Look after my sister. She needs you. Be happy.
Happiness. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d truly experienced that, but an inkling told me it might have been those nights on the couch with Mae, back when we were just friends, when we would talk for hours about nothing and everything. I wanted more of that. I wanted a life.
A siren pierced the air, as loud and obnoxious as a tornado warning. Except the sky was filled with a fat full moon and a galaxy of stars.
The only tornado in sight was the one I’d created.
They knew. And they were coming.
4
Mae
Despite attempts to catch him, Rowe fell to the cell floor with a sickening thud, taking Liam down with him. Liam’s head cracked off the wall, but it was Rowe’s lifeless body on the floor that terrified me.
I dropped to my knees beside him, pressing my fingers to his neck, checking his pulse. “My God, Liam! What the hell?”
Liam disentangled himself from Rowe’s deadweight. “He’s fine. I just knocked him out. He knew it was coming.” He shook his hand. His knuckles were bruised, bleeding, and rapidly swelling. “Fuck. That really hurts. He’s got a hard head.”
I stared at him with big eyes. It would have almost been laughable except that none of this was funny.
Liam sobered. “How’s his pulse?”
“Fine, I think. My first-aid knowledge is pretty basic, though.”
Liam eyed him for a moment. “If he ever played high school football, he’s probably had worse.” He held a hand out to me. “We’ve gotta go.”
I knew he was right, but walking away from Rowe when he was unconscious didn’t feel right.
“Mae, come on. This was his idea. Don’t let your feelings ruin it now. We need to get to Heath. It won’t be long before they find Rowe, and then they’ll call the cops, and then they’ll bring the dogs. Heath can’t be wandering around Saint View on foot when that happens.”
I knew he was right. Part of my heart was already out on the street, searching for safety, but another part of it was right here and hurt. I was torn right into pieces. The third grabbed my hands and dragged me from the room. I let him, because of the two of us, he was the one thinking more clearly.
We beelined straight for the parking lot without coming across anybody else and got in Liam’s car. I flashed my access card at the bored-looking guard, and he opened the boom gates to wave us through.
Both of us heaved a huge sigh of relief as the prison disappeared behind us in the darkness. But it was short-lived. I glanced over at Liam who was staring out the driver’s-side window, scanning the shadows instead of paying attention to the road.
I nibbled on a fingernail. “We should have left together. What if we can’t find him?”
“You know we couldn’t. Even if none of the cameras work, the guard on the gates would have been an eyewitness. Then we’d have been on the run, too.”
He was right, but we hadn’t even thought to make a meeting place. It had all happened too quickly. “How do you know we’re going the right way?
He shook his head. “I don’t. But I do know Saint View. I know the way I would have gone. And this is it. So keep an eye out.”
I stared through the windows as we drove around the streets, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was just house after house, some more run-down than others. There were people out on the streets, but not many, and the ones who were looked mostly up to no good. They congregated on street corners in groups of three or four with seemingly no purpose to being out at this hour. That worried me, too. But I was also well aware that Heath could hold his own. At least against a couple of thugs hanging around after dark.
Against an entire police force all searching for him? That was a different story.
“Are we crazy?” I asked Liam.
He choked on a laugh. “I think you already know the answer to that one. We’re driving around Saint View in the middle of the night, searching for the convicted murderer and death row prisoner we just helped escape.”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
Liam and I looked at each other, and both of us burst into laughter. It wasn’t the good kind, though. It was the kind that nervous energy escaped through when there was no other option for release. It died off quickly, and both of us went back to searching the streets for Heath.
When the siren started up from the prison, it was barely a surprise. Liam glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “A fifteen-minute head start. Twenty-five max by the time they call the police and assemble the dogs.”
“That’s not much time, is it?”
Liam pressed his lips together. “No. It’s not. We need to find him. And now.”
5
Rowe
“Stand back! Give him some room, Goddamn it!”
The headache was so instant and severe that I immediately wished I could pass out again. A siren wailed in the background, doing nothing to help the spearing pain. The groan that seeped out between my lips wasn’t put on. It really did hurt that bad. I would need to ask Liam where he’d learned to punch like that because fucking hell.
A bright light flashed in my eyes. “Rowe? Can you hear me?” Perry screeched in my face.
I winced again and waved her torture device away. “Yes. Pretty sure they could hear you on Mars, you’re so loud.”
She frowned but lowered her voice. “Sorry. Was just making sure you weren’t dead.”
“Not dead.” I tried to sit, but the world spun around me again, and Perry pinned me to the floor by my shoulders.
“Don’t move,” she demanded. “There’s an ambulance on the way.”
I shook my head, but that was a huge mistake. “What happened?”
It was only partially a lie. I knew exactly how I’d come to be lying on the floor in a solitary cell, but nothing after that.
“Heath Michaelson attacked you and escaped. Do you remember any of it?”