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“Zeke!” Jericho calls from outside.
“Here! We’re here!”
My brother runs toward the window, and I gather Blue up in my arms.
“Take her!” I call out, following Jericho’s gaze over my shoulder to the fire that’s swallowing up the door, the table just inside the room. “Take her!” I lift Blue up, using the gown to protect her against the shards of glass still hanging from the window. Jericho takes her from me, and I smash out more glass, another explosion coming, hurling me out the window with the force of it.
28
BLUE
Iopen my eyes to distant, unfamiliar sounds. It must be nighttime. It’s dark and for a panicked moment, I think I’m back in the trunk of that car. That within moments, Wyatt Hoxton will haul me out. But no, my brain catches up. It’s not pitch black where I am. I’m not lying in the hard trunk of a car. I’m in a bed. My head lies on a pillow and the mattress beneath my body is soft. My head hurts and my body feels bruised and beaten. Am I still at the guest house? Did I fall asleep in all that commotion? That insanity?
No. It smells different here.
What happened? Where am I?
Girard sent me with Ines to change clothes. I remember that. I can still see Ines applying and re-applying blood-red lipstick before her vanity as I changed. She looked so strange, so wrong. And then the men took us to the guest house.
I see my father in that cage. He looked like an animal, hands clutched around the bars, panicked, eyes wild.
He’s dead. I know he’s dead.
Zeke had been inside the house. He’d come for me. What had he said, though? I wasn’t Society. The guard had dragged me away and then what?
Then the explosion.
I bolt upright. “Zeke!”
Movement from the corner has me panicking, has me leaping off the bed, but my legs are tangled in the blanket, and I am trapped. Where am I? Where the fuck am I?
“Blue. Blue, it’s okay. It’s Zeke,” he says, approaching quickly. “You’re safe. You’re safe.” A hand closes over my shoulder, and I hear a click. I panic but soft light illuminates the room. The click was the light switch not a gun.
I look up at Zeke. His face is dirty in places, and he has cuts on his face and arms. When he pulls me to him, he smells of fire and smoke.
It all comes back to me then. Like a flood, a tidal wave, it all rushes back. Everything, all of it, from the moment Girard stepped on the airplane to when he sent me away, when Zeke told him to send me away. That I wasn’t Society and I’d spoil his live stream. He knew what Girard would do. I knew too. I felt what it was to kneel before that block. To have my arm stretched across it, my wrist exposed to his ax.
Panicked, I draw back. I touch him, feel his arms, hold his hands. Feel for his fingers. Only when I do, do I exhale.
“You’re all right,” I say.
“More or less. All fingers and toes accounted for.”
I look up at his soot stained, still-bruised face. It’s healing. His forehead is furrowed, concern in his eyes.
“Where am I?” I ask.
“Hospital. You inhaled a lot of smoke. You’ve been out for a while.”
“How long?”
“About twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours.” I push a hand into my hair. The soldiers, from my window I could see what they were doing. They were emptying explosives from their vans and placing them in the main house, then in the guest house. Then they started to leave. All those vans driving away calm and orderly, no panicked rush. It was a calculated exit. “I saw what they were doing but I couldn’t call out to you. They put me at the back of the house.”
“I know.”
“How did you get to me?”
