We made it three-quarters of the way to the library before a man with an assault rifle caught us, head-on.
“Down on the ground!”
I recognized the man as the one who’d hit Anna Hayden over the head, the one who’d implied that he was taking orders from Dr. Clark for now.
Mercenary. Unpredictable.
I dropped to the ground. The guard rounded on Henry.
“You!” he said, jabbing the gun in Henry’s direction.
Henry held his hands up. He slowly lowered himself to his knees. I saw a flicker in the gunman’s eyes. He stepped toward Henry.
“Marquette,” I blurted out Henry’s last name. “He’s Henry Marquette. I’m Tess Kendrick Keyes.”
Henry stared down the gun—and the man who held it. When he spoke, each word was deliberate and crisp. “You want us alive.”
Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot him. Please, don’t—
After an elongated moment, the guard lowered the gun ten or fifteen degrees—just enough to start my heart beating again in my chest, not enough to stop me from picturing him changing his mind and pulling the trigger.
The guard shifted his gaze from Henry to me. He removed one hand from his gun and lifted it to his ear. I realized that he was talking to someone, sending a message. “I’ve got eyes on—”
One second, Henry was beside me, and the next, he lunged for the man’s gun.
No.
Henry’s hands closed around the barrel of the gun and he slammed it back into the gunman’s face, throwing his whole body after the blow. The two of them went down. The gun went off.
No.
I leapt forward, nothing in my mind except getting to Henry. If I could get to him, he would be okay. If I could touch him, I could save him. I could make him fine.
Please, God, let him be fine.
“Tess.” Henry stood up off the guard. I looked for blood, looked for a hole in his shoulder or chest. “Kendrick.” Henry’s voice was sharper this time. “We need to go. Now.”
He’s okay. Henry’s okay. As we took off running for the library, I fought the urge to glance back over my shoulder. No blood, I thought. There was no blood. Not on Henry. Not on the gunman.
“He’s unconscious,” Henry said as we hit the library door. “He won’t stay that way.”
Maybe one of us should have grabbed the gun—but I didn’t know how to shoot it. I doubted Henry did, either.
We have to find a way out of here. We have to find the tunnel before someone comes looking for the man Henry took out.
How long did we have? Seconds? Minutes?
Fueled by adrenaline, I pushed forward. Where had the Secret Service agent been heading?
If I were an entrance to an underground tunnel, where would I be?
“The tunnel’s under us,” I told Henry. “The entrance probably is, too.”
I squatted down, running my hands frantically over the floor. There had to be something. I looked for a flip, a switch, a crack in the floor—
“Here,” Henry called. He threw his weight against a bookshelf. It creaked, then started to move. I hurried to help him, not questioning how he’d found it, how we could have possibly gotten so lucky when—
“This way!”
I heard the shout, and then I heard running—toward the library, toward us. The bookshelf gave way. Something clicked, and a second later, I was looking into a dark hole.
The tunnel—if we were lucky.
“You go first,” Henry told me. “Give me the tablet, and go.”
There was no time to think, no time to waste. I handed him the tablet, then dropped down into the hole and landed hard. I looked up.
“Go,” Henry told me again. There was a finality to his tone, and I realized then why he’d asked for the tablet.
He’s not coming.
“Henry!” My yell was lost to the sound of the bookshelf moving back into place. A second after the entrance closed, there was silence, and a moment after that, I heard the sound of feet overhead.
Of gunshots.
They won’t hurt him. He’s a high-value target. He has to be—
There was no way back up.
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.