I have to go.
I had to get help. For Henry—and Vivvie and Emilia and all the others. I stumbled in the dark, feeling my way to the tunnel wall. It was cool and damp to the touch. I kept moving—running, stumbling, falling and getting back up.
I’d crawl if I had to.
They have Henry. I didn’t let myself consider the possibility that there was no Henry anymore, like there was no John Thomas. I didn’t let myself think about Henry’s face belonging to a body and not a boy. They have Henry. They have Vivvie. They have Emilia.
I pushed myself forward. Finally, finally—there was a break in the darkness. The closer I got to the end of the tunnel, the easier it was to make out the slants of light. On the ground, I could make out the outline of two long-dead glow sticks.
Three days. It had been three days since the party, one week since John Thomas had been killed.
It had been less than ten minutes since I’d left Henry, less than an hour since the armed men had fired their first shot.
I put my hands flat on the iron door to the tunnel and pushed. My body protested. So did the hinges on the door, but a second later, it gave. I heard the sound of running water. It must have rained, I thought. The drainage ditch had been dry on Friday, but now I slogged through water to get to a single metal rung. I put my foot on it, hoisted myself up. Removing the grate was easy, but getting through was harder wet and alone than it had been on Friday.
I threw my upper body against the ground overhead for purchase. I made it out. I made it to my feet. And then I heard the voice behind me.
“So nice of you to join us, Tess.”
I turned slowly. Mrs. Perkins stood behind me. She wasn’t visibly armed, but the guards on either side of her were.
Henry stood just behind them.
I could feel my body getting ready to give out beneath me. Henry was alive, I had failed, and the adrenaline that had kept me going for the past hour drained out of me, leaving my body feeling like little more than a shell.
I stumbled. Henry moved past the guards to catch me. The terrorists didn’t turn their guns on him. They didn’t so much as bat an eye as he steadied my body with his.
Henry held on to me a second longer than he had to. He whispered two words directly into my ear, and then he let me go.
“Take her to the third floor. Put her with Raleigh.” Mrs. Perkins offered me a smile, too sharp-edged for her soccer-mom face. “I’ve heard you fancy yourself an expert problem solver, Tess. I’m interested to see what you make of my current problem.”
I barely heard her. I was fixated on two things—the words Henry had whispered in my ear and the fact that the order to take me to the third floor hadn’t been issued to the guards.
Mrs. Perkins had issued that order to Henry.
And the words he’d whispered to me as he’d caught me, his body keeping mine vertical?
I’m sorry.
CHAPTER 53
Kendrick, what you don’t know could fill an ocean.
Mrs. Perkins reached out and laid a hand on Henry’s shoulder. Henry didn’t stiffen at the terrorist’s touch. He didn’t bat an eye.
We’re all liars sometimes, he’d told me.
We infiltrate. Dr. Clark’s words to Emilia in the library washed back over me. We observe, we influence, we recruit.
“Don’t fight this,” Henry told me. His voice was quiet. I wished he didn’t sound like the boy I’d known. I wish I couldn’t see my Henry in his eyes as he continued. “Don’t fight me.”
Armed men bound my hands behind my back. They bound me to a chair, and Henry watched.
He knew that when I’d been kidnapped, I’d been bound. He knew that I couldn’t even see a roll of duct tape without flashing back, and he watched.
“Leave us,” Henry told the guards.
I thought of the armed man in the hallway, the way he’d looked at Henry as he said: You.
Not you as in now you get on the ground. You as in I know you. You as in what are you doing with this girl?
At Henry’s request, the guards left us. I stared at the boy I’d kissed less than an hour earlier. I forced myself to look at him, to take in every line of his face, features I’d memorized, features I knew—
“Kendrick.”
Full lips, wide jaw, piercingly clear eyes.
“Don’t call me that,” I told Henry. “Don’t call me anything.”
He lowered his voice. “I tried to get you out.”
Anger bubbled up inside me and came out as a strange, dry laugh. “You tried to get me out,” I repeated. “What about Vivvie? And Emilia?” I didn’t give him time to reply. “What about all those freshmen who think you hung the moon?”
Henry’s jaw clenched. “I never meant for any of this to happen. If you understood—”
Understood?