Pull

by Anne Riley

“What?” I protest. “How am I supposed to—you know—if I’m handcuffed?”

  “Just till we get to the loo.” He pins my wrists together behind my back and clicks the handcuffs into place. “Let’s go.”

  He gives me a little push so that I walk in front of him. We exit the main holding area and turn left down a hallway. Our footsteps echo along the cement block walls, which are painted a depressing shade of taupe. One of the fluorescent lights above us flickers and dies, throwing a section of the floor into shadow. At the end of the hallway, looking out onto Borough High Street, is a glass door with iron bars on the outside.

  And on the other side of that door is a beautiful black-haired girl with panicked eyes.

  Mark lurches in surprise behind me. “Whoa! What—”

  Casey beats on the door and twists her head around frantically. “Help me!” she shrieks. “Let me in! I’m being chased! Help! HELP!”

  Mark stops in his tracks. I spin to face him. “Aren’t you going to let her in?”

  He’s sweating again. “Uh…”

  “She’s in trouble!” I shout.

  He wavers for another moment, but then Casey flings herself onto the door and claws at it while throwing a blood-curdling scream through the glass.

  “Don’t move!” Mark says to me. He hurries to the security desk and pushes a button underneath it. The door buzzes and Casey wrenches it open, her face flushed. She scrambles through the metal detector, which offers a feeble beep of protest. Then she hurls herself into Mark’s arms. He catches her, his hands fumbling over her back, and falls into the wall behind him.

  She lifts her face from Mark’s shoulder, panic replaced with satisfaction. “Thanks, mate.”

  Two things happen simultaneously—Casey’s right hand brushes along Mark’s hip and slips the baton out of its holster. Her left hand dips into the waistband of her jeans, underneath her shirt, and pulls out a gun. She aims both weapons at Mark's head and takes several steps back.

  My plan was to try to use my phone—which Roberts conveniently forgot to confiscate—in the bathroom. Casey’s plan was to storm the place with a gun. I will never be on her level.

  Mark’s mouth opens in silent shock and his breathing turns to gasps. “Wh…what…?”

  “Casey!” I shout. My body is buzzing with adrenaline.

  “Don’t you dare,” she says through her teeth as Mark’s fingers drift toward the walkie-talkie. He closes his mouth and holds up his hands.

  Casey stands perfectly still. Her hair twists in wild tangles around her shoulders. “Give me your keys. Put them on the floor and kick them over to me.”

  He hesitates for a second, then slowly unhooks the key ring from his belt and drops it on the floor.

  “Kick,” she commands.

  He kicks—a stuttered motion that paints a clear picture of his unfortunate gym-class days. The keys skid across the linoleum and stop in front of Casey’s leopard-print flats.

  “And the walkie-talkie.”

  Sweat cascades down his face. “Please don’t shoot me.”

  “I will if you don’t do what I say.” She cocks the gun, sending an ominous click echoing around the space. “The walkie-talkie.”

  He drops it with a loud clatter and kicks it over. Casey squats on the floor and places the baton beside her, keeping the gun pointed at Mark. She hooks the key ring on her thumb and clips the walkie-talkie onto her belt loop. Then she picks up the baton and steps sideways, in my direction.

  “Do. Not. Move.”

  Mark nods shakily, staring at the floor.

  Casey keeps the gun on him until she reaches me. Shoving the baton into her waistband, she separates the keys with her free hand. Her grip falters and the keys fall to the floor, their metallic clinking magnified by the concrete wall. Mark eyes her as she bends to pick them up.

  When he thinks she’s not looking, he takes a tiny step toward her.

  “WHAT DID I SAY?” she screams, swinging the gun toward him.

  He freezes, swallows several times, and sinks to the floor. “I won’t do it again.”

  “That’s right. You won’t.”

  Casey’s eyes are bright with adrenaline as she stuffs the gun into her waistband and chooses a key from the ring’s endless options. Her breathing accelerates as she moves behind me, trying key after key on my handcuffs, none of them working. I stare at the ceiling, waiting to feel the lock release.

  Something moves in my peripheral vision.

  Mark lunges toward the security desk and grabs the phone. A click sounds above our heads, followed by his flustered voice over the intercom.

  “Help on main floor! Alistair! There’s a woman with a—”

  Casey pulls the gun out of her jeans and fires.

  THIRTY-TWO

  MARK GRABS HIS THIGH AS THE BULLET LODGES JUST above his kneecap. Screaming, he falls to the floor and writhes in agony.

  “What did you do?” I shout. My voice sounds like it’s coming through a thick layer of cotton.

  “Albert said to break you out of here. So that’s what I’m doing.” She stows the gun in her waistband again and pushes on my shoulders until my knees bend. “Get on the floor and pull your legs through your arms.”

  I can’t focus on what she’s saying through Mark’s screeching and the ringing of my ears. “What?”

  “Get. On. The. Floor.”

  I lower myself to the floor and she rolls me onto my side. “Now. Put the handcuffs underneath your bum and pull your legs through. Quick.”

  This is the same move Max tried when he was on the ground by the fountain. Casey helps me shove my legs through the loop of my arms until my feet scrape over my hands. I push up from the floor, still trapped in the handcuffs but much more mobile with them in front of me.

  A crazy thought occurs to me.

  I’m pretty sure shooting a guard isn’t going to turn out well for Casey, and maybe—just maybe—I can erase what she’s done and get us to this same point some other way. I have to want it, though. Really want it.

  Closing my eyes, I muster my desire to change what happened.

  Reach for the mental handle, I think.

  I hold my hands out in front of me.

  “What are you doing?” Casey cries.

  Search for it. Curl your fingers around it.

  I close my eyes and try to block out Mark’s moans of pain, but my fingers find nothing.

  Focus on the exact moment you want to return to.

  The moment Casey appeared at the door. I picture it in explicit detail.

  There’s still nothing…

  …no, wait. There’s something. I’m touching something!

  “Get up,” Casey hisses. “Now. Hurry!”

  The mental handle. I feel it!

  “Wait,” I say, because I’m pretty sure I could get a grip on that handle if I just had a few more seconds—

  But Casey’s hand is wrapped around my wrist and she’s tugging me to my feet. Whatever I felt, it’s gone now, and my heart is heavy with frustration and disappointment. That might have been the moment I Pulled for the first time.

  “If you Pull, I’ll just have to do all of it again,” she snaps.

  Anger bubbles up inside me. “Not necessarily,” I say as she examines the lock on my handcuffs. “There might be another way—”

  “There might be, but we need to save our energy for a Pull that really matters. Not one that might make things more convenient.” With a nervous glance at Mark’s whimpering form, she drops my cuffed wrists and grabs my elbow. “No time to unlock them here. We gotta get the boys. Show me where they are.”

  I’m about to argue with her again, but then Mark groans loudly and I remember the other guard is probably on his way down here. Casey follows me as I run down the hall to the holding room, where Albert and Dan are standing with their faces pressed between the bars. They let out a string of swear words as we burst into the room, and I can’t blame them. They just heard a gunshot and Casey looks like a lioness ru
nning down her prey, tousled hair flying around her shoulders and eyes sharp with focus. I don’t know how I look, but if it’s anything like I feel, then I’m pale as a ghost and rigid with fear.

  “Who fired a gun?” Albert demands, his face tense.

  “Me,” Casey says as she shuffles through Mark’s keys. “I’ve just screwed us all by shooting that guard in the leg, but he didn’t give me a choice. The good news is that I got his baton, too.”

  “You did what?” Albert shouts.

  She pushes her hair away from her face. “I’m sorry! He tried to stop us!”

  Albert and Dan both gape at her.

  “Casey,” Dan says slowly, “surely there was another way—”

  “There wasn’t,” she shouts, and he holds his hands up in surrender.

  Mark’s walkie-talkie, which is hanging from Casey’s belt loop, clicks on. “Mark, you there? Where on the main floor are you?” It’s Alistair, the guard who took over Mark’s outdoor patrol.

  We all freeze.

  “Hurry, Case,” Dan mutters.

  “I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying.”

  She flips through a few more keys before finding one that looks a little larger than the others. We hold our breath as she shoves it into the lock. It doesn’t turn.

  “Pick another one,” Dan says, shooting worried glances toward the door.

  “Shut up, Dan, I’m going as fast as I can.”

  The walkie-talkie clicks on again. “Mark. Come back, mate. You all right? Was that a gunshot?”

  “Somebody has to respond,” I say. I unhook the walkie-talkie from Casey’s belt loop and hold it—with both hands, since I’m still handcuffed—through the bars. Albert takes it from me and clicks the button on the side.

  “Yeah, mate,” he says in a terrible impression of Mark’s wobbly voice. “I’m here. Gunshot, did you say?”

  There’s a long pause. Then Alistair’s voice again. “Who is this?”

  Albert grimaces and throws the walkie-talkie on the ground. It clatters across the floor and bumps into Dan’s feet. “He knows something’s up. Casey?”

  She thrusts another key into the lock. It doesn’t fit. “Working on it, working on it.”

  An exclamation sounds in the hallway. Alistair must have come to investigate and found Mark bleeding on the floor.

  We all stare at Casey, who’s flying through keys at the speed of light.

  “Why aren’t you trying them all?” Dan snaps at her.

  “Because they’re too small, the key has to be something like”—she holds one up, longer and thicker than most of the others—“this.”

  Footsteps pound toward the door as she sticks the key in the lock. It slides in with a jagged clicking sound. She turns it to the left.

  The lock opens.

  Dan and Albert burst from the cell. We all run toward a door at the back of the room, opposite from the footsteps coming down the hallway. Alistair erupts into the room just as we’re leaving. His baton is drawn and he looks ready to use it.

  “Hey!” he shouts, but we’re already through the door and sprinting down another taupe hallway.

  I push myself to run as fast as the others, but the handcuffs are making it almost impossible to build up any speed. Casey and Dan are way ahead of us. Albert’s holding back because of me. My heart screams and my lungs burn for air; my legs threaten to give out. The hallway turns right and we skid around the corner. The echo of Alistair’s pounding feet trails us. It doesn’t sound like he’s getting any closer, but we’re not losing him, either.

  An alarm wails above our heads. Red lights flash on the walls.

  Please let us find a door. Please please please.

  “HERE!” Casey screams as we run past a narrow alcove. I only catch a glimpse of her as we speed by, but I think she’s standing next to an exterior door.

  We almost fall over each other trying to change directions. Albert grabs my arm as we stumble after her through the door and into the parking lot. We tear past a row of police cars to the parking lot gate, duck under the automated barrier, and race to the sidewalk on Borough High Street. A black Fiat slows next to us and Casey wrenches the passenger door open. “Get in!”

  Albert shoves me into the car and then tumbles in behind me. His shoulder rams my hip as we crawl over the center console into the backseat. Dan climbs in behind us and Casey leaps into the passenger seat, grabbing onto the headrest as Isaac slams his foot down on the gas. The air fills with the smell of burnt rubber as we peel away from the curb.

  Isaac swerves into traffic. He shifts gears and presses the pedal to the floor. We roar around cars, buses, and black cabs before turning onto a main road and matching our speed to everybody else’s.

  “So,” Isaac says drily. His dark eyes find mine in the rearview mirror. “How’d it go?”

  “Casey shot a guard,” Dan says.

  Isaac lets out a low grunt. “That complicates things.”

  “Look,” Casey says. “There wasn’t another option, okay? He was calling for help! If I hadn’t shot him in the leg, we wouldn’t have had time to get out of here, and then Rosie’s brother would be d—”

  She cuts her sentence short and I realize she’s staring at Albert. His expression is clearly telling her to shut up.

  “Can I have those keys, Casey?” he says pointedly. “Rosie might like to have the use of her arms back at some point.”

  She tosses him the keys and he pulls my hands into the space between us. The fourth key he tries pops the lock open and I throw the handcuffs to the floor. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “How much farther to the hospital?” I ask, rubbing the raw spots on my wrists.

  “Couple of minutes,” Isaac says. “I’ll stop the car near the entrance. Since you four have a price on your head, I’ll go inside and find your brother. If there’s any trouble, I’ll com you.” He looks at me in the mirror again. “No use showing your faces unless we’ve got Mortiferi to fight.”

  I nod and start biting my nails, a habit I thought I kicked last year. Casey transfers the gun and baton from her waistband to the glove box, and then turns on the radio.

  “To see if they report us,” she explains as Isaac frowns at her.

  She turns the volume up, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. I can’t hear anything. I know Isaac is right, I shouldn’t go in the hospital unless Paul is in serious danger, but I’m not sure I can resist the temptation.

  “Hey,” Albert says in my ear.

  I look at him.

  “It’s going to be okay. Isaac is going to walk into that hospital and find your brother. If he needs protection, we’ll back him up. There’s a good chance we’ll all be arrested again before the night’s over, but Paul will be okay.” He tries to give me a smile, but ends up wincing. “Ouch,” he says, reaching for his eye.

  Without thinking, I touch the deep purple bruise that has bloomed at the outside corner of his eye. The skin is swollen and he flinches a little as my thumb skims over it.

  “Sorry,” I say absently.

  He shrugs. “I’m used to getting beaten up.”

  “No, I mean I’m sorry for everything.” My hand drops to his cheek. I brush over it with my fingers and then drag them over his scar before letting them fall away.

  He closes his eyes for a moment. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “I’m not sure about that. My presence here seems to have caused extra work for you.”

  “Servatores have been fighting the Mortiferi since ancient times.” He manages a small grin. “It’s not like you started it.”

  I nod, wanting to feel better, but the knot of guilt in my stomach doesn’t ease. Albert must see it in my eyes, because he slips his hand over mine.

  “We’re almost there,” Casey says, turning the radio down. “Everybody ready?”

  “Yes,” I say. The hospital appears through the windshield, and immediately I know something’s wrong.

  Police cars swarm the
parking lot, their lights flashing so brightly I have to squint. Half a dozen officers mill around on the sidewalk, talking to distraught nurses and scribbling things on notepads. Dread reaches into every part of my body; something very bad has happened.

  We pull into a bus stop lane in front of the hospital. Isaac puts the car in park and unbuckles his seatbelt. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Dan says, and we all look at him. “Oh. Right. Price on my head. Never mind, I’ll stay here.”

  Isaac opens the door. “Don’t go anywhere unless you absolutely have to. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He slides out of the car. Casey climbs over the gearshift to the driver’s seat.

  “Something happened to Paul,” I say, watching Isaac walk up to a policeman. “What if they’ve gotten him out somehow and changed him?” My voice breaks on the words.

  Casey looks at me over her shoulder. “Then we’ll find him.”

  “We don’t know that Paul had anything to do with this,” Dan says. “It might be a coincidence.”

  I nod, but I’m not even close to convinced.

  Isaac’s dreadlocks swing across his shoulders as he talks to the cop. The policeman’s expression is grim, and he’s shrugging a lot. I can’t see Isaac’s face because his back is to us, but the tense set of his shoulders sets my nerves on edge.

  Finally, Isaac turns around and strides back to the car. Casey cranks the engine and reaches across to open his door.

  “He’s gone,” Isaac says breathlessly as he lands in the passenger seat.

  The car explodes with questions, and I blink a dozen times, trying to clear the fuzziness from my vision. His words hang in the air like a fog.

  “I’ll tell you more once we’re moving,” he says. “Drive, Casey.”

  She pulls out of the bus lane and filters into traffic. “Okay. What’s going on?”

  Isaac turns around to face me. “The white-haired man came in at the same time as your brother. On the way to the hospital, a paramedic put his shoulder back in its socket, and that was the only injury he had. When they parked, the white-haired man forced his way out of his ambulance and ran over to Paul’s. Then he pulled a knife out of his boot and stabbed one of your brother’s paramedics. The other medic almost subdued him, but he didn’t move fast enough. The white-haired man got into the driver’s seat and drove away with your brother still in the back.”