The Rules

by Nancy Holder

  He fell to his knees. Raising her hand, she found the knob and pulled herself to her feet by sheer force of will.

  She hit him.

  And hit him.

  And hit him.

  Then Robin ran out of the warehouse down toward the path. She slipped and rolled, over and over, bruised and hurting. She came to a stop among the blazing pines and manzanita bushes. Her face was bloody, her hair bouncing in her eyes. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.

  She had to get up. She had to move or she’d die.

  And then she remembered Praveen. Unconscious. Alone.

  Keep running, she begged herself. Please.

  A shadow moved in front of her.

  August.

  His face was sooty and blistered and he yanked her into his arms and hugged her. He then took her hand and started to run.

  “Praveen,” she said. “Praveen is up there.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t, Robin. Not if we want to live. We’ll come back for her. I promise.”

  “No. We can’t leave without her!”

  As she spoke, the bell tower tilted, the bricks sliding away from each other, crashing onto the fiery roof. The flames were rising; they were at least five feet tall—no, ten—and then the roof collapsed. The bell tower slammed to the ground and circular blasts of shells jettisoned into the air.

  The walls splayed outward. They would hit the shed. Robin bit back a wail and kept climbing back up the cliff with August. There were cuts and burns on his neck and hands. He was limping badly, but he didn’t slow down.

  The fire crawled over Jackson’s body.

  They made it to the shed, which had started to smolder. August bent over, picking up Praveen, and carried her firefighter style. The added weight significantly slowed him down.

  “Get out of here, get out,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”

  “I’m not going without you,” she shouted. “No.”

  He shook his head. The buildings were catching, one by one by one. The fish guts building, another shed. The heat sent them back toward the cliff. The wooden deck transformed into a field of fire. The concrete spiral staircase looked like a pinwheel in the inferno.

  Together they hurried down the road with the traffic barrier, where Kyle had found his crowbar. The burning factory loomed above them, threatening to slide down the cliff.

  “If it goes, get into the water,” August said.

  She nodded and they ran, Inky darting from out of nowhere again and nipping at their heels.

  Their progress was so slow; Robin and August were both spent. On the cliff, the factory fire lit up the night as it raged. Robin looked back over her shoulder, sure that at any minute Kyle would burst out of it and run them to ground. She was shaking, shivering, barely keeping it together.

  Each step was torturous, and she kept checking Praveen to make sure she was breathing. They were the only ones left. They had survived. And they would never be the same.

  They passed Hiro’s body and the exploded structure and were now walking on a primitive one-lane road. They’d only gone a few feet when August stopped abruptly, hunched over, panting so hard she was afraid he was going to have a heart attack.

  “I can’t go any farther,” he said. “If you see a car there, get the phone. Call nine-one-one.”

  “We won’t have service,” she said.

  “We’ll find some. Just go. I have to take a break.”

  He laid Praveen on the sand and fell down beside her. Inky licked Praveen’s cheek. Looking back at the warehouse for a few heartbeats, Robin forced herself to walk on. Everything in her wanted to rest, too. But they had to get Praveen to a doctor.

  And they had to leave this hellhole.

  She didn’t need a flashlight. Startled, she looked toward the ocean. Streaks of lavender and turquoise were glowing against midnight blue.

  Dawn was coming.

  Finally.

  She stopped to catch her breath, watching the sunrise. Inky yipped and sweat hit the back of her hand as she reached out a hand to pet him.

  In the gray light, a battered white car sat beside the road. As she approached, she saw a Maximum Volume sticker on the bumper. Her stomach did a flip. Warily she approached it, circling it to make sure there were no surprises on the other side. She thought of Thea and swallowed hard. Her throat was seared. Then she tried the handle. Locked.

  She looked around for a rock and once she found one, started pounding on the driver’s window. It didn’t take too many times until the glass shattered and fell like a curtain onto the ground and the seat. She unlocked the door and looked around for a cell phone or a spare key. Finding neither, she popped open the trunk.

  Cell phones, all of them, including hers. She grabbed for it, sobbing. There was no service, but at least she could walk to someplace that had it. Or they could take the battery out of this car and put it in one of the others they had a key to and drive out of here.

  Suddenly Inky growled. Robin stumbled as she turned.

  It was that stumble that saved her life.

  Kyle.

  His downward swing of a charred two-by-four slammed into the car instead of her. His face was covered with black soot, his ocean-colored eyes glittering with insanity. She threw herself at his hip, knocking him off balance. Then she kicked him in the crotch and Kyle doubled up, moaning. The two-by-four was too unwieldy but she punched and kicked him the same way she had Drew. He couldn’t reclaim the advantage; gradually he stopped moving and she got up, kicking him one more time for good measure.

  He lay silent as she dug the car keys out of his pocket with a shaking hand.

  She left him there, then drove back for August and Praveen.

  August laid Praveen in the back and sat with her. Although the light was coming, Robin had turned on the car’s high beams. She braced herself and locked the doors as they drew close to where she had dropped Kyle.

  There, bathed in the headlights, Kyle was sprawled on the ground, unmoving.

  And an animal was bent over him.

  Chewing on something.

  Robin shouted and hit the horn. The animal raised its head. There was blood on its muzzle. It stood for one moment as if mesmerized, and then it dashed away, disappearing among the pines the fire had not yet reached.

  Kyle was hurt; it had taken a bite out of his shoulder. By tacit agreement, they picked him up and put him in the trunk. She looked down at his bloodless face, the wound, and then shut her eyes against a flood of emotion before slamming the trunk.

  By then, the sun was shining on the water.

  The beach smoked. The charred skeletal remains of the warehouse seemed to roar like a furious, defeated beast.

  Then it fell silent.

  As silent as a tomb.

  —

  The police met them at the ER entrance of the hospital, and the trunk was opened while Praveen was whisked away to receive treatment. A well-meaning man in blue scrubs told Robin not to worry. Her boyfriend would be up and around in no time.

  Robin didn’t watch as Kyle’s gurney disappeared through the emergency room doors.

  “You’ll never see him again,” one of the cops promised her. “He’s gone for the rest of his life. Count on it.”

  Then Robin crumbled into August DeYoung’s arms.

  But she should have looked. She should have reassured herself that Kyle was well and truly gone. It felt like he was still beside her.

  Like he would never leave her, ever.

  14 MONTHS LATER

  “It’s the rope,” Carter said. “Strangulation is the sixth most common form of murder in the United States.”

  For a moment, Robin saw Heather swaying above her in the factory. Then she gave her head a shake and banished the image. Chills ran down her back on that hot July afternoon.

  Kyle’s trial had taken place during the fall of her senior year. It lasted for months. It was on all over the news. Kyle had been tried as an adult, and he was serving sixty years to life.
He confessed to planning all the murders, although Drew had carried out most of them. During his trial, Kyle had steadfastly insisted that he had not planted explosives in the Cheater Theater. He said Drew must have done it on his own, even though, he admitted, Drew swore that he hadn’t. There wasn’t enough evidence to find out what had really happened, and Robin guessed they would never know.

  Now it was July, and Kyle was in a maximum-security prison.

  The DeYoungs left Callabrese as soon as August graduated. Their restaurant was up for sale. Their mansion was empty. August was at MIT, and he emailed Robin at least four times a week. He kept talking about coming to see her, but so far, email was as close as he got. Praveen had lived, and her family had taken the DeYoungs and the Brissetts on a spa weekend in Mendocino, then quietly arranged to put ten thousand dollars into a college fund for Robin. After that, Praveen’s family moved to London, and Praveen and Robin Skyped. But in truth, they really didn’t have much to say to each other anymore.

  Because of the heat, the Brissetts were playing Clue in the kitchen, with all the windows open. They didn’t run the air-conditioning because it cost too much and there were still many medical bills to pay. Her mom insisted that the ten thousand dollars be used for college only. Robin had been accepted at UC Berkeley, not too far away, and a better school than any she had dreamed of attending.

  Robin could smell the fresh earth of the vineyards across the highway. The vines were thirsty. The nights were so sweltering and dry.

  “I think it was Colonel Mustard with the rope in the kitchen,” Carter announced.

  At Robin’s feet, Inky raised his head, growling like a tiny machine gun. A branch cracked in the backyard. Robin smiled. Her father and mother were on a stroll. Miraculously, Robin’s father had kept his vow and walked at her graduation three weeks ago. He said that he would dance at her wedding, whenever that might be.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Robin said, leaning down and scratching his head.

  Ignoring her, Inky yipped again, and the front door opened. Jinny Brissett came in first, followed by her husband. Robin lifted her hand in greeting. Then she realized they had come in the front door. The noise had come from the backyard.

  Robin crossed the room, scooping up Inky, and reached a hand toward the knob. She hovered there, hearing the crackle of fire and Beth’s shriek, that long, horrible death wail as Kyle plunged his knife into the center of her chest.

  Someone’s out there. Someone’s in our yard, Robin thought.

  “Honey? What’s the matter?” her mother asked.

  Robin froze with her hand around the knob.

  But Robin knew that Kyle wasn’t there. He wasn’t coming, ever.

  But if he did—

  I will catch you and I will kill you, she vowed, her chest tightening.

  Then she opened the door.

  Nancy’s Acknowledgments

  Thank you first and foremost to Debbie Viguié, my partner in crime, work, and fun. You are so wonderful. And thank you so very much to our brilliant and insightful editor, Krista Vitola, who helped The Rules become the book it is today. Thanks to Alison Impey, Heather Kelly, Colleen Fellingham, and the sales, publicity, and marketing teams at Random House Children’s Books. Thanks to my family, especially Belle and Tutu and our vacation fairy, He Who Loses at Firefly. Thanks, crazymombuds: Amy Schricker, Beth Hogan, and Pam Escobedo. Thank you, Stinne B. Lighthart and Debbie Nelson. A high-paw-five to Julia Escobedo, who takes care of all the animals and never stops being sweet. I love you, Point Loma Public Library.

  Debbie’s Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I would like to thank Krista Vitola for her clear editorial guidance and her fantastic sense of humor! I also must thank my awesome agent, Howard Morhaim, who consistently works hard on my behalf. I deeply appreciate you both. Thank you to my husband, Scott, and my parents, Rick and Barbara Reynolds, for their endless patience in listening to me while every last detail of this book was carefully crafted. I must also thank Jason and Rita De La Torre, Traci Owens, and Audra Berreth for their continued friendship and support.

  About the Authors

  Nancy Holder is the New York Times bestselling coauthor (with Debbie Viguié) of the Wicked saga and has written more than eighty novels and two hundred short stories, essays, and articles. She has written novels, espisode guides, short fiction, comic books, and other forms of “tie-in” material for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Teen Wolf, Smallville, Hellboy, Beauty and the Beast, Sherlock Holmes, Zorro, and many other “universes.” She has also written Nancy Drew stories as Carolyn Keene. She is a charter member of the Horror Writers Association and has received five Bram Stoker Awards for her supernatural fiction and a Scribe Award for the novel Saving Grace: Tough Love, based on the TV show by the same name. In 2012 RT Book Reviews awarded her their prestigious Pioneer in Young Adult Fiction Award. Many of her short stories have appeared in “Best of” anthologies.

  Nancy’s latest book is Futuredaze2: Reprise, which she coedited with Erin Underwood and which contains short science fiction stories for young adults from such authors as Neil Gaiman, Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, and Scott Westerfeld. She edits comic books and pulp fiction and teaches in the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program.

  Debbie Viguié is the New York Times bestselling author of more than two dozen novels and the coauthor, with Nancy Holder, of the Wicked series. In addition to her epic dark fantasy work, Debbie also writes thrillers, including the Psalm 23 Mysteries, the Kiss trilogy, and the Witch Hunt trilogy. Debbie also plays a recurring character on the audio drama Dr. Geek’s Lab. When she isn’t busy writing or acting, she enjoys spending time with her husband, Scott, visiting theme parks. They live in Florida with their cat, Schrödinger.