Knives and Lightning

Olivia lunged forward against her captor’s grip, sobbing. She fixed her gaze on Jason as he knelt in the shallow stream, his arms pinioned behind him and a knife held at his throat by Marx.

“Let him go!” she screamed, tears and rain equally mingling on her cheeks. “And let me go!”

The hands holding tightly on her arms squeezed harder. “Shut up,” growled the boy holding her.

Marx smiled cruelly. “Tell us where it is, and we will.”

“Don’t listen to him, Liv,” gritted Jason, his cold green eyes locking with hers. “He’ll kill us as soon as he gets what he wants.”

“I’ll kill him first if you don’t tell,” suggested Marx, his knife digging slightly into Jason’s skin.

“I don’t even know where it is!” she screamed, pleadingly. “They never told me!”

“Does your boyfriend know?”

She looked at Jason, her vision blurred with tears, and another hopeless sob wrenched out of her throat. Olivia’s knees gave out under her and she dropped slowly into the water opposite Jason, her shoulders protesting against the unusual angle. “Please, Jace,” she wept. “You have to tell them!”

Jason looked at her, his eyes flickering faintly with pain. “I can’t, Liv. You should know that.”

She felt water from the stream wash higher up her legs, and she looked up the flow to see that it did seem to be rising. “Please, Jace, the water’s rising!”

“I can’t,” he said fiercely. “I’m sorry, Liv, you know I can’t!”

Sobs wracked her violently again from head to foot. “But why?” she demanded. “Why can’t you just tell them and be done?”

“You know why! He’ll just kill us anyway! There’s no point in betrayal if you’re going to die either way!!”

“You don’t know that!” she screamed.

“Yes, I do! It’s the way guys like this work, Liv! They don’t give any quarter!”

The water rose higher again, washing above her hips now. “You’re going to kill us, Jace!” she yelled. “We’re going to drown!”

“Maybe we should!” he yelled back, a flash of lightning suddenly illuminating the dark sky behind him. “They won’t get anything that way!”

The knife in Marx’s hand dug deeper into Jason’s neck. “If you don’t talk with the knife in your neck, Marlowe, maybe you will when it’s in hers,” hissed Marx. He looked at Olivia’s captor, a vicious and hateful expression on his face, and threw the knife to him. Instantly the cold metal froze to her throat, and she grew still, her eyes wide and her heart pounding. She sought Jason’s eyes, her trembling lips parted in a pleading expression as tears flowed from her eyes. Thunder followed its brighter companion at that moment, drowning out the pitifully breathless sobs catching in her threatened throat.

Jason’s face tightened, the sharp edges hardening dangerously, and highlighted suddenly by another brilliant flash. But he remained silent.

She feebly tried to move her lips, but her voice would not follow. She wetted them fearfully and barely managed to whisper “Please,” her eyes fixed on Jason’s face. The thunder drowned her out again as the water crept to her chest.

But then he looked at her, his own eyes holding a pained expression in their depths. “Liv,” he said, his voice cracking, “I — I can’t.”

The look in his eyes jolted her conscience awake, as the waters of the stream began to course past her ribs, and her face grew composed and resolute. Her lips closed and ceased to tremble, and she swallowed, her eyes gleaming with a new, hopeless determination. “I — I’m sorry, Jace. I understand now. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough before.”