Just a loud thump, followed by a softer one. She opened her eyes and looked past Gabriel and saw Charlie standing over Jackson’s prone body, gripping his French horn.
“Who would’ve thought these things could be so versatile?” he asked.
From behind Saint, Johnny spat out a curse. Corinne saw the knife glinting in his hand and ran forward, her warning caught in her throat. Saint let out a gasping cry and kicked both legs backward. His heels caught Johnny in the chest, and Johnny stumbled backward, right into the steel bar that Ada was swinging at his head.
He crumpled to the ground without a sound, and Ada flung the hand crank away, wiping her hands on her dress to alleviate the burn. Corinne and Gabriel ran forward to help Saint. They managed to get some of the chains loose from his chest, but even standing on the chair, Gabriel couldn’t loosen the chains from his wrists.
“We have to lower him,” he said. “Up there.”
They could see that the chain was looped over a ceiling brace above and secured on the railing of the warehouse’s mezzanine.
“I’ll get it,” Charlie said, taking off.
“Dammit,” said Gabriel. “Where’s Jackson?”
As soon as he spoke, the warehouse went dark. At first all was silent. Then there was a gunshot, and the world became chaos. Someone knocked Corinne over, and she crawled for the crates she knew were to her right, calling out for Ada and Gabriel as she went. She felt the wooden crates with her hands and tried to move to where she would be covered, but she didn’t actually know where the gunshot had come from.
She shouted for Ada and Gabriel again, and then jumped at Gabriel’s voice in her ear.
“He’s across the room. We need to move farther back.”
She nodded, though he couldn’t see her, and tried to follow his lead. Her heart was skipping every other beat, and her head pounded with adrenaline. She reached out to touch Gabriel, desperate for an anchor in the darkness. Her fingers brushed what must have been his gun hand, because she could feel the cool metal.
Except it didn’t sting, the way that steel should.
She stumbled backward, her mind reeling to catch up. From the corner of her eye, in the distance, she saw a glint of orange light in the black. Gabriel was lighting a match.
Before she could scream, Jackson had lunged on top of her and clamped a hand onto her face. She kicked blindly, feeling the barrel of his gun pressed into her stomach. She managed to bring up one of her knees for leverage and rolled hard to the right, slamming his shoulder into a crate. She heard the clunk of the gun hitting the floor and tried to pull up her other knee so she could push away from him. He moved both his hands to her neck, and she choked on her last breath as his grip tightened around her windpipe.
Her vision exploded into red and violet. She clawed at his hands, digging her fingernails into skin, but his hold was a vise. She could hear music through the rushing in her ears. She wondered if instead of seeing her life flash before her eyes, she was going to relive one of her most cherished, most private memories. Huddled on her bed in the Cast Iron, still in the black dress from her grandfather’s funeral, and Ada sitting beside her, coaxing everything bright and beautiful in the world back to life with only the strings on her violin.
Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she realized that the music was real. With her last reserve of strength she lifted her right hand and raked her fingernails across Jackson’s face until she found his ear. She yanked the earplug away and then stopped struggling, because she was just too damn tired.
As she slipped into unconsciousness, she thought his grip was loosening. But that might have just been wishful thinking.
Ada played the violin until Gabriel switched the lights back on. At first she didn’t even notice when they plunged back into light. Her eyes were shut tightly with focus. She was trying to aim the music directly toward Jackson, which was something she had never attempted without actually being able to see the person. But Jackson was the one with the gun, and she couldn’t risk putting everyone else to sleep if he still had the earplugs in. She was hoping that Jackson had removed them to hear better in the dark.
When her eyes had adjusted to the light, she surveyed the warehouse, spinning in a tight circle. She could see Charlie above at the railing, and Gabriel was behind her, coming back from the light switch, but Corinne was nowhere to be seen.
“Cor,” she shouted, running down the length of the warehouse, scanning the rows of crates.
Then she saw Jackson, slumped on the ground, and Corinne beside him. She screamed.
She ran to them, not caring if he would wake up, not caring if he still had the gun. She could hear Gabriel behind her as she threw herself down beside Corinne, who was lying unmoving on her back. Jackson’s hands were loose around her neck, and Ada pushed him off.
“Cor,” she said, sliding her hands underneath her head to cradle it. “Corinne, wake up.”