“Oh yeah?” Cole said. “Then how do things work, Baker? Enlighten us. Please.”
“Okay,” Ryan said, his voice rising. “For one thing, you don’t get to bribe intruders out of your house. Because they have so much honor, right? Fair trade, they’ll say. Let’s shake on it.”
I didn’t like seeing this version of Ryan, who wasn’t hoping for the best anymore. He’d moved past it, into reality: There were men outside, and we were inside, and Cole was bleeding, and they weren’t leaving. They had guns, and we had nothing.
“Right, you know what’s stupid?” Cole said, staring at me. “Telling them they had to wait outside, Kelsey. They probably think we’re planning how to escape. You don’t get to make demands when we’re the ones trapped!” I could feel the desperation in his voice. He was starting to panic. His breath coming too fast, his arm shaking, pressed against his side.
“He’s right,” Annika said. “We’re stuck in a cellar. I don’t see how we have that many options.”
“It’s not a cellar,” Cole said, trying to twist in her direction. “You know what this is? This is the panic room. My mom told me about this.”
“Stop it,” I said. And his gaze: I know, I know, I know what you are.
Annika tilted her head. Picked at the polish on her nails, which I knew was a nervous twitch. Looked at Cole from under the mess of hair that had fallen in her face. Looked my way again, as if she were seeing me for the first time. There was a look she gave to people she didn’t know: slightly pursed mouth, eyes roaming, as if she wanted them to know she was mentally assessing them. It used to make me smile, make me feel like I was on the inside of her world. But now that look was turned on me, and I didn’t know what she would see.
The walkie-talkie chirped, interrupting the argument. “We have a counter-offer.”
That voice again. Low, deliberate. I pictured his mouth moving, the way he began to say my name….
“Say something,” Cole said.
I waited for someone to agree or disagree. I wanted to be sure, but there was only the silence and the waiting and the phone in my hand. Everyone’s faces flickered from the glare of the screens and the solitary flashlight. I raised the device to my mouth. “What is it?” I answered.
There was a long gap of silence again, and I was halfway to repeating the question when the receiver beeped once.
“Give us the money. And give us Kelsey Thomas. Then we’ll leave.”
My name sounded like poison in his voice. I felt everyone’s eyes on me, even as the room filtered and narrowed to a point—me, they wanted me—because now they all knew what Ryan must’ve already suspected. They weren’t here for the money, or a burglary at all. Someone spoke my name at the front door because they were looking for me. All of this was because of me.
Ryan was on his feet in the middle of the room, like he was waiting for a fire about to ignite, but wasn’t sure which corner it would spring from. But my focus was on Cole—staring at me, staring at the device, now fizzling with static in my hand.
“No,” Ryan said. “Tell them no.”
Annika shook her head too fast. “No way, Kelsey. No way. If we open that door, they’ll kill us. Look at him,” she said, pointing to Cole.
But I was already staring at him. At the blood soaking through the makeshift bandage and his shirt. At the life dripping onto the cold basement floor.
His eyes were locked onto mine, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.
“One life for three,” I said.
“No,” Ryan repeated, and Annika was still shaking her head.
I pulled Ryan into the corner, turned so I couldn’t see Cole and Cole couldn’t see me, lowered my voice. “Is he going to die?” I asked.
He closed his eyes. Didn’t answer at first. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not a medic.”
“Best guess then.”
He set his jaw. “I really don’t know. Eventually, if he doesn’t stop bleeding, I guess.”
“Can you stop the bleeding?”
“I’m trying,” he said.
I touched his arm. “Look at him.” But he didn’t. He looked at me instead.
Cole raised his voice from across the room. “We can get help, Kelsey. If they let us go, we can get help.”
“No,” Ryan said. Hands up. “Final answer.”
“I’m sorry,” Cole said, “I didn’t realize this was a dictatorship.” And for a moment, I was surprised that Cole even knew the term.
“No, it is stupid,” Ryan said, and I saw the calm facade crumbling down. His voice rose; the air filled with tension. “You think they’re not going to hurt her? That we’ll have time to get help? You don’t trade people’s lives!”
“Except you already are.” Cole lifted his hand to Ryan, palm out, and even in the dark, we could see it covered in blood.
Annika was looking from the door, to me, to Cole. She seemed on the verge of speaking, and I was scared. Scared because I had thought Emma was my best friend too, and I had thought Cole had liked me, and they both had traded me in for nothing, in a heartbeat.
And now we were bargaining with people’s lives. We were inside a panic room. We were panicking.
Will you trade money? Your word?
Will you trade another person?
Turned out I didn’t want to see. Like looking down when you’re already hanging from a cliff.
Her breath hitched. Her hands shook. Annika was unraveling, and I pictured her hopping down from the stone wall into the tall weeds even though there might be snakes, darling, then pulling me close and making sure I was okay.
I placed a hand on her shoulder, and everything inside of her stiffened.
“It’s okay,” I said. And I meant it. It was okay to want to be safe. To be willing to do anything for it. I understood how my mother would start with safety and go from there. At the sacrifice of everything else. I wanted her to know, I, of all people, understood: it was okay.
“No, Kelsey,” she said. “No.”
And why was Ryan on my side? Just doing what I’m trained to do. It’s an oath. A responsibility. It’s his job. He can’t choose to give me up. He literally can’t. But deep down, I wondered if he wanted to. That’s human nature. Self-preservation.
I handed Cole the device, because he was the only one who would do it. Then I turned around, hoping no one would notice the tears starting to come in the dark. Enough, enough.
I wondered if this was what falling felt like. Giving over. The fear in the lead-up, and then a long calm. Your finger muscles failing, the cut too sharp, the will giving out, your whole body saying Enough. And letting go.
“Don’t,” Ryan said, but I heard the beep of the walkie-talkie as Cole prepared to relay the message, sending me to my fate.
“Okay, so how do we do that?” Cole asked the people on the other end. “Hypothetically. How do we know you’ll let the rest of us go?”
The static filled the room.
“Put down the device,” Ryan said.
“No,” Cole said.
“I thought this wasn’t a dictatorship,” Ryan said.
“No, I just don’t care about the opinion of the guy trying to get in her pants at the moment.”
“That’s not what I’m—”
“No? Tell me, Baker, what were you doing here this evening? Nobody’s allowed in here, isn’t that right, Kelsey? Nobody sets foot inside the House of Horrors, and yet here you are.”
What are you doing here? The same question I’d asked Cole.
“I came to talk to her,” Ryan said. It made sense, and it sounded nice, and he had. He did come here to talk to me. Except. Except there was something in the slant of his face, the cut of his eyes away from me, which made me second-guess him. Or maybe that was just this room, twisting us all around.
Like my mother, seeing the danger in everything first, instead of all the ways we could be safe. It was all in the perspective.
Cole started laughing. “Of course you did. Talk your way right into the house, did you?”