We stop when we reach Apartment 8008. I concentrate on my slow breaths, damming the flood of doubts and expectations that threaten to overwhelm my courage. Adjusting our hoods, we step closer to the door, placing our grungy boots on the worn-out mat smeared with the fresh stains from someone else’s shoes. Someone is here.
Ava raps firmly, twice, on the door, but there is no response. She tries again, the knuckles of her fingers striking the door seven more times, each blow louder and stronger, exposing her impatience.
Between the intervals of hammering, I hear the faint sounds of shuffling feet beyond the steel barrier. Ava hears it too.
“Hello?” Ava says, dropping her hand but keeping her fingers clenched into a fist.
“We’re looking for Rayla Cadwell,” I add when no one answers.
Pressing my ear against the door, I close my eyes and listen for signs of life. I hear only the strangled throbs of music vibrating the walls from the floor below and the blaring alarm rising inside me, urging us to leave.
“I know someone’s in there,” Ava says, her impatience heightening to intense frustration. She raises her hand to resume her knocking, but I catch her arm before her fist hits the hollow steel.
The padded footsteps have returned.
“Please, will you speak with us?” I ask whoever is on the other side.
“We were sent to this address,” Ava continues. “We were told Rayla Cadwell would be here.”
Ava brushes my shoulder, and I peer over in time to see a shadow cross the oval peephole. We both stand there, straining to see through the tiny fisheye lens, waiting for something to happen—the handle to turn, the door to open, a voice to answer our questions. But nothing does.
The music’s rhythm somewhere underneath our feet quickens, antagonizing us to act. The flush of anger on Ava’s cheeks nearly matches the stain on her crimson lips as she shoves her mouth into the thin gap that divides the door from the wall, using the last card we have to make this damn door open.
“Resist much, obey little—”
I jump when the door cracks ajar, revealing a single green eye.
“Hush!” the green eye growls.
A slender hand flecked with liver spots reaches out, seizes Ava by her sleeve, and pulls her into the apartment. I issue an unintelligible cry and jam my right boot into the entrance before the door can close. The heavy steel smashes against my foot once, twice, three times, but on the fourth strike, my healing ankle can take no more.
Before I can stop it, my foot ignores my commands and yanks free from the torturous pressure. I’m thrown backward onto the ratty mat, and all I can do is outstretch my hands uselessly as the door slams shut in my face.
AVA
Clutter and long silver hair.
That’s all I register before I’m thrown roughly into a corner and my vision blurs. I shake my head clear and find a woman—the silver hair belongs to her—securing one of the deadbolts on the door.
Bam. The door shudders. Bam. Bam. Mira’s using her body as a battering ram to get through. I pounce on the woman and twist the lever to open the lock. Mira bursts into the room.
Without missing a beat, the woman drives the door closed and fastens two deadbolts with a grunt. She turns and zeros in on me.
“Who are you?” the woman demands as she uses her body to block Mira from me.
“Are you Rayla Cadwell?” I ask in return.
Somewhere in her sixties, with a robust, wiry frame, the hostile woman regards me with a crazed look in her eyes. I raise my empty hands, showing that I bear no weapons. We did not come to fight.
The woman lunges and yanks off the hood of my jacket, taking a handful of my hair with it. White-hot pain rips across my scalp, and her hand smothers my explosive scream.
“Who told you to say those words?” the woman shouts. “Who sent you?”
“Get off her!” Mira cries, diverting the woman’s attention from me.
The woman dives for my sister and pins her hard against the wall.
“Is your name Rayla Cadwell?” Mira asks. “Is this a safe house?”
“Are you wearing a recorder? Where is it?” She claws frantically at Mira’s body in a mad, desperate search. “How did they find this address? Are there more of you outside? Who sent you?” she demands.
Her rough frisk uncovering nothing except more frustration, she grabs hold of Mira’s shoulders and slams her into the wall.
“We’re not spies!” Mira shouts.
I surge forward in an attempt to pull Mira free, but I’m thwarted immediately, the older woman knocking me back with startling strength.
“Who sent you? Who sent you? Who sent you!” Again and again Mira’s back collides violently with the stained wallpaper.
I was wrong. This woman has no answers. We will find no help here.
My eyes quickly sweep the apartment for a weapon, and I dive for a half-empty bourbon decanter I locate on a littered end table.
She’s here alone. Two against one. Strike a blow straight down the back of her head and she’ll fall.
“Who sent you!” the crazed woman screams into Mira’s face, slapping her across the cheek.
I raise my weapon, ready to strike—to make it all stop—but find myself shouting instead.
“Darren Goodwin!”
The woman goes limp as if I had actually struck her across the head. She hesitates, her long fingers hovering gently over my sister’s red cheek. Peering close into Mira’s eyes, the now-docile woman sees through my sister’s disguise, and all the exhaustion, dirt, and grime.
“Ava?” she asks softly.
Mira shakes her head, water pooling in her eyes.
“I’ve played Ava my entire life . . . but my name is Mira,” she reveals, pulling the heavy secret from deep inside her and throwing it into the open for the first time. Her body slides down the wall as if suddenly relieved of a great burden, and she doesn’t yet know how to stand without its weight.
I feel the same weightlessness Mira feels. The same manic energy that comes from admitting an eighteen-year-old secret that could kill us both.
For the first time outside of our basement, my sister is truly known. She is Mira.
She is Ava no longer.
The woman turns her wide eyes from my sister to me.
“And you’re—”
“We were instructed to come here. Why?” I demand, emphasizing my weapon still held firmly in the air.
The woman doesn’t answer right away—she takes her time to analyze each of our faces. Let her see. We have nothing left to hide. Tears begin to flow freely down her cheeks, but she doesn’t move to wipe them. She just stands there, marveling at us.
“You were sent here because I am your grandmother,” the woman finally says.
Mira’s mouth drops open in disbelief. I slowly lower the decanter—everything happening in slow motion as if I’m outside of myself—and I see the glass slip loose from my fingers, spilling bourbon all over the white carpet.
“Lynn. You’re both my daughter Lynn’s?” she asks, still not able to believe it fully.
Overwhelmed, it’s all I can do to nod.
“Twins. Of course you are. Of course you are,” Rayla says, reaching out her arms. She pulls Mira and me into a powerful embrace, and we collapse into our grandmother’s arms.