I reached for him as he stumbled, bracing myself as he fell into me.
“Oh my God,” I said. I eased him to the ground, and I said, “You’re okay, you’re okay,” and my voice echoed off the walls like a vicious taunt.
I placed my hand over Cole’s, which was pressed to his side, and I felt the quiver of his skin, the warmth of his blood. The whites of his eyes glowed from the monitor screens.
The rest was darkness.
“Cole,” I whispered, though my words still seemed to echo. “You’re okay.”
“Is he hurt?” Annika asked. She picked up the flashlight and shined it directly on Cole.
His gaze drifted down again, to the dark liquid coating our hands, the stain spreading through his shirt. I grabbed his chin, jerked his head back to face me. “Don’t look,” I said. “It’s fine.”
White lies. Simple lies. Careful.
The panic would make it worse. The fear would eat away until there was nothing left.
I looked over my shoulder, trying to get Ryan’s attention, but he already had his button-down shirt off, stripping it into pieces.
“Let me see,” he said, crouching beside me in his white T-shirt and dress pants.
Cole propped himself against the shelves, and I pulled my hand away, lifting one side of his shirt in the process. Ryan’s body tensed, and he quickly covered the wound back up, pressing down with the balled-up fabric in his hand.
“That noise I heard when we were upstairs,” I said. “That wasn’t the front door, was it?”
Ryan shook his head. He handed me a long stretch of fabric with his other hand. “Tie it around,” he said.
“Oh my God,” Annika said. “Is he shot? What the hell is going on?” She looked around the room. “And what the hell is this?”
“We don’t know,” I said, leaning Cole forward, keeping my hands busy to calm my nerves. “They showed up a little while ago, and our phones didn’t work, and we were trying to get help. The smoke, that was me. And then you showed up, and you didn’t notice that they were coming for you….”
Ryan had his eyes squeezed shut. “You said ‘basement,’ and we ran, and I wasn’t thinking….The door. I panicked. I’m sorry….”
“No, it’s not—it’s not your fault—”
“Yes, it is,” he said, pressing harder at Cole’s side.
I cinched the knot around Cole’s waist, and he sucked in a breath. I placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it reassuringly.
There was a crash on the outside of the door, and I imagined all the possible things it could be: a tool, a gun, an explosion. Annika let out a moan.
“It’s okay,” I said. “This is the safe room. Nobody can get in.”
I wiped my hands against my jeans, but I couldn’t get them clean of Cole’s blood. They started trembling, and I balled them into fists. I stood, stepped closer to the monitors, blindly hoping. “Come on,” I mumbled.
Annika stood beside me. “That’s the view outside?”
“Yes,” I said. “Somebody must’ve seen something. Or heard something. We can’t be stuck here all alone.” We’re not alone; we’re not trapped; we’re not dying. I tallied off the list, trying to carve out our safety, but we were alone, and trapped, and Cole was bleeding on the floor….
I looked back at Cole, and Ryan caught my eye, his face desperate, and I realized he must’ve understood something about Cole’s injury that we didn’t.
“Someone will come,” Ryan said. But he squeezed his eyes shut when he thought no one was looking.
That taste had returned to the back of my mouth, sour, on the verge of sickness. I cleared my throat, swallowed air. The back of my neck broke out in a cold sweat. I was going to be sick, right here, in this safe room, right now—
Another crash from the outside, and Annika jumped. A noise escaped her throat, and she dropped her head into her hands. “We should’ve run for the car,” she said, her voice cracking. “We’re trapped. Oh God, we’re trapped and they’re…” Her voice trailed off. But the thought lingered:
They’re inches away. Right on the other side of the wall. And there is nowhere else to go.
I took a breath, fought against whatever was rising in the back of my throat. Forced it down, closed my eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do!” I said. I never did. Impossible choices, and I kept making the wrong ones. “Someone had a gun and you were on the wall, and this house is a fortress. I thought it was the safest choice.”
But maybe she could’ve gotten away, gotten help, gotten us all out of here. Instead, I’d pulled her in. How many lives did I hold in my hands, dangling over that precipice?
I’d invited Ryan inside with me, dragged Annika, yelled for Cole….
“What were you doing here, Cole?” I asked.
He winced as Ryan applied more pressure. “What do you think? My mother sent me to check on you. Apparently she’d been trying to call after you sent her some message.” He coughed, and Ryan murmured something to him. Cole continued. “?‘Just swing by,’ she says. ‘Get her to call,’ she says. ‘I’m worried,’ she says.” He spoke slowly and deliberately through his clenched teeth.
I heard the bitterness in his voice, but instead I felt a surge of hope. “If she doesn’t hear from you, she’ll send help,” I said, grasping onto the idea.
Cole laughed, and it reminded me of how he used to cry instead, as a kid who’d just fallen backward off the swing set. “I wasn’t going to come,” he said.
I thought that was the end of it. That he was mad at himself for being here. But he continued. “So I sent her a message.” He slid his phone across the floor in my direction.
His text read: All okay at House of Horrors.
“I told her I did it. I told her before I came here. I lied, because I didn’t feel like coming to help you again when you so obviously didn’t want it.” I flinched, but he continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “But then I felt guilty, of course, because if something did happen to you, we would be so screwed. So I drove by, for my own peace of mind.” He tried to laugh, cringed. Gestured to his side. “And this is what I get.”
“I’m sorry….”
Something crashed against the door again, and Ryan’s eyes widened.
“Someone will come, right?” Annika asked.
I stared at Ryan. He stared back.
“Of course,” he said.
I pulled out the walkie-talkie, turned it on, depressed the side button, holding it to my mouth. “We’re trapped inside the basement of the house on Blackbird Court in Sterling Cross. There are armed men. Please send help.” Only the static echoed back. I changed stations, found the clearest channel, and repeated the message.
“There are better houses than this one to rob,” Annika said, her voice wavering along with the flashlight in her hand. “I mean, no offense.”
Cole swallowed, tipped his head toward the door. “This isn’t just a break-in. They’re right there.”
They were all watching me, and something crashed into the door once more. Everyone jumped.
Annika looked straight at me. “Did you know that man upstairs?” she asked.
I thought of the man at the front door, the way he’d started to speak. Started to say my name…
“No,” I said. She pursed her lips together, and I repeated, “No, Annika. No.”
“Then why are they trying to get in?” She sucked in a breath, held her hand to her mouth. She was going to crack, I could feel it. The whole room tingled with fear, like chemicals waiting for a spark.
Because my mother escaped. Because they’ve come back for us. Because there’s no such thing as safe, not really.
But I grasped for anything else to tell Annika. Any other possible explanation. Like I was falling, and desperately reaching out an arm on the way down.
“There’s money,” I said. I yanked back the carpet, exposing the square tile that could be removed. I lifted the lid and pulled out the envelopes of cash, one in each hand. Cole’s eyes went wide, and Annika took one of the bags from my hand.