“She doesn’t need a wheelchair,” said Sean. “Get up, Becca.”
She didn’t get up. She was wailing softly into her hands. He reached for her arm but didn’t touch her. Like he couldn’t. Like there was an invisible wall between them.
I scanned the room, landing on a pair of crutches and leg braces against a cabinet on the opposite side of the room. Whoever had brought her here had left them far out of her reach. A surge of fury rose within me so immediately that I nearly screamed.
I sprinted toward them, gathering the intricate black plastic braces and the modified crutches, and returned to the floor.
“How do I put these on?” I demanded.
“Becca, look at me,” said Sean.
A Sister, about my age, pushed through the door.
“Oh dear!” she said. “Did she have a fall?”
“Back off,” I growled at her. She stopped short.
“There’s a fire drill,” she said cautiously, as if we couldn’t hear it. “We’ve got to move everyone we can outside.”
I shuddered to think about the people that couldn’t be moved.
“How do I put these braces on?” I demanded of the Sister.
Sean didn’t wait for an explanation. He scooped Rebecca up off the floor and carried her out of the room.
“She’s being transported to another facility,” I said between my teeth. The Sister’s mouth had formed a small o.
The siren was much louder in the hall. I stuffed Rebecca’s crutches under my arm and clapped my hands to my ears. Girls darted into rooms, shouting directions at one another. I inspected the chaos, convinced that this was some ploy to catch us.
Tucker was nowhere to be seen.
“The stairs are that way!” shouted the doctor over the noise. “The elevators shut down when the alarm is pulled!” He was pushing a man in a wheelchair toward the emergency exit. The patient cried out in pain, pressing his hands to his ears.
My breath was coming fast, raking my throat. We hurried to the emergency exit and joined the crowd of Sisters assisting amputees and wheelchair-bound patients down the stairs. Two girls had dropped their sweet Sister façade and were snapping at each other about how to get a patient’s walker out of a crack in the handrail. I prayed that this was simply a drill; they were leaving a lot of people behind.
“Blend in,” I told Sean unnecessarily. I might be able to do so, but not him. He was the only soldier in sight.
It didn’t matter what I told him anyway. He wasn’t listening.
Rebecca’s hands remained over her face, a shield from Sean’s blank stare. Her legs hung over his arm. I could not swallow the lump in my throat.
Truck’s words from before the blast kept echoing in my head. What were we supposed to do with him once we got him out? We can’t support that kind of care down here.
She’s okay, I told myself. We’ll make her safe. We’ll take care of her. She’ll be fine.
Please let her be fine.
We’d made it to the landing of the third floor when I saw the other soldier. He was running up the stairs, shoving through the crowds of Sisters into the second floor hallway.
My heart stopped cold.
Chase.
We’d taken too long. He’d come in after me. He’d probably been the one to pull the alarm. And now he had no idea where to look, and was going the wrong way. I opened my mouth to shout for his attention, but he had already disappeared behind the heavy silver door.
“I’ll meet you at the car,” I shouted in Sean’s ear, throwing the braces and crutches onto Rebecca’s lap. Without another word I shoved down the last flight of stairs toward the second floor.
My heart was racing as I burst through the heavy door. There were no Sisters here, no doctors either. I heard the weakened call of one of the patients left behind in his room and fought the urge to follow his voice.
“Hello?” I screamed over the siren. I didn’t want to say his name if I didn’t have to. Eerie worship music rang between the blasts of the siren. My blood burned in frustration. How was he supposed to hear me with all of this racket? How could I hear him?
“Hello!” I shouted again, this time running around the nurse’s station. I slid on the slick linoleum floor, grasping the circular desk for balance and sending papers flying through the air.
We saw each other at the same time. He didn’t hesitate. He ran toward me from the far side of the hallway. As he drew near I could see the fear creasing his forehead. We collided; he grabbed my hand and whipped me after him.
Our way was blocked.
We stopped short, and I slid again, righting myself just before I fell. A soldier stood before the door ten feet away, his face drawn with anxiety and fear, his gun raised at Chase’s chest. I didn’t have to glance at his gold name badge to know it read HARPER.
In a flash, Chase had drawn his weapon and jerked me behind him.
Nothing happened. No one fired.
I felt every part of me extending like roots down my legs, through my heels, and into the slick linoleum. I couldn’t move. I was frozen. Stuck. It was like a nightmare, when the monster is chasing you down, and you are helpless to defend yourself.
“I know who you are!” Harper yelled over the noise. “Jennings and Miller. We followed your case in basic training. Put down your weapon and come with me.”
He was new on the job; I’d figured that downstairs. If he’d followed our story in training, he must have just been sent to work in the past few weeks.
More blaring siren. More church music. I willed my body to move, to do anything, but it was like I was shoving through wet concrete.
“We’re leaving,” Chase responded. “You can let us leave. You can let us walk through the door. No one has to know.”
Chase lowered the gun a fraction of an inch. Every beat of my heart felt like an explosion in my chest.
No, Chase, I thought. Don’t trust him. But gone was the soldier who’d rescued me from the reformatory, the cold, fragmented soul who knew death too intimately. Back was Chase—my Chase—who believed in change.
The soldier’s hand was visibly shaking. Beads of sweat blossomed on his hairline and dripped down his jaw. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he attempted to swallow. His fear was all around us, choking us, more potent than my fear, which only demanded survival. His fear weighed options. Weighed the consequences of Chase’s proposal.
If the MM knew he’d let us escape, they would kill him.
“Lower your weapon!” Harper repeated again, his voice breaking.
I thought of Billy, and how his voice broke because he was only fourteen. This soldier was only a few years older. He could be the same age as me. We could have sat next to each other in high school. We could have taken the same tests, and stood in line to punch our meal passes in the cafeteria. We could have been friends in a different life.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Chase said.
“Do it or I’ll shoot you!” he shouted.
A frightened cry snuck out between my lips. The soldier’s weapon jerked toward me, and I saw, straight on down the barrel of his gun, how the whites of his eyes surrounded his brown irises.
My still body grew hard and fragile like glass. If he fired, I would shatter.
“Look at me,” Chase said firmly. “Don’t look at her. Look at me.”
I begged my body to move. I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t.
The soldier aimed back at Chase’s chest.
“I’m taking you in,” he said. “I’m giving you five seconds to lower your weapon.”
“They taught me that one, too,” Chase said. “Back in Negotiations. I trained here, too, did you know that?”
“Four seconds,” said the soldier. His hands were still shaking.
The breath shuddered out of my body. My heels moved at last. My fists gripped. The freeze had passed.
“Come with us!” I heard myself say.
His gaze jerked my way, but Chase blocked his path.
/>
“Three.”
“She’s right,” Chase said, the urgency now clear in his voice. “Come with us. We can protect you.”
“Lower it! Two seconds!”
“Please!” I begged.
“You don’t want to shoot me,” Chase said rapidly. “I don’t want to shoot you either. I promise, we can help you. We can protect your family.”
The soldier twitched. Chase lowered his weapon slowly, aiming it at Harper’s knees.
“We can keep your family safe,” continued Chase. “I know what it’s like. They hurt someone I cared about, too. They threatened to hurt her more if I didn’t follow orders, but I got out and you can do the same.”
“You don’t know that!” Harper choked on the words. The tears blurred my vision.
“I got her away from them,” Chase said. He removed one hand from the firearm, and held it up for Harper to see.
The soldier’s gun dropped an inch. Then another. A wave of dizziness came on, and I felt my knees begin to buckle.
“Come with us.” Chase took a tentative step forward.
“I can’t…” the soldier was crying now, that heaving, snot-filled crying that wracked spasms through his body. I couldn’t hear him over the sirens, but I saw it, and that was enough.
“You can,” said Chase. “Let’s go.”
One more step forward.
The soldier’s chin shot up, and he burned Chase with an agonized, distrustful stare.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.
Everything slowed.
I saw Harper’s gun lift, as if pulling through water. I saw his eyes change, the lights in them go dark. Chase lunged for his arm, hitting him hard in the break at the elbow, and then they were locked together, chest to chest. They hit the ground in a streak of blue. Chase’s gun slid out, bumping against my foot. Before I could bend to retrieve it, the sound of gunfire ripped through my body, and I screamed.
Chase scrambled back.
We sat in stunned silence for a full beat, watching the blood pool on the floor from Harper’s chest. He didn’t cough or choke, he didn’t rasp words like the carrier in Harrisonburg. He died instantly.
And then, in a flood, everything within me burst into motion. My ears rang, my pulse scrambled. Even my muscles burned to run.
Chase felt Harper’s neck for a pulse. He grabbed the dead boy’s uniform and shook him. “No!” he shouted. And then, “Get up, man. Come on. Get up!”
I grabbed Chase around the waist, feeling the quake echo through my body. He was still shaking the dead soldier; both guns were lying to the side.
“Chase!” I grasped his face, turned it toward me. His face was blank with shock.
“Look at me!” I shouted, just as he’d told the soldier moments before. “Look at me, Chase! We need to go! We need to get out of here!”
His breath came in one haggard gasp, and as his eyes readjusted, his hands cupped mine, and he staggered to a stand.
And then he was back. He grabbed my hand, scooped his weapon off the floor, and together we skirted around the body through the exit.
CHAPTER
20
THE chaos in the stairway was thinning, but the way was still blocked by Sisters guiding patients down the steps. They hadn’t heard the gunshot over the alarm. They didn’t know what we’d done.
Chase released my hand so we wouldn’t draw attention. The loss of his touch felt like something breaking off of me. My airway tightened, made it hard to breathe.
Put it away, I told myself. Lock it up. That was the only way to get out of here alive.
Finally we reached the bottom of the stairs. I kept my head down, peering through my fringed curtain of black hair as we entered the foyer, where we’d nearly had ID scans, and then through the buzzing door, into the lobby.
It wasn’t hard to find Tucker. He was alone, and a foot taller than the Sisters. His brows lifted in surprise when he recognized Chase, but he had the good sense to flatten his expression. As he steadily shoved toward us, my gaze darted from side to side in search of an ambush in these last twenty feet before our freedom.
There was a bottleneck effect near the door. We packed in tighter. When Tucker got close enough, I fought the urge to punch him in the face. He’d been the one to tell me Rebecca was here. He’d known she’d been transported to this facility, so he had to have known why, and he hadn’t once mentioned her injuries.
But he’d also gotten us inside.
“Have you seen Sean?” I asked him.
“I saw him carry her outside,” he answered. “She can’t walk?”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know,” I whipped back, too quietly for anyone to hear above the chaos. His eyes changed then. From that haughty, hateful edge to something different. Something I’d never seen before.
“Would it have mattered if I did?”
It was honest, maybe the first honest thing he’d said to me. And if I were being honest with myself, too, I would have said no. It wouldn’t have mattered. I would still have come here.
Each shuffling step filled my head with more crazy thoughts: Harper wasn’t dead; he was chasing us, blood oozing from that anemone-shaped hole in his chest. Others were coming, too. Maybe the siren had created too much interference for the radio, but he could have called us in before that.
We had to get out of here. I wanted to push them all out of my way and run, but I couldn’t. We were packed like sardines; I couldn’t lift my arms, much less shove someone.
Finally we toppled out the exit and onto the sidewalk. The van was still there, ready to go. My chest tightened when I saw how Sean struggled to load Rebecca in the backseat.
Chase and I walked as calmly as we could around the hood, but once I was seated in the middle row he slammed the door behind me. Tucker was already in the passenger seat. Sisters and patients filtered onto Reformation Parkway, blocking our path.
My fingers tapped on my thighs as Chase eased onto the main drag.
“Get out of the way,” Tucker told the crowd. His voice angered me. Why had he helped us? Good deeds didn’t erase evil, even if they did even things out a little. Did he think he could make up for what he’d done?
Did I think I could make up for what I’d done? My friend might never walk again. Harper certainly wouldn’t.
I glanced to the backseat. Rebecca was sitting on one side, hunched over her knees. Sean was on the other, his face pale. They were not touching.
“Sean,” I said between chattering teeth. He looked over slowly, as though there was a delay in his hearing. What was he doing? She was broken and frightened, and his distance only reinforced that she was damaged.
“I didn’t know you couldn’t walk,” he said. His stare returned out the window.
“Sean!” I snapped. Rebecca sobbed loudly.
Tucker fell back in the seat, hollering excitedly. The path had cleared, and soon Chase was speeding down Reformation Parkway away from the hospital.
“What happened to Sprewell?” I demanded.
“We had a disagreement about my discharge status,” Tucker answered, high on adrenaline. “He’ll be sleeping it off in the elevator while they clear the building. Good thing the place isn’t really burning, huh?”
“You pulled the fire alarm?” I asked incredulously. I thought it had been Chase, but it made sense. Chase wouldn’t have been able to get past the front desk if not for the commotion.
“Go ahead and thank me,” he answered.
I didn’t. But for the first time, I felt a glimmer of respect for him. For the person who’d let us believe Rebecca was healthy and the last person to see Cara alive. For my mother’s killer.
Like a blow it hit me. We’d killed someone, too. We’d crossed a line today—one we could never take back.
Tucker kicked back in his seat. “What a rush. I get why you like it.”
“Shut up,” said Chase coldly.
“Come on, Jennings,” he said, obviously unfazed by the impenetrabl
e tension in the car. “I thought we were pals again.”
“Shut up!” Chase roared. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
I felt a sob bubble up in my throat.
No. Not yet.
We passed a line of supply trucks, all blue with the FBR logo and motto on the side. So much blue. Blue everywhere. Watching.
“Where are we going?” My voice trembled.
“To the waterfront.” Chase tapped the radio on his belt. “Truck is waiting.”
My heart took a momentary leap from its fear. If ever we needed a safe house, it was now.
* * *
THE bruised sky was high, leaving the air beneath chilly. In the morning light it was easier to see the devastation from the War. Most of the area looked like the airfield. Piles of debris and obtuse rebar, mountains of cinder blocks, and everywhere, the fuzzy peach-skin dust. My eyes drew to a thirty-story building behind the tunnel exit that was somehow still standing, even though it looked like a giant monster had taken a bite out of its waist. It went on like this for miles, until the lake consumed the horizon.
I had the sudden recollection of talking with Chase so long ago, listening to his story about when the bombs had hit Chicago. He’d been evacuated with the other students, and then hitchhiked to a town outside the city limits to meet his uncle.
The uncle who’d later abandoned him.
The uncle we would soon see if we made it to the safe house alive.
We all watched vigilantly for shadows, but no one had tracked us from the base. It seemed insane to me that we’d made it this far without being followed, but with so many uniforms around it was easier to melt into the crowds.
Chase took a hard left and the van descended into a dark abandoned parking garage. The tires sloshed through the water coating the floor. In the headlights I saw the FBR two-ton truck that had made its return from the Indiana checkpoint last night.
There were only eleven people left. Truck was outside, waving giddily. Jack and the supply boy with the almond eyes were among the others. I was glad not to see anyone who had been suspicious of us earlier.
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