by Amy Engel
I slip my hands from my mittens and roll my hair into a quick knot, tuck it up inside my hat. “Better?” I ask.
“No,” Caleb says. “But it covers your hair.”
I roll my eyes at him, and he and Bishop share a grin.
“If you two are done being idiots, we should get moving,” Ash says, and now it’s our turn to share a smile.
“We’ll head through the woods,” Bishop says. “Come out as close to my side of town as we can.”
“Where are we going first?” Caleb asks.
Bishop looks at me. “I used to work with a woman named Victoria,” I say. “I think she might help us get to Callie.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Caleb asks.
“Then we deal with it when it happens,” Bishop says. “Once we’re in town, we’re going to stand out.” He gestures at our weapons. “But I’m hoping things are chaotic enough, or people are scared enough, that we can escape too much notice.” He pauses. “But if something happens, if Ivy and I get separated from the two of you, do what you have to do. Get out.” He tosses the guard’s ring of keys at Caleb, who catches them easily in one hand.
“We’re not leaving you behind,” Ash says. She has her determined face on, a little crinkle between her brows, her mouth drawn tight.
Bishop glances at Caleb. “I mean it. If they catch us, you two aren’t going to be able to do anything but get yourselves killed if you stick around. Find a way and get out.”
Caleb’s and Bishop’s gazes lock for a moment. Caleb nods. “We will,” he says. He slides the ring of keys into his pocket and lays a hand on Ash’s arm when she opens her mouth to protest. “If it comes to that, we will.”
“Okay,” Bishop says, and I can see some of the tension in his face ease, the same way I feel my own shoulders relax. Caleb is here for us, but Ash will always come first for him. If he has to leave us behind to save her, then he will. Strangely enough, the thought comforts more than it stings.
The woods we travel don’t seem familiar at all, although I walked them more than once with Bishop in the months we were married. Instead of a humid green canopy above our heads, the bare branches stretch gray and gnarled into the equally gray sky, making it impossible for me to get my bearings. Even the river is quieter now, the surface most likely choked with muting ice. But Bishop knows these woods better than anyone, could probably navigate them blindfolded and with both arms tied behind his back.
It’s the smell of fire that first tells me we’re getting close to the populated sections of town. Bishop doesn’t speak, just points a finger toward the sky where plumes of black smoke are rising. When we finally emerge from the winter-bare trees, we’re on the gravel road I recognize from the times Bishop and I made the trek to the fence. We are the only people in sight, which eases the tightness in my chest just a little.
Even with no one else around, Bishop keeps his voice pitched low. “When we get closer to town, I’m going to move fast. Stay with me.”
“Do you know where Victoria lives?” I ask him, because I have no idea, other than somewhere on Bishop’s side of town.
He nods, and we set off at a brisk pace, facing into the biting wind. The acrid smell gets stronger the closer we get to town, smoke burning the lining of my nostrils. My eyes sting, but I don’t know if it’s from the wind or the remnants of fire. Bishop doesn’t slow when we step off the gravel onto the regular paved road, the first houses visible in front of us. I keep my head down, shielding my face, and keep pace with his footfalls in front of me. From the corner of my eye, I can see that three houses have burned on this street alone, their blackened frames still smoldering. I don’t see any people, but I can feel eyes on us, have to fight the urge to take off at a dead run.
“How far?” I whisper.
“Not far,” Bishop whispers back, but I can hear the tension in his voice, his words pulled taut. Caleb and Ash have bunched up beside me, doing their best to protect me from curious eyes.
“We’ve got company,” Caleb says, voice low, and I glance up, see the way Bishop’s back stiffens. He doesn’t turn around.
“Where?” Bishop asks.
“Behind,” Caleb says. “To our right. Coming fast.”
It’s too early to engage, not if we can find any way to avoid it. If someone recognizes me at this stage, then even if we escape, they will know why I’m here and we’ll never get to Callie, with or without Victoria’s help.
“Get ready to move,” Bishop says. He veers left, three steps to take off and he’s running, weaving between houses, long legs jumping over the debris from a fire. I’m right on his heels, can hear Ash and Caleb behind me.
“Hey!” a man yells behind us. “Stop! Get back here! Where’d you get those weapons?”
Bishop vaults over a low chain-link fence and I don’t stop to think about it, just grasp the top with my mittened hand and leap. I don’t land as gracefully as he did, rolling onto my side, but adrenaline has me bouncing up to my feet like a spring and Bishop grins at me. I’m terrified, but I grin back. There is power in what we’re doing, in taking control, in making our own choices, even if they’re dangerous or maybe even foolish.
“Let’s go,” Caleb hisses as soon as Ash hits the ground, and we take off again, following Bishop through an alley between two brick buildings and out onto a residential street. In the near distance, I can see the remains of President Lattimer’s house, but Bishop doesn’t even spare it a glance, just leads us across the street and down the driveway between two small bungalows. The house on the left is dark blue, with a lopsided back stoop. Bishop leaps up the stairs and tries the doorknob. Locked. The top half of the back door is a series of small glass panes and Bishop uses his elbow to smash in the one closest to the doorknob, reaches in and turns the lock.
“Go, go, go!” he says to us. I can hear the sound of footsteps pounding down the driveway. We slip inside and Bishop closes the door, all four of us pressed up against the wall of the narrow hallway.
From outside the sound of men’s voices, at least two of them, maybe three. They pause in the backyard and I hold my breath, willing them to keep moving. After a few endless seconds, they do, the crash of bushes as they cross into the neighboring yard. A relieved breath gusts out of me, and Bishop leans forward, his hands on his knees.
“Are you okay?” I ask, one hand on his elbow. “Did the glass cut you?”
“I’m fine,” he says, twisting his head to look at me. There’s a noise from the end of the hall, a sharp, sudden inhale and we all spin, our bodies crowding out the light coming from the door and throwing the far end of the hallway into shadow. Even so, I can see that it’s Victoria standing there, frozen.
“Victoria,” I manage around my heartbeat in my throat, my fear-choked voice.
Her mouth opens, a wide O of shock.
From beside me, Caleb moves, brings his crossbow up, and points it right at Victoria’s head. “Don’t scream,” he says.
Chapter Seventeen
Victoria doesn’t scream. I didn’t think she would. She’s too practical for that, too levelheaded. In fact, she barely seems to notice Caleb at all. Her eyes bounce back and forth between Bishop and me.
“Ivy?” she says finally, taking a step closer.
Caleb’s arm tightens and I put a hand on it, pushing lightly. “It’s okay,” I tell him. “She’s okay.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off Victoria, but Caleb relaxes a little, the crossbow still raised but no longer aimed at her head.
“Yeah,” I say, pulling off my hat. “It’s me.”
I’m not sure what I expected from her, but a hug wasn’t one of the possibilities on my list. But she rushes forward, enfolds me in her arms. I’m so stunned it takes me a minute to respond before I embrace her in return. She smells like soap and the apple tea she always drank, and I close my eyes in an effort to keep them dry.
After a minute, Victoria pulls back and I do, too, neither one of us quite sure what to do with our hands now that we’
re no longer hugging. “I can’t believe you’re alive,” she says. “I can’t believe you’re here.” She glances at Bishop, reaches out and grasps his hand. “It’s so good to see you both.”
She ushers us into the kitchen, taking a second to pull the curtains shut on the window above the sink. We introduce Caleb and Ash while she points us to her kitchen table. “Are you hungry?” she asks, setting a kettle on her stove.
I’m about to say no; eating seems like a waste of valuable time, but Caleb answers before I can. “Yes,” he says simply. “We’re hungry.” He looks at Bishop and me with a shrug. “We have to eat. It might be a while before we’re able to again.” His words remind me once again why he’s survived beyond the fence. Basic needs come first.
Victoria slices a loaf of bread, thick with nuts and raisins, and slathers the pieces with butter. She pours us all warm tea as we eat. I try to remember my manners and not just stuff the bread in my mouth like an animal, but it’s been more than a week since we’ve had much beyond jerky. The rabbits on the fire are only a faint memory on my tongue.
Victoria sits with us, but she doesn’t eat. Her fingers wrap around a mug of tea she doesn’t drink. “Ivy,” she says finally, “you can’t be here.”
I glance at her. “I know. We’ll leave. I don’t want to put you in danger. More than we already have.”
Victoria shakes her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. You can’t be in Westfall at all. They’ll kill you.” She pauses. “The way things are now, there are people who will kill you the second they see you, no questions asked.”
“How are things now?” Bishop asks. “We’ve heard about what’s going on, but how bad is it, really?”
Victoria looks at him. “Not as bad as it was a few weeks ago. But still bad. Ivy’s dad disappeared right after they arrested Callie. Some people think your father had him killed, Bishop. Others think he’s hiding out somewhere orchestrating the rebellion.”
I try to pretend she’s talking about a stranger and not my father. Not the man who taught me to read at the same time he taught me to hate. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“No.” Victoria pushes her mug away. “Everything is still too angry. I think if your father were dead, it would have died down with him.”
“So he’s still got a hand in it?” Bishop asks.
“Probably,” Victoria says. “But things haven’t been blameless on your father’s side either, Bishop.”
Bishop’s jaw tightens. “I never thought they would be.”
“He’s clamping down on everyone he suspects of disagreeing with him. Even people who were just friendly with Ivy’s family.”
No wonder the jam man ran when he had the chance.
“I still don’t understand what you’re doing back here,” Victoria says to me. “You survived out there. You found each other.” She glances at Ash and Caleb. “You found other people. Why come back?”
I take a sip of tea, delaying the moment when I’m going to have to speak her name, watch the judgment in Victoria’s eyes. “Callie,” I say finally.
Victoria stares at me. I don’t see judgment in her eyes after all, just a weary disbelief. “You can’t save her,” she says. “I can’t believe you’d even want to try.”
“She’s my sister.”
“She’s poison,” Victoria says without hesitation. “The same as that vial she gave you.” She holds up a hand. “Don’t try to deny it. That was never you, Ivy. It was always her.”
I don’t even realize my fingers are biting into my thigh until I feel Bishop’s warm hand over mine, his fingers gentling my grip, giving me something else to hold. “Everything you say may be true,” I tell Victoria. “I’m not defending her or what she did.” I squeeze Bishop’s hand. “What she tried to get me to do. But she’s still my sister, and I can’t let them kill her.”
“How do you think you’re going to stop it, Ivy? Not even Bishop can stop it.”
I take a deep breath. “You can stop it.”
Victoria sucks in a laugh. “Me? How do you figure that?”
“Let us into the courthouse,” Bishop says. “That’s all you have to do. We’ll take it from there.”
The screech of Victoria’s chair against the floor is loud in the silence. She pushes back from the table, stands and crosses to the doorway, turns back, pacing. Caleb looks at Bishop and me in turn, asking the question with his eyes: what’s she going to do? Bishop raises just his fingers from the table, telling Caleb to wait.
“How can you even ask that of me?” Victoria says. She’s not yelling, but her voice has the hard edge I used to hear when she talked to prisoners. “She was trying to get to the guns!”
“But she didn’t get to them. She was never going to. I gave my father the wrong code.”
Victoria’s eyebrows go up at the same time Bishop makes a startled noise in his throat. One more detail I never gave him. Sometimes all the secrets I’ve held feel like the layers of an onion; peel and peel and there is always one more waiting. “Regardless,” Victoria says, “her intention was to get the guns.”
“But she didn’t. She didn’t get them,” I repeat. “She doesn’t deserve to die for the attempt.”
“That’s the worst logic I’ve ever heard,” Victoria snaps. “So because we were able to stop her before she actually killed anyone, she gets a free pass?”
“No one’s saying she gets a free pass,” Bishop says. “We’ll get her out of here, but then she’ll be beyond the fence, just like us. Believe me, that’s not a free pass.”
Victoria shakes her head, a humorless smile on her lips. “And how’s that going to work? The three of you are going to be a happy family? You think Callie’s going to bounce your babies on her knee someday? Be a doting aunt?”
I’ve already thought about what happens after, and I know Callie can’t stay with us. It would never work. And she would never want to, anyway. “No,” I say. “Once we get her out, then we’ll go our own ways.” I stand up and cross to where Victoria is standing near the doorway. “I know you don’t like her. I know you don’t understand why I’m doing this.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
“But I also know you aren’t bloodthirsty, Victoria. You don’t really think her punishment fits the crime.”
Victoria closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose. “So what are you thinking? I let you in and you waltz out of there with her?”
Just the fact that she’s asking the question tells me she’s going to do it. But I keep my voice calm when I answer. “All you have to do is unlock the basement door. And tell me where to find a key to her cell. That’s it. We’ll get her out.”
Victoria opens her eyes, pins me with her gaze. “Without hurting anyone.”
I nod. “Okay. Without hurting anyone.”
“Ivy,” Bishop says, from his seat at the table, “we can’t promise that. We may—”
“I’m not doing it otherwise,” Victoria says. “I’m not putting other people’s lives on the line for Callie.”
I look back at Bishop. “All right,” he says. “We won’t kill anyone. That I can promise.”
Victoria blows out a breath. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“I’m doing it for you, Ivy. Not for her. I’m doing it because I feel like I let you down, when they put you out. I should have done more, tried harder to stop it.”
I’m already shaking my head before she’s done speaking. “That wasn’t your fault. It was my choice. I don’t blame you.”
Victoria’s smile is small and bittersweet. “I’ll unlock the door in an hour. Be ready. The cell key will be on the top of the doorway. She’s in the very first cell.”
My heart is starting to pound harder just listening to her words. By the time we get to the courthouse it will be raging in my chest. “Okay.”
“Once you get her out, you need to go, Ivy. Get out of Westfall. Fast.”
“I want to try to f
ind my father, too,” I say, “if I can. But I promise we won’t stay long. And we won’t get caught. No one will ever know you helped us.”
Victoria nods. “Okay then,” she says, voice brisk. “Let’s get this done.”
Before we left Victoria’s, she gave me a scarf to wrap around the lower part of my face. She also tried to convince Bishop and Caleb to leave the rifle and crossbow at her house, saying they made us too conspicuous, but they both refused. After living beyond the fence, going anywhere without a weapon makes us all feel naked. Better to take our chances being singled out because we have weapons than to go out on the streets unarmed.
Victoria leaves before we do, tells us to follow half an hour behind. While we’re waiting, anxious eyes on the clock on her kitchen wall, Caleb asks how far it is to the courthouse.
“It’s pretty close,” Bishops says. “We can stick to backyards and stay off the streets as much as possible.”
When it’s time to leave, Bishop pauses at Victoria’s back door. “Listen,” he says, looking at Caleb, “when we get there I want you and Ash to stay outside.”
“What? No!” Ash protests.
“What if something goes wrong?” Bishop says. “What if we need your help to get out? Or what if there’s no point in helping us? I want you to be able to get away.”
“Makes sense,” Caleb says.
“How about you give us twenty minutes?” I say.
“If we’re not back by then, you can come looking,” Bishop says. “Or you can take off if things have turned a corner.”
Ash huffs out a breath. “Doesn’t anybody care what I think about this?”
Bishop smiles. “Not if it means putting yourself in more danger than you are already.”
“Just knowing that you’re going to be waiting for us makes me feel better,” I tell her.
“Fine,” Ash grumbles. “God forbid I get in on any of the action.”
The walk to the courthouse goes faster and more smoothly than getting to Victoria’s house. We don’t see another person, although a few times I see curtains twitch in windows as we pass through empty backyards. But no one tries to stop us or comes out to ask what we’re doing, probably thankful we just keep moving.