The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)

“I have to try! You said yourself that I’ve got to fix things!” Owen wasn’t even trying to whisper anymore. A moment ago, I had been furious enough to leave him behind and escape, but now, my heart rushed into my throat and the dizzy feeling flooded back in. A thousand emotions surged through my brain at once, paralyzing me for a split second.

It was a split second too long. There was a final crash, accompanied by excited shouts from the guards, and a big slice of pale light flooded down the stairs above us as Desmond’s voice drifted down the stairwell in the flood of debris and settling dust.

“Time’s up, Owen,” she said, her voice arctic cold.

Owen whipped his gun up to face the stairs, and I had time to swing my backpack around, fumbling for the gun as I took frantic steps backward, when, instead of the rush of footsteps I was expecting, I heard something clink. A small object made an arc in the air as it sailed down the stairs, hitting the landing with a metallic noise.

My brain recognized the object but refused to believe what it was. I was frozen, trapped in a nightmare all over again—bombs going off around me while I was dying. Owen shouted something, but it was impossible to hear over the panic causing my heart to skip beats and my ears to ring.

Owen turned to face me, his eyes wide, and my shock barely registered as he grabbed me, like he once had in The Green, throwing my stomach over his shoulder and running toward the back of the garage.

I barely noticed the throb of pain that pulsed through my ribs, focused on the grenade as it bounced, up off the landing, down toward us. We weren’t far enough. We weren’t going to make it through this.

And then, a shadow detached itself from the dark edges of the room, moving quickly in the dim light. I had time to register a tall, lanky frame and mop of tangled dark curls, all too familiar, racing the opposite direction that we were, toward the stairwell.

Time seemed to slow. In a motion almost too fast to understand, the figure stooped down and grabbed the grenade, making my heart leap up my throat. Then, almost before I could think, his arm drew back and he threw the object back up the stairs. Whirling, he ran toward me and Owen. I reached out for him over Owen’s shoulder, my arm straining to touch him.

Tim’s name was on the tip of my tongue as Owen knelt and slung me to the ground, hunching his body over mine to shield me just as the blast went off. The sound of the explosion was loud but oddly faraway, and I had time to wonder exactly how far Tim had managed to throw the grenade. I clasped my hands over my head as I felt the force rumble through the house, the lights in the basement flickering.

A wash of heat, dust, and small debris washed over us, and for a moment I hoped that was all. Then, with a huge creaking and a groaning, the room around us went dark, and I heard the sounds of timbers splitting and cement cracking. I felt Owen jerk above me as rubble rained down around us, and then he was falling down on me, pushing us both the short rest of the way to the floor.





3





Violet





For a while, it seemed like everything around us was rumbling. I couldn’t see anything, and I was pinned to the ground by Owen. There was no way to tell whether moving or staying here would be safer. All I could do was pray, Tim’s name still on my lips.

Slowly, silence fell. I started counting after the noise of debris falling stopped, wondering whether there was still more of the house above us slowly falling apart. When I got to thirty, I began to hope it was finally over.

I realized I’d closed my eyes during the cave-in. I opened them again. Blackness greeted me, and I blinked once, then twice. Now that I’d realized I was alive, I also began to notice the new set of aches running through my body. I struggled with the warm weight holding me down: Owen was lying on top of me, his chest pressed to mine, his hair tickling my chin. And he wasn’t moving.

A throb of fear pulsed through me as the blackness did not lessen, the feeling unfurling slowly in the pit of my stomach as awful possibilities raced through my head. What if we were trapped underneath this building? What if Desmond was digging us out as we lay here? What if she left us for dead? What if I had gone blind? What if Owen was… I cut that one off. Had I really seen Tim? And if so, where was he now?

A fear unlike anything I had ever known gripped me. I had survived a lot of things, but I wasn’t sure I could handle any of those possibilities, let alone all of them at once. It was too… too terrifying a thought. My vocal cords clenched, and my body started to shake. When I caught myself whimpering, I stopped and took a deep breath.

I worked through the questions, starting with the silliest. I wasn’t blind. My eyes would have been in pain if they’d been injured. More likely, the lights in this part of the basement had broken. If there was no light, at least they hadn’t started a fire. If we were buried under here—another wave of panic flushed my chest, and I struggled with the question. I couldn’t know for sure that we were trapped unless I checked. That went for most of the other questions too. Except—

Tim. He was the one who had saved us from the grenade. It had definitely been him. The memory was crystal clear. He must have been in the basement the entire time, hidden in the shadows at the edges of the huge room. Why hadn’t he come to us when we’d raced down there? Why hadn’t he said anything? Why wasn’t he saying anything now?

I focused on Tim, pushing the rest of the questions back into the farthest recesses of my brain. If I tried to find him, the rest of the things would fall into place. They had to. I hoped.

First things first. “Owen?” I whispered.

There was no response. But the steady feel of the man’s heart beating from inside his ribcage, and the sound of his breathing, softer than my own, reassured me he was still alive.

I shoved awkwardly at Owen, trying to push him off me. My left arm wasn’t as strong as my right, but I continued straining with my whole body, first wriggling my hips out from under him, and then my shoulders, making for freedom, ignoring the pain. Nothing seemed that dire, though I was sure, as my chest heaved, that my bruised ribs were going to be set back in their healing process. Dirt and rubble on the floor gritted under me as I shifted, scraping loudly across the floor.

Shoving a final time with my hips, I pulled free of Owen. He slumped, his breath coming out in a grunt, but he showed no signs of waking—well, from my limited perspective. My guess was that some of the rubble that had missed me had hit him on the head during the cave-in. Maybe his attempt to protect me had helped after all.

My anger at Owen was still there, but it was pressed deep down beneath a layer of fear. I couldn’t process all these feelings right now. I just needed to make sure he wasn’t injured too badly. And find Tim, I thought, but one thing at a time. I needed to find a light first.