Chapter Forty-Two
Forty-Two
Out in the hall, Sloane, Aisha, and Jasper have changed out of their hospital gowns.
Jasper is back in the clothes he disappeared in, but Sloane and Aisha are outfitted in an odd assortment of items. A pair of gray sweatpants that Sloane has to roll three times at the waist and an oversized T-shirt that reads Blackridge Pe Department.
Aisha wears a pair of leggings that stretch halfway down her shins and a hoodie with uneven seams. Finn slips into the room to swap his thin pants for a pair of black sweats and another hoodie, oversized and pastel pink.
“We found our own stuff,” Sloane says, her jaw set, “but it’s too small now.”
Finn, easing his way back into the hall, gripping the wall for dear life, huffs a laugh.
“Yeah, those are my sweats, Sloane,” he says.
He has his typical cocky smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his tired eyes.
He blinks a few too many times each minute.
He looks like he wants to protest when I return to him, put an arm around his waist, but he sinks quickly into my side.
Most of his weight is shuffled onto me, and though I can tell he doesn’t like the show of weakness, he doesn’t step away either.
He’s who I’m most worried about. Jasper is almost entirely awake and steady. He hangs to my side, gripping my hand tight. Sloane and Aisha are still out of it, the latter more so, but they hold on to each other with ease.
Finn, however, is wobbly. A glaze to his eyes and an exhaustion that must be bone deep.
Even if he could walk by himself, I wouldn’t let him. It’s like I need convincing that he’s real, that this whole thing wasn’t some big hallucination on my part.
For months he was a specter, and that made falling for him safer. Easier. But now he’s here, tangible. All of them are. And as vehemently as I wanted to keep him, Sloane, and Aisha far enough from me that there’d be nothing to lose, I failed long ago. Now I don’t think I know how to let go.
“You can have them back later.” Sloane pats her thighs. “They’re so not my style.” She flashes him a grin. “I’m digging the pink, though.”
Finn snorts.
“If y’all are done comparing outfits, I’d really like to get out of here,” Aisha says.
“Jo?” Sloane asks. “Please tell me you got the code for the door.”
“Cecily won’t give it up,” Finn says.
“She knows it, though. If we could get her to talk—” I say.
“She won’t,” Finn says. “If we get that door open, all of this is over. She dies.”
An idea prickles in the back of my skull. It’s a horrible one, dangerous enough to get us all killed in the process. But if Cecily’s main goal is self-preservation, the only way to get her to save us is to make it worthwhile for her.
“Does everyone remember those stop-drop-and-roll drills from school?” I ask.
Finn’s brows knit together. He looks between the others and me, lips parting.
“Yeah, but there’s no fire,” Sloane says. “Lot of good rolling will do us.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. Look at Aisha and Jasper. “I need you to find rags or T-shirts or anything cloth. Get them wet. Tie them around your mouth. Get one for Finn and me, too.”
Finn shakes his head. “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s a bad idea—”
“Cecily won’t open the door for us. But I’m willing to bet she’ll open it for herself.”
“Are you willing to bet our lives on it?” Sloane asks.
I look around the hallway, this bunker these kids have spent years trapped in. A never-ending cycle of sacrifice for one man’s delusion about fighting for his daughter.
“There are likely sprinklers. Or some kind of fail-safe. This probably won’t work,” Aisha says.
“We’re screwed anyway, aren’t we?” I ask.
Sloane scrunches her nose. “I don’t know about this.”
“Know about what?” Jasper asks, looking between us all, concern twisting his small face.
“Your sister is going to burn the place to the ground,” Sloane says. “And us with it.”
I ignore that comment. To Finn and Sloane, I say, “I need you to get Cecily. Find something to tie her wrists with. I’m sure Holden has zip ties or something. I want her on her feet and out here when I get back.”
“Jo, you can’t go,” Jasper pleads. I kneel in front of him.
“I’ll be right back. And before you know it, we’ll be back with Mom and Margot and Dad and Paige. I know you want to go home. I think this is the only way to do that. But I need you to stay with Sloane and Aisha. Can you do that? Can you do everything they tell you?”
He looks like he wants to argue, but in the end he nods. I stand, bending down to kiss the crown of his head.
“He can do it,” Finn says. His voice is gentle as he adds, “He’s a Griffin.”
Jasper puffs out his chest.
“And Griffins are badass,” Finn says.
“Yeah. Badass,” Jasper mirrors.
I neglect to correct him for the curse word. If I can get him out of here, he can say all the bad words he wants. He’ll be alive to say them.
“I want you to hold Sloane and Aisha’s hands,” I say. “Hold on and don’t let go.”
Jasper nods. And despite not having met any of this trio before waking up in a scary room hooked up to sensors and IVs, he understands that we’re all on the same sinking boat. Sees them as the allies they are.
“I really hope you’re right about this,” Finn says.
—
The room of boxes and files I stopped in earlier is full to the brim with cardboard, paper, and whatever medications are jammed inside the boxes.
I have no way of knowing how flammable the drugs are, if a single spark will kill my slow-burn plan by blowing us all up, but there’s no time to consider it.
I make my way to the desk in the far corner, covered in files, some with coffee stains and watermarks. I dig through the drawers, steadily losing hope until I come across a small matchbook with four matches remaining.
One last wave of protest courses through me. But then an image of Harper, her bloody hand dangling through the shattered car window, presses into my skull. I couldn’t save her. I can do this, though. I can save Jasper and the others.
I start with the files on the desk. I spark one of the matches and light up as many pieces of paper as I can before the match dies.
The second I set to one of the cardboard boxes.
The box goes up quickly, crackling, already spilling smoke into the air.
I press my hand over my nose and mouth and tuck the matches away, slipping out of the room and leaving the door open.
I enter the room we found the clothes in next.
Two matches remain, and I use them on opposite sides of the room.
This room is smaller, and by the time I get the finicky second pile of clothes to light, the space smells like a campfire.
When I step back into the main hall, the smoke is billowing from the file room. The glass inside the medication boxes pops, joining the crackling flames. But there is no immediate explosion, so I take it as a victory.
Near the staircase, Jasper, Finn, Aisha, and Sloane have damp T-shirts wrapped around their mouths and noses. Cecily stands with her hands zip-tied in front of her. She isn’t wearing a cloth over her mouth.
“This is foolish,” she says as soon as I join them. I ignore her, taking the outstretched wet T-shirt from Finn and tying it over my face. “You’re all going to die.”
“And we’re taking you with us, Cece,” Finn says. He has a tight grip on her arm, and Sloane has an even tighter one on Finn’s other side to keep him steady. Without the code to the door, though, there’s nowhere for Cecily to run.
She looks at me, then back at Finn. Shakes her head.
A large crack from one of the rooms—more glass—makes her flinch. Smoke billows out both open doors, slowly creeping toward us. Sloane nudges Aisha and Jasper, and the trio lower themselves to a crouch.
“Please. Just—just let me go. There are fire extinguishers—” Cecily starts, pulling at Finn’s grip on her, but he holds firm.
“Yeah, no, that’s not happening,” he says. “There’s one way to stop this, and you know what it is.”
Cecily shakes her head again. Tears glitter in her eyes. “Please. I don’t want to die,” she says.
Guilt and fear prickle along my skin. Despite the increasingly warm hall, a shiver runs through me. I may have damned us all to a horrible death.
When I was seven, I wanted to prove I was mature enough to make the potatoes for dinner by myself.
But the dish was smaller than it should have been, and the cream the potatoes were cooking in was at the lip of the glass.
I knew better than to reach in bare-handed, so I snagged the square potholders from atop the counter.
Then I knelt, cracked open the oven, and pulled the glass dish out.
The moment I did, the cream splashed over the edges, dousing my hands in boiling liquid.
I remember the pain hitting a second after the cream—a searing, blinding pain lancing up my palms and wrists.
The dish hit the floor, shattering, spilling scalloped potatoes across the tile.
The second-degree burns made my hands and arms a blistered, swollen red mess for weeks. And for years after, chunks of skin on my hands were lighter than the rest of my arms. In time the scarring faded, but the memory of the moment the cream hit my skin never did.
I try to imagine that feeling coating my whole body. That’s the death I’ve condemned all of us to if Cecily doesn’t open this door.
She realizes it, too. Her gaze flicks between us and the door at the top of the stairs.
Already the smoke is filling the hall, seeping through the cloth I have tied over my mouth.
Cecily clenches her teeth, hard, then turns to me, and says, “I’ll open it.”
As Cecily lifts her bound hands, a beeping sound comes from the keypad on the other side and the door begins to open. For a moment I think it’s Ingrid, managing tangibility long enough to save us, but then a hulking form steps through the door. Oliver Holden.