JAV DARTS FOR the door. The mayor pulls the pistol from Mr. Caluna’s drawer. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“That’s a gun,” I say as Jav’s footsteps stutter to a halt. An actual gun. I bet it doesn’t shoot electrical bolts.
“Very astute.” Mayor Darcy scoops our phones into her handbag and loops the chain strap over her shoulder. Patent leather, crocodile-effect. Think I saw that same overpriced model in a boutique, back when I first found the Hench flyer, a summer and a lifetime ago. “Now, once I leave the building, all it will take is one phone call to set off the bomb.” She uses her spare hand—you know, the one not holding the pistol—to rumple her hair out of its neat waves. “You’ll perish in the explosion, destroying a beloved monument of our city and generating the perfect sob story to demonstrate why this city needs increased Super-Squad support—and my strong leadership. Life returns to normal, and after the next scheduled villain attack, Sunnylake forgets you ever existed.” She beams at us, dabbing her mouth on a tissue to smear her makeup. “Project Zero in full operation. Magnificent, no?”
Jav gazes at me, beautiful brown eyes pleading. For what, I don’t know. I’m welded to the spot. The world shrinks until it fits the pistol’s mouth: a lightless O; a soundless scream.
After five harrowing seconds, Jav sits. I copy her.
“There,” purrs the mayor. “That wasn’t so hard.” She keeps her pistol trained on us as she trots to the door. It takes some effort to wrestle it open one-handed, but she manages. “I’m sorry, girls. I didn’t want it to end this way, but you left me no choice.”
Only once the door swings shut again, locking with a loud clunk, does Jav whip around in her chair and scowl.
“What the hell! Why didn’t you do something?”
“Like what?”
“Dive on her while she was distracted? Or while she was fighting the door?”
“Did you not notice the gun? Sorry for not being Bruce Willis!”
Jav shakes her head, pulling fretfully on her braids. “Why’re we arguing? We’re locked in city hall with a freaking bomb.”
“I didn’t start the argument.”
“Sorry, sorry. I’m just.” Her voice dips. “Fuck. I’m scared, Riley.”
Scared doesn’t begin to cover it. The mayor had us from the moment we walked in. We never stood a chance.
“I can’t believe this,” I whisper.
Jav mops her puffy eyes. “I know. It’s like an episode of Scooby-Doo. The real bad guy wasn’t the monster; it was the businessman wearing the mask.”
“At least you’re Velma. I’m just…” I wave up and down at myself. “Scooby.”
She sniffles. “Give yourself some credit. You’re at least a Fred.”
“But nobody likes Fred…”
This is ridiculous. We’re talking about Scooby-Doo. It’s the sort of filler conversation you have on your lunch break, not when you’re about to get turned into human hamburger.
I look at Jav, straight on. “I don’t wanna die.”
Her chin trembles. “Neither do I.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
Her admittance—because Jav never, ever doesn’t have a plan—is the final straw. Time slows. This is it: breaking point. Either I succumb to the panic … or I tame it. I survive.
“Okay,” I whisper. A crack in the silence. “What do we know about bombs?”
Jav plucks at the sleeve of her Ralbury blouse. Pick-pick, pick-pick; today’s peacock-blue nails pinch loops into the hemstitches. “Mayor Darcy said it’s phone activated. And she’ll have left it in one of the nearest rooms. To … to take care of things.”
I eye up the scissors in the monogrammed stationery pot on Mr. Caluna’s desk. “If we found it, we might be able to do something. Like … like snip the wires or whatever.”
“Which wires?”
“I don’t know! You’re the genius!”
“I wanna do government at Harvard! Not fucking bomb disposal!”
“Fair. If there’s a red one, we can cross it off our list; I’ve seen enough movies to know that’s a bad idea.”
“Excuse me if I don’t trust you to do this based on your pop culture knowledge!” Jav stares at the stack of files on Caluna’s desk. Then up to the camera in the corner. I imagine the cogs and wheels whirring in that gorgeous, marvelous brain. “No. Forget finding the bomb. Too much of a risk of setting it off. We need to get outta here and use that CCTV footage to bring the mayor down.” She opens a folder, tugging a hefty paper clip loose. “Can you pick a lock?”
I cross my arms. “Are you insinuating that because I grew up in Shit Creek, I know how to pick locks?”
“Well, can you?”
I snatch the paper clip. “Duh. Gonna need another of these, though.”
Jav obliges. I drop to my knees in front of the door. At least here, focused on the keyhole in front of me, I don’t have to dwell on whether they’ll be able to scoop up enough of my remains to justify a coffin.
“Why bother with footage?” I ask, scraping the tumblers. The key (haha) thing when you’re lock-picking is visualization. You gotta see the mechanism in your head, know how it all fits together, how all those tiny teeth interlock. Luckily, I’ve always had a vivid imagination. “Camera might not even be on. Why not just split?”
“Escape without any evidence, we have less than when we arrived. We need that footage, or there’s no point surviving at all.”
Sounds a bit over the top. I’d rather run for the border and camp out with Lyssa’s abuelita than risk explodey death. And—holy shit; I’m thinking of fleeing the country. And I’m not freaking out of my head.
I know it’s because I haven’t acknowledged the depth of the shit pit we’ve landed ourselves in. Once I do, I’ll be useless. I gotta ward the panic off, concentrate on the here and now.
I shut my eyes. Force them open again. Keep picking. The soft scritch of it, the tension and release, the scrape of metal on metal is all that keeps me sane.
“Where would we even find the footage?”
Jav bounces on the balls of her feet, looking everywhere but the bomb. “I vote the room with all the monitors we passed on the way up.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“And if you can’t get us out of here?”
Either way, we’re fucked. Thankfully, the universe has mercy, because the lock takes that moment to pop.
I huff sweaty hair off my forehead. “You were saying?”
We don’t talk about the obvious stuff, like how the mayor’s gonna leave city hall before us, or how our lives hinge on the chance she dials the wrong number the first time. We don’t talk about whether it’ll hurt, or whether it’ll all be over so fast, our lives snuffed out like candle flames, we won’t notice.
We definitely don’t talk about who we’ll leave behind. But I think of them as we race along that corridor, empty offices on every side, silent as tombs in a mausoleum. Hernando. Lyssa. Sherman, and that last kiss that never got to be more. Her thick curls between my fingers, her lips parting for my tongue. The perfect yin-yang of our clasped hands.
“Here,” pants Jav. “Security room.”
I dash in after her. We face an array of screens, each showing an identical office. If I was alone, I’d give up and sprint for the elevators, but Jav’s never been good at admitting defeat. She scans along until she finds Caluna’s room, recognizable by the open drawer and the still-shutting door.
“There! And—yes, the files have audio!”
We’re not dead yet. Why aren’t we dead? I picture Mayor Darcy pausing in a ladies’ restroom to perfect her act. Untuck her blouse, apply dark eye shadow to her cheeks for bruises. Make it look like she’s the one running for her life.
“Okay, seriously,” I say as Jav slides into the computer chair. “We’re wasting time. I’d rather be alive without evidence than dead with it.”
Jav’s eyebrows are scrunched so tight they almost touch. The monitor highlights the curves of her face in blue. “You think the mayor will stop? We’ll just delay the inevitable. She’ll come after us. The Super Squad, the villains, they all will.”
I cast a mournful glance for the door, but I hear what Jav’s saying. Running might save our lives, but it won’t save my home, or Bridgebrook.
“Just another minute.” Jav’s fingers fly over the keys. “That’s all I need. One minute, please.”
“You talking to me or God?”
“Whichever will save me from death-by-explosion.” Jav’s fingers keep gliding over the keys. “Grab that thumb drive from my bag.”
I hand it over. It sports a bright orange sticker with Baahir Sharpied on the side. Wonder who lent her that. I raise my eyebrows at Jav, only for her to snatch it out of my hand. “Stay focused!”
She jams the stick into the port under one of the monitors. We watch the green bar creep across the miniature control screen. The dull whine of a computer fan grinds down the bulges on my brain. I’m staring down the barrel of a gun again. Waiting for that pull of the trigger. Skin prickling. Armpits sticky. Gulp in my throat too huge to swallow.
I’m not safe, I’m not safe, I’m not safe …
Usually, that’s all in my head. Usually, I’ll do the breathing exercises I found online and try to logic my way back to sanity, reminding myself that I’m not dangling upside down in a car, held by the cutting cradle of my seat belt, vision spinning, head a swirl of gasoline fumes.
Usually, I don’t have a bomb approximately one hundred feet to my left.
The USB flashes. Jav yanks it loose. Nothing explodes. I concentrate on that, over the rapid-fire rat-a-tat of my pulse: We’re still alive. All we gotta do is stay that way.
The elevator pings. And my hope falls away, along with the inner lining of my stomach.
Me and Jav meet each other’s eyes. “Hero,” I whisper. “Come to finish the job.”
“Flamer,” she counters. “Come to start it.”
I clutch my paper clip. May not be the most effective weapon, but so help me, I’m gouging out an eye before he takes me down.
“Riley!” Sherman screams. “Where are you?”
I drop the clip.
Jav tilts her head to one side. “Are you … blushing?”
I wrench open the door of the security office. Fighting to keep the grin off my mug. “Sherm—”
Sometimes, when you gamble, you hit jackpot. Other times … Well, you win some, you lose some. Sometimes, no matter how many dimes you push into the arcade game, you don’t get the prize.
Or, as in this situation, sometimes the bomb goes off.