“Time,” Dad said.
The vents scraped shut, and the doors to the rooms slid open. The men moved in as the lab filled with the acrid scent of dissipating gas. I pushed away from the wall, closer to Sam’s room. Next week was supposed to be his week for blood work. The fact that I wouldn’t be able to see him up close, in person, to touch him, tugged at cords I didn’t know I had.
One man stood at the front of Sam’s room like a guard, while his partner crouched down at the foot of the bed. The second man secured Sam’s wrists behind his back with a zip tie before pulling a syringe from an inside jacket pocket. He picked off the orange cap. Then he froze.
“What the hell?” He stepped over Sam’s legs. “Shit.” He whipped his gun from its holster as Sam rocked back, jamming his foot up and between the man’s legs.
I sucked in a breath. The man fell to his knees. The one on guard fumbled for his gun. Sam leapt in the air, swinging his tied-off wrists beneath his feet, putting his hands in front of him in one quick motion.
“Cell three! Cell three!” Riley shouted.
Sam tore the gun away from the first agent and cupped it in both hands. He didn’t waver. He pointed. Shot. Blood splattered across the wall. The man slumped over. I tasted the gas, bitter in the back of my throat. I jammed myself in beside the row of filing cabinets.
Sam shot again. The man on guard collapsed. Someone yelled. Dad ducked toward the control panel. The men in Cas’s room came barreling out into the lab, guns ready. The woman guarding Trev’s room hunkered down at the partition wall. Sam aimed for the light fixtures in the ceiling and took out three rows as one of the agents in Nick’s room tried a countering shot.
The bullet missed Sam. The room plunged into a murky half darkness.
Riley took a shot, the gun sparking to my left. Concrete pebbled from the wall. I could just make out Sam at the front corner of his room, gun up. Thwap. Thwap. Two bodies hit the floor. The sound rooted me in place.
“Turn the gas back on!” Connor shouted, and Dad fumbled at the controls.
The woman sprang from her hiding spot, and Sam killed her with one pull of the trigger. Another agent rushed in, landing a punch to Sam’s jaw. As Sam stumbled back, he brought the gun up and put a bullet in the man’s forehead.
Riley ran to the exit as Sam eliminated the last two guards.
I was next. Sam was going to shoot me. On purpose or by accident, I didn’t know.
Hands gripped me, wrestling me to my feet, an arm closing around my neck. I thought it was Dad, trying to save me, but the barrel of the gun rammed against my skull said otherwise. Connor’s cologne filled my nose.
“Sam!” Connor yelled.
Sam went rigid. Though I could see nothing else, I could see that—the sharp line of him in the dark. My head swam.
“Put the gun down.” Connor tugged me toward the door. He was crazy if he thought Sam would quit, just like that. Maybe I’d spent the last several years of my life trying to make Sam’s a little bit better, but he wouldn’t trade his freedom for me.
Dad hovered near the controls. Sam, hands still tied together, eased the gun toward the floor. His jaw tensed, like his brain didn’t agree with what his hands were doing.
He was throwing away his freedom for my life. The realization left me both cold and hot all over. I couldn’t stand to watch the unfairness of it register on his face. I didn’t know what any of this meant, or what Sam intended to do once he broke free of the lab, but if I had to pick sides, I had to pick Sam’s.
This was my chance. And I’d always known my answer.
I swung an elbow back, catching Connor in the stomach. He doubled over, sending his gun skittering across the floor. Sam shot. The first bullet clipped Connor in the shoulder. I ducked as a second bullet hit him in the side. He dropped. Riley fired a shot from the hallway and Sam flattened himself against the floor.
“Get me out of here!” Connor ordered as Riley popped off another round.
The lab door swished open. Sam rose to a crouching position. He aimed. I pressed myself harder into the wall.
Riley hooked his arms beneath Connor and dragged him out. Sam pulled the trigger again, but the chamber answered back with a hollow click.
“Go! Go!” Connor yelled.
The door closed behind them, sealing with a definitive whump. The keypad beeped from the other side and the bolts slid into place.
I shakily rose to my feet. My stomach swirled with nausea. I looked to Dad in the far corner. What now? I thought. But Dad just stood there, his fingers twitching like he needed a straw to hold.
Sam put the gun down and sprang into action. He stole a pocketknife from one of the dead men and flipped it open, then used it to split the zip ties on his wrists. He went to Cas’s room and shook him until he woke. Cas sat up, dazed. Sam went down the line, waking the others. I remained at the mouth of the hallway, unsure of what to do with myself.
I swallowed hard against the uneasiness sitting at the back of my tongue, like I might vomit at the slightest encouragement.
“We need to move,” Sam said to Cas. “I doubt we have much time—”
“Wait.” Dad stepped forward. The boys tensed. “I’m not going to stop you”—Dad held up his hands—“but you have to think about what you’re doing. Do you have a plan?”
Sam plucked another gun from the floor. “My plan starts with getting out of here.”
“I can help you.” Dad held up a set of keys. “Take my car. It doesn’t have a tracking device on it, but you’ll want to switch vehicles soon. If Connor is badly injured, you have a half hour, tops. There’s a safe house not too far from here. I’m sure that’s where Riley took him.”
Sam took the offered keys. “Cas, gather the guns. Trev and Nick, check out front.”
“The door is locked—” I started.
“Five-zero-five-nine-seven-three,” Sam interrupted.
That wasn’t the code I used to get in and out of the lab. Not that I thought Riley or Connor had locked us in using the normal one.
Nick slid a daggered look my way as he passed and I mashed myself even closer to the wall. Trev punched in the numbers and the lab door hissed open.
“H-how—” I sputtered.
Sam released the gun’s clip. Finding it empty, he tossed it aside and dug out a fresh one from a dead man’s vest. He slammed it in place with a snick, clack. “The keypad beeps when you punch in the numbers. You just have to know which tone comes from which number.”
I stared at him. He’d figured out the combination by listening? While he was being shot at?
“So now what?” Cas said. He and Sam glanced at Dad.
The line of Dad’s Adam’s apple sank as he swallowed, and I wondered if he felt like throwing up, too. “Go ahead,” he said.
I took a step. “Go ahead with—”
Sam pointed the gun at Dad and shot.
A gasp fluttered at the back of my throat and anger set me in motion. I wanted the gun gone before Sam hurt someone else, even though there was no one left but me.
Sam saw me coming, and tossed the gun to Cas, who snatched it easily from the air. I threw a punch, connecting first with Sam’s jaw, then his shoulder, before he grabbed me by the wrists and swung me around. He shoved me into the wall between his room and Nick’s, the bullet-riddled brick piercing my back.
“It won’t be fatal!” he shouted. “He’ll be fine.”
I fought for air but came up short, like I was drowning, like the panic had filled my mouth, my nose. I gulped. Sam tipped my head back and air trickled into my lungs. This was not happening. Those men were not dead. And Dad was not shot. And I was not so close to Sam that I could feel his breath on my face.
I squeezed my eyes closed and inhaled in the controlled way my instructor had taught me. I never thought I’d need to use the lessons, not like this. Slowly, the hysteria ebbed. Sam righted me, put his hands on either side of my face, and forced me to look at him. I blinked, the edges of my vision fuzzy and smattered with black, but I could see the green flint of his eyes and it reminded me of so many nights spent down here with him.
I thought I could trust him. I thought he was my friend.
“Why did you shoot him?” I choked out. “He never did anything to hurt you.”
“When Connor realizes we escaped, he’ll think your father was harmed in the crossfire. This way he isn’t an accomplice.”
I harnessed what little courage I had left and clenched my teeth. “Then will you shoot me, too?”
He cocked his head and sighed, exasperated. “No,” he answered. Short and sweet. No explanation. I wasn’t sure what that meant, or if I even cared.
He and Cas searched the men lying on the floor, swiping anything else that might be useful. I hurried over to my dad, sidestepping the trail of smeared blood left in his wake. From what I could tell, he’d been hit in the right leg, just above the knee.
I took his hand in mine. “Are you okay?”
He tried to straighten but winced. “Of course.”
“Should I put pressure on it? Or tie something around it?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
I sniffed back a sob. My hands were still shaking. “You’re not fine. None of this is fine.”
The lab door slid open again and Trev and Nick appeared. “Three men out front,” Trev said. “Armed. Looks like they’re waiting for us.”
“So we need to move,” Nick added.
Dad pushed me. “You need to go with them.”
“What?” The word came out a squeak.
Dad called to Sam over my shoulder. “Take her with you. Please. I won’t ask for anything else.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said.
“Anna. Listen to me.” Dad pulled himself up straighter. “Stay with Sam. Don’t come back here. Ever. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not leaving you,” I repeated.
“You can’t be here when Connor comes back. You have to stay away from him.”
“But—”
“Go.” He pushed me and I stumbled. Trev caught me and put a reassuring arm around my shoulders. Nick made a grumbling noise.
“Samuel?” Dad motioned to him and Sam crouched by his side. “Go to 4344 West Holicer Lane, Elk Hill, Pennsylvania. It’s a safe location. Someone will be there to help you.”
Sam nodded and rose to his feet. “Thank you,” he said before ushering us toward the door.
I wrenched myself away from Trev and wrapped my arms around Dad’s neck.
“I’ll find you later,” he said. “I promise. In the meantime, don’t call. It won’t be safe.”
I stood up, trying to obey but paralyzed by the fear of leaving him here like this, of disappearing with someone who had just killed eight people in front of me.
The lab door slid open and clean air filtered out the smell of death and stale gas. I looked back at Dad as we left the lab, until the hallway blocked him from my sight.
7
“GIVE ME THE LAYOUT,” SAM SAID ONCE we reached the top of the stairs.
Trev stuck a gun in the waistband of his pants and pointed at the front of the house. “Picture window in the living room. There’s a man stationed there.” He gestured toward the kitchen. “Man hiding in the garden. Clear shot from the window above the sink. The third is out by the garage.”
I didn’t know Connor had more agents than the ones he’d brought into the lab. Either that, or he’d called for backup. And if they were already here, how long before more arrived?
“Cas, out front,” Sam said. Cas nodded and disappeared down the hallway. I watched him go. The sight of him inhabiting the space that had been only mine and my dad’s was unsettling. “Nick, take the garage?”
Nick disappeared into the small half bath across the hall.
The vents scraped shut, and the doors to the rooms slid open. The men moved in as the lab filled with the acrid scent of dissipating gas. I pushed away from the wall, closer to Sam’s room. Next week was supposed to be his week for blood work. The fact that I wouldn’t be able to see him up close, in person, to touch him, tugged at cords I didn’t know I had.
One man stood at the front of Sam’s room like a guard, while his partner crouched down at the foot of the bed. The second man secured Sam’s wrists behind his back with a zip tie before pulling a syringe from an inside jacket pocket. He picked off the orange cap. Then he froze.
“What the hell?” He stepped over Sam’s legs. “Shit.” He whipped his gun from its holster as Sam rocked back, jamming his foot up and between the man’s legs.
I sucked in a breath. The man fell to his knees. The one on guard fumbled for his gun. Sam leapt in the air, swinging his tied-off wrists beneath his feet, putting his hands in front of him in one quick motion.
“Cell three! Cell three!” Riley shouted.
Sam tore the gun away from the first agent and cupped it in both hands. He didn’t waver. He pointed. Shot. Blood splattered across the wall. The man slumped over. I tasted the gas, bitter in the back of my throat. I jammed myself in beside the row of filing cabinets.
Sam shot again. The man on guard collapsed. Someone yelled. Dad ducked toward the control panel. The men in Cas’s room came barreling out into the lab, guns ready. The woman guarding Trev’s room hunkered down at the partition wall. Sam aimed for the light fixtures in the ceiling and took out three rows as one of the agents in Nick’s room tried a countering shot.
The bullet missed Sam. The room plunged into a murky half darkness.
Riley took a shot, the gun sparking to my left. Concrete pebbled from the wall. I could just make out Sam at the front corner of his room, gun up. Thwap. Thwap. Two bodies hit the floor. The sound rooted me in place.
“Turn the gas back on!” Connor shouted, and Dad fumbled at the controls.
The woman sprang from her hiding spot, and Sam killed her with one pull of the trigger. Another agent rushed in, landing a punch to Sam’s jaw. As Sam stumbled back, he brought the gun up and put a bullet in the man’s forehead.
Riley ran to the exit as Sam eliminated the last two guards.
I was next. Sam was going to shoot me. On purpose or by accident, I didn’t know.
Hands gripped me, wrestling me to my feet, an arm closing around my neck. I thought it was Dad, trying to save me, but the barrel of the gun rammed against my skull said otherwise. Connor’s cologne filled my nose.
“Sam!” Connor yelled.
Sam went rigid. Though I could see nothing else, I could see that—the sharp line of him in the dark. My head swam.
“Put the gun down.” Connor tugged me toward the door. He was crazy if he thought Sam would quit, just like that. Maybe I’d spent the last several years of my life trying to make Sam’s a little bit better, but he wouldn’t trade his freedom for me.
Dad hovered near the controls. Sam, hands still tied together, eased the gun toward the floor. His jaw tensed, like his brain didn’t agree with what his hands were doing.
He was throwing away his freedom for my life. The realization left me both cold and hot all over. I couldn’t stand to watch the unfairness of it register on his face. I didn’t know what any of this meant, or what Sam intended to do once he broke free of the lab, but if I had to pick sides, I had to pick Sam’s.
This was my chance. And I’d always known my answer.
I swung an elbow back, catching Connor in the stomach. He doubled over, sending his gun skittering across the floor. Sam shot. The first bullet clipped Connor in the shoulder. I ducked as a second bullet hit him in the side. He dropped. Riley fired a shot from the hallway and Sam flattened himself against the floor.
“Get me out of here!” Connor ordered as Riley popped off another round.
The lab door swished open. Sam rose to a crouching position. He aimed. I pressed myself harder into the wall.
Riley hooked his arms beneath Connor and dragged him out. Sam pulled the trigger again, but the chamber answered back with a hollow click.
“Go! Go!” Connor yelled.
The door closed behind them, sealing with a definitive whump. The keypad beeped from the other side and the bolts slid into place.
I shakily rose to my feet. My stomach swirled with nausea. I looked to Dad in the far corner. What now? I thought. But Dad just stood there, his fingers twitching like he needed a straw to hold.
Sam put the gun down and sprang into action. He stole a pocketknife from one of the dead men and flipped it open, then used it to split the zip ties on his wrists. He went to Cas’s room and shook him until he woke. Cas sat up, dazed. Sam went down the line, waking the others. I remained at the mouth of the hallway, unsure of what to do with myself.
I swallowed hard against the uneasiness sitting at the back of my tongue, like I might vomit at the slightest encouragement.
“We need to move,” Sam said to Cas. “I doubt we have much time—”
“Wait.” Dad stepped forward. The boys tensed. “I’m not going to stop you”—Dad held up his hands—“but you have to think about what you’re doing. Do you have a plan?”
Sam plucked another gun from the floor. “My plan starts with getting out of here.”
“I can help you.” Dad held up a set of keys. “Take my car. It doesn’t have a tracking device on it, but you’ll want to switch vehicles soon. If Connor is badly injured, you have a half hour, tops. There’s a safe house not too far from here. I’m sure that’s where Riley took him.”
Sam took the offered keys. “Cas, gather the guns. Trev and Nick, check out front.”
“The door is locked—” I started.
“Five-zero-five-nine-seven-three,” Sam interrupted.
That wasn’t the code I used to get in and out of the lab. Not that I thought Riley or Connor had locked us in using the normal one.
Nick slid a daggered look my way as he passed and I mashed myself even closer to the wall. Trev punched in the numbers and the lab door hissed open.
“H-how—” I sputtered.
Sam released the gun’s clip. Finding it empty, he tossed it aside and dug out a fresh one from a dead man’s vest. He slammed it in place with a snick, clack. “The keypad beeps when you punch in the numbers. You just have to know which tone comes from which number.”
I stared at him. He’d figured out the combination by listening? While he was being shot at?
“So now what?” Cas said. He and Sam glanced at Dad.
The line of Dad’s Adam’s apple sank as he swallowed, and I wondered if he felt like throwing up, too. “Go ahead,” he said.
I took a step. “Go ahead with—”
Sam pointed the gun at Dad and shot.
A gasp fluttered at the back of my throat and anger set me in motion. I wanted the gun gone before Sam hurt someone else, even though there was no one left but me.
Sam saw me coming, and tossed the gun to Cas, who snatched it easily from the air. I threw a punch, connecting first with Sam’s jaw, then his shoulder, before he grabbed me by the wrists and swung me around. He shoved me into the wall between his room and Nick’s, the bullet-riddled brick piercing my back.
“It won’t be fatal!” he shouted. “He’ll be fine.”
I fought for air but came up short, like I was drowning, like the panic had filled my mouth, my nose. I gulped. Sam tipped my head back and air trickled into my lungs. This was not happening. Those men were not dead. And Dad was not shot. And I was not so close to Sam that I could feel his breath on my face.
I squeezed my eyes closed and inhaled in the controlled way my instructor had taught me. I never thought I’d need to use the lessons, not like this. Slowly, the hysteria ebbed. Sam righted me, put his hands on either side of my face, and forced me to look at him. I blinked, the edges of my vision fuzzy and smattered with black, but I could see the green flint of his eyes and it reminded me of so many nights spent down here with him.
I thought I could trust him. I thought he was my friend.
“Why did you shoot him?” I choked out. “He never did anything to hurt you.”
“When Connor realizes we escaped, he’ll think your father was harmed in the crossfire. This way he isn’t an accomplice.”
I harnessed what little courage I had left and clenched my teeth. “Then will you shoot me, too?”
He cocked his head and sighed, exasperated. “No,” he answered. Short and sweet. No explanation. I wasn’t sure what that meant, or if I even cared.
He and Cas searched the men lying on the floor, swiping anything else that might be useful. I hurried over to my dad, sidestepping the trail of smeared blood left in his wake. From what I could tell, he’d been hit in the right leg, just above the knee.
I took his hand in mine. “Are you okay?”
He tried to straighten but winced. “Of course.”
“Should I put pressure on it? Or tie something around it?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
I sniffed back a sob. My hands were still shaking. “You’re not fine. None of this is fine.”
The lab door slid open again and Trev and Nick appeared. “Three men out front,” Trev said. “Armed. Looks like they’re waiting for us.”
“So we need to move,” Nick added.
Dad pushed me. “You need to go with them.”
“What?” The word came out a squeak.
Dad called to Sam over my shoulder. “Take her with you. Please. I won’t ask for anything else.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said.
“Anna. Listen to me.” Dad pulled himself up straighter. “Stay with Sam. Don’t come back here. Ever. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not leaving you,” I repeated.
“You can’t be here when Connor comes back. You have to stay away from him.”
“But—”
“Go.” He pushed me and I stumbled. Trev caught me and put a reassuring arm around my shoulders. Nick made a grumbling noise.
“Samuel?” Dad motioned to him and Sam crouched by his side. “Go to 4344 West Holicer Lane, Elk Hill, Pennsylvania. It’s a safe location. Someone will be there to help you.”
Sam nodded and rose to his feet. “Thank you,” he said before ushering us toward the door.
I wrenched myself away from Trev and wrapped my arms around Dad’s neck.
“I’ll find you later,” he said. “I promise. In the meantime, don’t call. It won’t be safe.”
I stood up, trying to obey but paralyzed by the fear of leaving him here like this, of disappearing with someone who had just killed eight people in front of me.
The lab door slid open and clean air filtered out the smell of death and stale gas. I looked back at Dad as we left the lab, until the hallway blocked him from my sight.
7
“GIVE ME THE LAYOUT,” SAM SAID ONCE we reached the top of the stairs.
Trev stuck a gun in the waistband of his pants and pointed at the front of the house. “Picture window in the living room. There’s a man stationed there.” He gestured toward the kitchen. “Man hiding in the garden. Clear shot from the window above the sink. The third is out by the garage.”
I didn’t know Connor had more agents than the ones he’d brought into the lab. Either that, or he’d called for backup. And if they were already here, how long before more arrived?
“Cas, out front,” Sam said. Cas nodded and disappeared down the hallway. I watched him go. The sight of him inhabiting the space that had been only mine and my dad’s was unsettling. “Nick, take the garage?”
Nick disappeared into the small half bath across the hall.
