜I killed a brown snake once. With a shovel. I’d go for spider too.’
    â€˜Plane or chopper?’ he chipped in.
    This was nuts. ‘Plane. Less chance of being thrown from the wreckage and dying slowly.’
    â€˜I’ve seen that. It’s a bad way to go.’
    In Afghanistan? Had he survived a helicopter crash over there? Did he have PTSD? She wanted to ask but figured gruesome death distractions were better right now. ‘Soldier ants or hyenas?’
    â€˜Eaten alive? Fuck.’
    There was something more sober in his tone – and a warning in the pause that followed. Jax flicked her eyes across the car. His gun hand was open, the weapon on the flat of his palm like a specimen. He spoke without taking his eyes from it. ‘Gun or knife?’
    Oh no. No, no .
    He sucked in a long, dragging breath.
    She tightened her hands on the wheel. ‘Brendan. No.’
    He pulled in another one – a loud, gulping rasp. She wanted to snatch the gun away from him. She wanted to see Zoe again. She clenched her teeth, kept her eyes on the road.
    The next sound made her jaw go slack. It wasn’t a deafening blast, it wasn’t shouting, nothing close to what she’d expected. It was an anguished sob.
    When she realised he wasn’t going to pull the trigger, when she could drag her eyes from the lane ahead, she saw his head bowed, his body slumped forward as though his chest had caved in, the curve of his spine shuddering. He was crying. Not a men-don’t-cry, holding-it-back kind of thing. Not a sniffling, hiccupping wailing, either. It was a heaving, silent, internalised agony.
    Jax glanced back and forth a couple of times, indecisive, anxious. Anyone else and she might have put a comforting hand on their sleeve, muttered soothing, empathetic words. But she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t have the wrong effect, wouldn’t make him rage at her or shoot himself. Maybe leaving him alone with his distress was her best option.
    Then the sound of it changed and she realised he was talking. Repeating something. She couldn’t make it outover the hum of the engine, didn’t know if it was to her or to himself but as she listened, as it droned on, she understood – the words, not the meaning behind them.
    â€˜I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t. Christ, I didn’t even know.’
    Was that what was stuck in his head? The it he couldn’t get out? Going round and round in his brain until he lost his hold on everything else. Fear and sympathy pounded in her chest as his repetitions got slower, fewer, finally petering out. Then he sat mute, staring through the windscreen. Or at it. Or at something in his mind.
    The