Thea
The time on the bomb keeps ticking, but Andi isn’t done.
She’s still working… and knocking things over due to her nerves.
The longer I watch the countdown, the more I sympathize with her.
She did what she thought she had to. She made a choice she thought was right, but it was a mistake. I’ve made plenty of those.
I’m still upset, and it will take time for us to be friends again, if we ever get out of here.
The more I watch her fret, the more I cave.
She needs her job. She never had support from her family, and we were that family for her.
SciTech used that knowledge to manipulate her. She’s as damaged as the rest of us.
“What’s taking so long?” Cole grounds out through clenched teeth.
Cole drops a cigarette on the floor and grinds it beneath his shoe. He stalks over to me, knife outstretched, and drops to his knees, slicing through the tape.
“Looks like you’re up.” He rips the tape from my face and I scream at the pain. Who needs a wax when there’s duct tape? I lift my fingers to my sensitive skin.
“I’ll be more help with both hands.”
“If you’re not helpful, the last thing you need to worry about is your hands.” He’s so close a drop of spit lands on my cheek.
He grabs my upper arm and hauls me off the couch, shoving me in Andi’s direction. My legs are jelly after sitting cramped for so long, and I fight the vicious pinpricks as I hurry toward her.
“What’s next?” she asks the second I’m in earshot.
“I don’t know.”
Her terrified eyes fly to mine. “You said you knew.”
I make sure Cole is out of earshot before I whisper. “I lied.”
“B-but he’s going to kill us.”
“Relax, Pierce will find us, I’m sure of it. We just need to hold out until then.”
“Okay.” She calms slightly, but her breathing speeds up as Cole stomps around the lab table, leering at us.
“If you can’t tell her the correct formula, maybe I don’t need you after all,” he says to me as he raises the gun in his hand.
“I know it,” I say quickly. The hazy memories have returned, and though I don’t know most of the names of things, maybe I’ll at least recognize what we’re missing. I hope.
“Then get to work.”
“What did Pierce do to you?” I ask instead.
My question catches him off guard, and he stills, his hand on his beard. From this angle I can see what tattoo goes up his wrist. It’s a snake with Chinese characters written on its back.
“This has nothing to do with Abernathy,” he says.
“Maybe not, but the way you fought with him last night looked personal… like you had something to prove.” Because he’s the dirty partner Pierce turned in. It makes sense now.
“He always thought he was too good for the rest of us—” He slams his fist on the table, knocking off a beaker as he cuts himself off. The beaker shatters on the ground, and he sneers at me. “Stop trying to get into my head. It won’t work.”
“That’s what Pierce said, too.” I flip my hair. “All I need is”—I peek at the time—“sixty minutes.”
He cocks the gun, letting it speak for him.
Can’t say I didn’t try.
He slips a flask from his pocket and takes a long sip, then stomps around the room, the gun in his hand. He’s impatient—not just because there’s a literal ticking clock. There’s more at stake for him here.
He’s irrational, with a loaded gun. This is not ideal for us.
“I don’t know if we have time to wait for your friend. He’s acting scary. Maybe he’ll let us go if I just make it,” Andi whispers as Cole peers out the far window. “Think, you saw the formula, right? What was at the bottom?”
I chew on my lower lip. “I have no clue, but maybe he won’t notice if we make the wrong thing. How would he know the difference?” He’s half drunk and half mad.
“He’ll know if it doesn’t work if he tries to use it on one of us.”
That would not be ideal.
“Think, Thea.”
I swallow and close my eyes, trying to see the formula in my memory. But I’ve got nothing. I open my eyes, and shake my head slowly.
She clutches her hands to her mouth, her fingers trembling. “Oh my gosh, we’re going to die. He’s going to kill us like he killed Henry.”
“He won’t…” The blood drains from my face, pooling like dread in my stomach. I never said Henry’s name last night. I didn’t want her to look up the news article. “How did you know who was dead in my room?”
She blinks. “You said it.”
I’ve forgotten many things, but I know I never said Henry’s name to her. “You knew him.” I retreat from the woman who has once again fooled me. “You made the drug he gave me.”
She inhales, rolling her shoulders back. Her desperation slips away, replaced with a hardness I’ve never seen before. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Thea. Stop being so na?ve.” She turns to Cole. “Jig’s up.”
Cole glowers, dragging a hand through his hair. “I told you it wouldn’t work. Your stupid drug did too much damage.”
“You’re in this together?” I ask. I’m not na?ve; I believe the best in people. It’s a good way to look at life. Healthy even. But how did I miss this?
“We weren’t,” Andi recoils. “But then this one had to go and kill Henry.”
“He was an idiot,” Cole says simply.
“He was admittedly not the best hire.” Andi takes off her glasses and rips the hair tie out of her hair, completely morphing in front of my eyes. This woman is no friend. She’s heartless and cruel.
My throat feels thick and I want to cry, but I’d never give her the satisfaction. Pierce thought SciTech sent Henry, but this changes everything. “You hired Henry to follow and drug me…” How far was she going to let him go? What if he had forced himself into my room? “Why?”
She drags her finger along the lab table. “While his construction crew was fixing some things in my lab last year, he started flirting with me and mentioned wanting to be an actor. I thought I’d give him a paying gig. He was cheap.”
None of this makes sense. “And you thought it was best to work with the man who killed him? You know he’ll probably do away with you, too, right? Unless that bomb is as fake as your act?”
“It’s real.” Cole snaps.
A barely discernable flash of fear shutters Andi’s features before she catches herself.
“Gavin was only going to pay Cole a quarter of what Lifeline offered me. He’d be stupid to turn on me.
” She sends a glare his way, but he’s too busy checking out the windows to notice.
“Who knows, maybe we’ll sell it to the highest bidder. ”
My head is spinning with just how deep this lie goes. No wonder Cole had everything he would need here to make the formula. Andi told him. Andi, who pretended to be on my side after we were kidnapped so I would tell her what she’s missing. Andi, the new chemist for Lifeline.
If there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that these two will never get that formula.
“I wouldn’t give you the drive, so you sent someone after me, to hurt me.
But you failed, and you’re going to fail again.
I don’t have the drive, and I’ve never been good at remembering chemical names. You know that.”
“No…” she says, then her lips turn up in a cheshire grin. “This was simply the first part of our plan. We’ll have everything we need when your boyfriend gets here.”
That’s why Cole keeps looking out the window. This is a trap.
“He’s not coming.” And for the first time today, I hope Pierce doesn’t run to my rescue.
“He will,” Cole says. “He’s a boy scout. That’s what made him a terrible agent.”
“I highly disagree.”
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
I’m not going to sit here and wait for Pierce to walk into a trap. I angle my body toward the table, wondering which chemicals I can mix to make a small enough explosion to distract them, but not a big enough one to set off the bomb.
Think. What did Dad teach me?
Even if I get away, where will I go? We are in the middle of a dense forest.
“I need to pee,” I say.
“Hold it,” Cole grunts.
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
Andi rolls her eyes and retrieves a phone from under the lab table. There was a phone? “You and your minuscule bladder. Take her,” she commands Cole, who doesn’t seem to be happy about the power shift.
“You take her.”
“I let you duct tape me and put me in the trunk!” Andi shoots back. “If you would have just taken care of this last night, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Fine,” he mutters.
He grabs my arm, squeezes me inside the tiny and extremely old bathroom, and stands in the doorway.
I note immediately that the window is too small to climb out of.
The wood beneath the toilet is rotted, and I worry I’m going to fall through as I step toward the horrendous toilet.
If it has ever been cleaned in its life, there is no evidence of such.
I turn. “Are you going to just stand there?”
He grunts and closes the door halfway. Not enough. I have no desire to actually use this toilet, but I’m going to have to now.
There’s a knock at the front door, and hope tries to weasel its way into my chest, but it can’t be Pierce. If he’s here, they’ll kill him. Maybe it’s a neighbor. Whoever is out there is my only chance.
“Help! Help!” I scream at the top of my lungs. Cole snatches me around the waist and hauls me into the kitchen, his hand around my mouth. I kick my heels at his shin, reaching for his pocket at the same time.
“Stop, or I’ll kill you.” His whiskers burn against my neck.
I stop kicking, and my fingers brush the key ring. Almost.
He drops me to the floor, and my fingers lose purchase of hope, but I hold on to the tiny sliver that remains. Maybe Pierce is on the other side of that door with an entire army behind him.
“Stay there and shut up,” Cole mutters as he puts more tape over my mouth.
But the second he turns for the door I work to pry it off.
Andi goes back behind the table, putting her glasses on and pretending to be another hostage, hiding her hands.
While she’s turned, I reach down, snatching up a piece of the broken glass at my feet.
I slip it between my hands as Cole opens the door a crack. “What are you doing here?”
“Taking back what’s mine.”
That’s not Pierce.
It’s Gavin Johnson.