I nod mutely, and then she’s off. I limp toward the edge of the cabin just in time to see Lyla crash into the woods.
“Where’d Hartley put that gun?” Farrah asks coolly, but she’s already pushing past me toward the cabin. She’s back a moment later with the shotgun propped under her arm. Somehow she found extra rounds and is sliding two fresh shells into the chamber.
“Farrah, there are already two of us out there. I don’t think this is a good idea,” I say.
But Farrah isn’t listening. She marches off toward the blackened woods. With a final snap of a twig, she disappears.
I’m alone. I cock my head toward the trees, trying to hear what’s going on in there. But it’s quiet. Too quiet. I wrap my arms around myself, my whole body tight, reined in.
A gunshot pierces the air. I yelp, my heart shooting into my throat.
Someone was shot. Farrah killed someone.
I don’t know what to do. Where to go. How to help. I clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from crying.
There’s a rustling in the woods, and then Farrah and Hartley crash out of the trees. Relief pours through me.
“What happened?” I ask.
“This idiot grabbed me from behind,” Farrah says. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to grab the person holding the gun?”
“I didn’t know you were going to shoot!” Hartley bends over and tries to catch her breath. She’s got fresh scratches all over her arms and stomach from her race through the woods.
“I was holding a gun, Hartley!”
“And thanks to your handling of that gun, we lost him.” Hartley angrily swipes little bits of duckweed off her bra.
Farrah grits her teeth, then shoves the gun at Hartley’s chest and storms off toward the car.
“Where’s Lyla?” I ask.
Just as I say it, Lyla emerges from the trees. “Almost caught him, but he slipped away,” she pants. She swears under her breath, kicking a rock across the parking lot.
“Did you get a good look at him?” I ask.
Lyla shakes her head, wiping sweat from her brow. “Too dark. And he was wearing a ski mask.”
The Society was here. Watching us.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
Lyla looks out at the woods, then shakes her head and pushes past us toward the car. “Now we go home.”
It’s past three by the time Lyla rolls to a stop outside my apartment complex. Lucky for me the house is still dark, no telltale light shining through the cracked venetian blinds to signal that I’ve been caught.
It took some time, but my breathing leveled out on the interstate, once the swamp was well behind me. It still feels as if I can’t fill my lungs all the way, and I don’t think I’ve ever looked forward to a treatment so badly, but I won’t need a breathing tube shoved down my throat, so it could be worse.
“Thanks for the ride,” I whisper as I climb out of the car. “And for, you know, saving me.”
“You’re welcome. And hey.” She grabs a receipt from the dash and writes something on it, then hands it to me. It’s a phone number. “Call if you want.” With that, she’s off.
I wait until her headlights disappear around the corner before I approach the apartment complex. But I’m not halfway across the road when a blast rockets me off my feet. I land hard on my ass, the wind knocked out of my chest. A car alarm goes off, and a crackling, sparking noise roars in my ears. Someone screams.
What the…
I push past the pain and roll over onto my side.
A fire engulfs one of the cars in the parking lot. Orange-yellow flames lick the roof and send huge curls of smoke into the sky. Heat from the flames reach for me all the way across the street.
The door of the apartment bursts open, and Jenny runs out onto the stairs. She spots me on the ground, and her shock turns to confusion.
“What are you doing out here?” she cries.
I get up quickly, uselessly brushing dirt from my pants.
“Why do you think?” I shoot back.
Her eyes widen, and she whispers, “The Society,” just as Mom bursts outside behind her.
She freezes when she sees me. “Hope?”
“Mom!” I jog over to her. “I heard the explosion and ran right out. What’s going on?”
The woman from apartment 6B runs up, gasping for breath. “Fill up buckets with water—pots, pans, whatever you can get your hands on. If this fire gets any bigger, it’ll take the house.”
That seems like a terrible idea, but already neighbors are emerging from their apartments with huge pails and pots, emptying buckets of water onto the blaze, then coughing and hacking as they stumble for more. A siren wails in the distance.
“The smoke—Hope, get inside.” Mom shoves me toward the door. “I’ll come for you if it gets worse.”
Relief floods my body. She bought it.