Final Fall

by Heather W. Petty

  I might have felt pity for her if she hadn’t turned around and done the same to me. But that begged the question, why had she been confined? And, more importantly, what did she expect this captivity would do to me?

  With those questions and several more swirling through my thoughts, I expected I’d never be able to sleep that night. But just in case, I crawled back into the alcove and waited for two a.m.

  • • •

  It took about thirty seconds too long for my sleep-addled brain to figure out why it was so cramped and dark and what was making that irritating thunking noise right by my head.

  “What is it?” I groaned, perhaps more loudly than I should have.

  Everything got quiet for a few heartbeats, and then I heard the growling breaths and outright snores of my night watch. Moments later, two of the boards in the wall were dragged aside, leaving a small, screened opening right at the north corner. I switched on the flashlight and gasped.

  “Freddie!” I managed to keep my voice low, but I couldn’t help the tears that formed in my eyes. It hadn’t been a month without him, and still I felt a rush of relief on seeing him.

  “It’s you,” he said, pushing his fingers up against the screen.

  I pressed my fingers against his and felt a tear trace down my cheek, which I quickly wiped away. It wasn’t the same as having him with me in my cell, but I could feel the warmth of his skin.

  “Trent said I should throw rocks against this panel and then slide it over. I didn’t think. . .”

  “That I’d be on the other side? I had no idea why he told me to be here either. But I needed to see you. I’ve been throwing a fit about it.”

  “I’ve been going out at night to look for you, but I couldn’t get into the barn because of all the men around it. Should’ve known that’s where you’d be. Are you locked in there?”

  “Never mind about me. How are you three? Tell me everything.”

  “Sean’s fine. He’s Alice’s favorite, so he gets to do anything he wants. He even gets to learn fighting from Trent.”

  “But not you?”

  Freddie made a face. “Too busy.”

  I was pretty sure there was more to that story, but I let it go. “And Michael?”

  Fred stared at the ground and wouldn’t look up.

  “What is it? You have to tell me.”

  “Alice says we aren’t to tell you that.”

  “Since when do you listen to Alice over me?”

  “She says it’s for your own good. To keep you from becoming like Dad.”

  I felt my lip curl at the mention of our father, at Alice’s comparison of me to him. “She knows nothing.”

  “She says—”

  “Alice doesn’t get a say. She isn’t our family.”

  I watched his little face cloud over in thought, then clear again. He leaned in close to the screen, practically brushing the metal with his lips. He wasn’t smiling.

  “He’s different, Mori. Like a different person. And he doesn’t remember things.”

  My heart sped up, fueled by some overdosing combination of terror and rage. “But he’s still recovering, right? He’ll get better once he heals.”

  Freddie winced away from what he was about to tell me. “That’s what the nurse says to us, but not what she says to Alice.”

  “In private?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

  “When she thinks we aren’t around.”

  Suddenly nothing else seemed to matter. I needed to see Michael. I needed to see for myself.

  “Go back to the house.”

  “I’ve got a little time to talk still.”

  “Go back. I’ll meet you there.”

  Fred stared at me a moment, and then I heard the soft scraping sound of the boards moving back into place, but I was up and moving before they closed.

  Pushing my back against the outer bathroom wall, I kicked my feet up against the barn siding and leveraged myself to walk up. It felt like a much longer journey this time, maybe because I was trying to keep a flashlight balanced on my lap while I moved. Maybe because I was pausing more to make sure all my little scraping and stepping sounds hadn’t woken up someone who’d be ready to catch me on the other side of the bars. I couldn’t have that. Not tonight.

  When I was standing on the framing beam, I set the flashlight up on a rafter, then pulled myself up next to it. I’d done it. All was quiet and sleeping sounds on the ground floor, so I let myself flash the light on twice. Once to make sure of my path across the ceiling rafters and another to find footholds and handles that let me climb down a support column right by the front barn doors.

  I briefly wondered what Trent would have thought of this little performance, but then turned my focus to my next obstacle: how to get from the barn to the house without being seen. Through the open door, I could see a few soft lights in the main house, but there was no movement between the barn and those lights. I thought I could make out a few figures down the drive toward the front gate, but none near me—at least, none of the ones surrounding the barn that Freddie had warned me about.

  It was a risk, but I knew I didn’t have much time. I’d have to run for it and hope Trent’s perimeter men weren’t looking for me between the barn and the house. If I could run in bursts and keep out of the moonlight, I’d be okay.

  I made it all the way to the lush garden before I saw another guard. I wasn’t sure of his name, though I thought I’d heard Stan say it once. Grady, was it? Grady the guard? He was a big one, but somehow less imposing than the others. Maybe it was that he was only an inch or two taller than me. I hunkered down by a great tower of snap peas and waited for him to pass. He seemed to stare up at the barn for a little too long, then started to jog toward it.

  I didn’t have time to care about what he had seen. I had to get to Michael. So the minute he was gone, I made sure there wasn’t another pair of eyes staring me down from the darkness, and then I ran as fast as I could for the side kitchen door that Alice had taken me through just a few months ago. Back when she was just the blue-haired lady from my mum’s picture. Back when she was my mum’s friend and our caretaker. Before I knew what she’d really become.

  I was at once surprised and not surprised to find the door unlocked. We were in the very definition of countryside, where people rarely locked their houses, or so I’d been told. Still, Alice’s paranoia made me suspicious of how easy she’d made it for anyone to enter the place where she slept. But when an eager white face popped up to fill one of the glass panes of the kitchen door, I knew not to worry.

  Freddie had unlocked it. He smiled, then pulled the door open and jumped into my arms. It was an odd gesture from my oldest brother. He wasn’t overly stoic, but he wasn’t one for sentimentality either. I couldn’t think of a time in our lives when he’d hugged me that way. But knowing he was okay and knowing he’d been worried for me too made me wish he’d never let go.

  I held him as tight as I could for a few seconds, then gently pushed him away. I whispered, “Don’t want to get caught out here.” I looked around just to make my point, which was when I saw lights up at the barn. “We don’t have too much time now.”

  Freddie straightened up and nodded, then grabbed my hand and pulled me deeper into the house. It wasn’t a palatial estate, just a long ranch house, with a string of rooms leading to a long hall with more rooms. And Michael’s room was of course at the farthest end. But we reached it too soon, or at least that was how it felt. With my hand on the doorknob, I felt suddenly numb, like I wasn’t ready to see what was on the other side. Still, I opened the door.

  Chapter 3

  What I saw was anticlimactic. Michael slept alone in his bed, and all the medical equipment that had apparently traveled with him to this place was pushed off into a corner. The only clues to his affliction were his fluffy curls shaved down to almost nothing and the stark white headband that held some gauze to the side of his head.

  I sat next to him and gave myself a moment to take him in,
to listen to his breathing, to see that he wasn’t all that different from before. But then he opened his eyes.

  “MORI!”

  Fred and I shushed him at the same time, which only served to make him laugh.

  “Mori,” he whispered playfully as he clambered out of bed. He turned to Fred. “She’s my sister. I told you I remember the important things.”

  I saw a joyous light shining in his eyes, one that I’d never seen in him before. He’d always been so alert, watching for danger and ready to cower from it. But his vigilance also made him anxious for the ones he loved, concerned and ready to stand by them. Now he seemed free of all of that. Carefree. And even though I should have been happy to see him so relaxed, I couldn’t help but yearn for the frightened little boy who still needed to climb up into my lap when he was scared. Maybe he’d never be frightened again, but did that also mean he’d lost his ability to assess his surroundings properly? Would he never again be the clever, most observant boy in our family? Had we really lost him for good?

  I noticed I had tears in my eyes when Michael looked at the night-light by the door and tilted his head. “It’s got a halo,” he said. “Like an angel.”

  And in the next second, he went stiff as a board and started to deadfall back to the floor. I caught him and managed to help him down so that he didn’t injure himself further. But he wouldn’t respond to his name, and his whole body started to convulse.

  “Get the nurse!” I cried.

  But Freddie hesitated. “They’ll find you and take you away again.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ll find another way out. Now go!”

  He ran off and I was left with my helplessness and ignorance. I had no idea what Michael needed. All I could do was keep watch over his head and hope this wasn’t the end of his life. That I hadn’t somehow caused this.

  But I knew better than that. I knew exactly who had caused this.

  I made a list as I knelt by my brother’s body, his limbs tensing and flailing in equal measure. The names filtered through my grief to etch into my mind forever—all the people who had contributed to that moment, whether through negligence, ignorance, or loyalty. The list was my crusade, but it all centered around one name. And I realized rather quickly that my true revenge couldn’t start until that name was erased from my list, from my thoughts, from the planet.

  James Moriarty.

  My name. His name. And before I was done, there would be only one of us left breathing.

  I was so entrenched in my rage that when the tiny doll of a thing that was Alice’s nurse friend appeared at the door, I could only growl, “Fix him!”

  Whether she was surprised to see me there or angry to be ordered about by a teenager didn’t filter into her expression. She was entirely focused on Michael from the moment she stepped in the room, and of the four of us, she was definitely the one in charge.

  “On his side,” she said, spurring me to action.

  She dragged a metal cart from the corner to the bed and had a syringe in her hand before I could turn a still-flailing Michael onto his side. She pushed the drug into his hip and then helped me hold him there until his seizing subsided. Only then did our eyes meet. “If you have questions, ask now before Alice finds you,” she said.

  “Did I cause this?”

  She shook her head. “Probably not. There are lots of triggers. Common enough for him to have a few seizures during his recovery.”

  “Will he always have them?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s impossible to tell right now.”

  “But he’s still healing? He could get better?”

  The nurse met my eyes and laid a hand on my shoulder. “There was brain damage, but we can’t know how much will heal and how much won’t. He might not ever go back to how he was. Not completely.”

  I ran my fingers through the sweaty hairs at his temple, then found the nurse’s gaze again. “If I find a way out, if I can pay you, will you come with us?”

  “He shouldn’t travel now. He needs time to heal.”

  “But when he’s ready? Will you help us?”

  She sighed, clearly conflicted. “I’ll work on that from my end. If I can’t go, I’ll find someone who can. Now you’d better get back before—”

  “Where is she? And why is Michael’s light on?!”

  We were too late. It was all I could do to lift Michael’s still-unconscious body back up onto his bed before Alice, Stan, and Trent were rushing through the doorway. I had started to straighten Michael’s bedclothes over him, when Alice tried to push between me and the bed to get to him.

  “What have you done to my—?”

  I slammed her up against the wall, my arm across her neck and an open sneer tightening my lips across bared teeth. “He’s not your anything,” I ground out.

  Alice tried to respond, but she just gasped and gaped at me instead. My arm was pressing on her throat too hard, and I knew it, but I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. I didn’t want to. Just then, I wanted to keep watching her eyes grow wider with terror. I wanted her to fear me more than anything in her life.

  Stan came at me, and when he got close enough, I punched out as hard as I could at his sternum. It was a lucky shot, but it sent him back a few steps, enough to collide with Trent and give me a couple of more seconds with Alice. I stared into her eyes.

  “Next time I get out, I’m coming straight for your worthless life.” I leaned in close enough to smell the sweat on her. “So be good, Aunt Alice. Let us go now and I’ll spare you.”

  I was yanked off her by two giant hands that pulled my arms behind my back. I kicked out, but only managed to tag poor Stan in the shoulder again.

  “You can’t keep me locked up forever!” I screamed as Trent dragged me from the room and down the hall. Seanie came out of his room just as I was pulled around the corner, and I heard him yell my name, heard his running steps chase after me. But I only got one more glimpse of him being held back by Freddie as I was torn from the house and tossed out onto the dewy front lawn. I jumped up and ran back toward the house, but Trent pushed me back again, harder this time so that I lost my balance and fell onto the grass. I started to get up, but I was surrounded by a forest of legs, all attached to Trent’s guards, with no path through.

  “Are you done with your tantrum now?” Trent barked at me. He leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees while trying to catch his breath.

  I lay on my back and stared up at the sky, my own breaths coming in stuttered hiccups. Giant hot tears fell down my temples and into my hair, and I didn’t even try to stop them. I felt so heavy, like I could feel the gravity pulling me into the earth. My heart was heavy too, because Alice had beaten me yet again. No matter how many times I lashed out or screamed, no matter how many of her guards I incapacitated, I was stuck there until Michael was healthy enough to travel. We were all stuck there, and I couldn’t protect my brothers from inside a cage.

  When Trent finally lumbered back over to where I was, there was pity in his eyes, though not enough, it seemed, to leave me to my moment on the lawn. Or maybe he thought it more merciful to take me away from all the men who still stood in a circle around me, gaping at the spectacle. He hauled me up to my feet and used both of his hands on my shoulders to walk me back toward the barn.

  We’d almost reached the garden when I composed myself enough to whisper, “Help us.”

  “I can’t, so don’t ask again.”

  “I just want to take them and go. I’ll leave Alice alone if you let us leave.”

  Trent cursed under his breath and then shouted, “Stop fighting me!” He pinned my arms behind me again, then spoke quietly at the back of my head. “These men here are all for the money. And she’s promised them double once she escapes to America with you and those boys in tow.”

  “And you? Do you get triple?”

  Trent redirected me into the garden area, then released me so that I stumbled forward two steps. I turned on him, putting my hands up to fig
ht, but thought better of it the minute I saw his stormy expression. “I get my freedom,” he said.

  My hopes fell to dust. She had something on him. Something big. “What did you do?”

  Trent dusted off his hands and stared up at the barn. “Doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that I can’t help you leave.”

  “Then why did you help me earlier? With Fred?”

  Trent tried to ignore me. He put his hands back on my shoulders and turned me toward the barn. “Let’s go.”

  I thought I’d been so clever escaping out of the cage, finding such a large gap in the guards who usually surrounded the barn. Only it hadn’t been me at all. Trent had let me go to the house, let me see my brothers, but that was as far as his help would go. “Do you want to help us leave?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I want, so let’s go.”

  I turned to face him. “I’ll find a way.”

  Trent tried to turn me around again, but I wouldn’t budge.

  “Listen. I won’t ask you to help us escape. But if I can find a way to get us out without implicating you, would you look the other way at least?”

  He raised a brow and crossed his arms, but he wasn’t pushing us to move, so that was something.

  “Or you could let me kill her and you’d be free just the same.”

  Trent shook his head. “Can’t let you kill her.”

  He should’ve wanted her dead. Should have and could have killed her himself, and whatever she had on him would die with her. There was only one reason why he’d want to keep her alive. “If she dies, your secret is revealed?”

  He stared at me in a different way then, like he wasn’t sure I couldn’t read his mind or something. But he didn’t know that was my mum’s old trick. My mum’s crew had set up a system of sending letters out to one another when they died so that the money they’d earned together would never be lost should anything happen to one of them. No doubt Alice had taken out a similar insurance policy to keep herself breathing.