Rewriting the Apocalypse novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Recruiter's Smile

Jo did not let it go.

By noon the next day, in a diner booth off the interstate, she was still looking at him across a plate of eggs neither of them had touched.

Sam sat beside her, eating for three.

"You said 'again,'" she said to Eli. "I haven't rewritten you. Not once."

"I misspoke."

"That's three lies."

"It's not a lie. It's a thing I can't say yet."

"That's a lie with a better excuse." She set down her fork. "Rule one was no lies. Do you know why I made it?"

"Because of me."

"Because on July ninth, last time, you drove me to that building and held my car door and told me it was only a few nights."

Eli's face did not move.

"You smiled at me," Jo said. "You said Dr. Faulk was wonderful and I'd be home by the weekend. You shook my hand."

"I remember."

"I believed you. That was the last time anyone was kind to me in front of me, and it was you."

Sam had stopped chewing.

The diner clattered around them, plates and orders and a radio playing something soft.

Eli's gloved hands lay flat on the table.

"I did that," he said. "I won't say I didn't. I took you because I was told it was a sleep study. By the time I knew it wasn't, you were already in the chair."

"And then?"

"And then I sat by it."

"Why?"

"Because I couldn't stop them," he said. "I could stay."

She wanted to hate him.

She had been sure of it for two days, and it would have been so much easier.

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