Chapter 36

The door at the top of the stairs slaps open, and hauling a massive fire extinguisher, Jug barrels through. When he sees us, he stops.

“You.” His shoulders bunch and he calls out behind him. Resistance is futile.

The stairwell fills. Links flit past to fight the fire, but others remain with us; someone grabs my arm, wrenches it around my back, and hauls me into the foyer, where the mayor stands beside the Storm Trooper like Darth Vader himself.

Oddly it’s not the smell of smoke that I notice, it’s the overwhelming scent of fresh pizza—Karl! But I don’t see him. He’s already come and gone. It might have been a trick of the light, but I would swear that I saw the Storm Trooper turn its head a fraction. Peter’s wrestled to my side, held by two broad-chested links.

“You had me willing to give you a chance,” the mayor says. To another link he adds: “Get Williams. This is her mess.”

When the double doors to outside open wide, I see only a few dozen stragglers, some stepping into cars. Ellie’s yelling at the last news truck. Only one vehicle is driving down the road toward the mansion, honking for people to move out of the way. I wish it had police cruiser lights flashing, but all I can make out in the deepening darkness is that it’s larger than a car but smaller than a news truck. Probably some desperate Celine fan who received the news late. The doors slam shut, blocking my view.

The mayor pulls a large silver revolver. He has my full attention.

“To the farm?” Hector asks.

“There are idiots all around the fence. I’m not taking these two anywhere.”

Hector’s jaw flexes and that’s when I realize I’m about to die. Here. The gun lifts.

Peter struggles against the men holding his arms.

“Leave the girl alone,” he says.

But the mayor shakes his head. “This is a mess. We’re going to clean up every loose end.”

I’m staring down the shiny barrel. Peter writhes and screams. And it’s like I’m dreaming because, as the mayor’s eyes tighten in advance of the gun’s retort, the Storm Trooper steps forward.

A swift jab to the back of the mayor’s head sends the gun skittering. The mayor collapses in a heap. No one moves, everyone staring at the animated action figure. With a twang, the Millennium Falcon drops and lands on top of Jug, catching Hector’s shoulder and sending him sprawling. Jonny, on the Falcon’s back, crashes to the ground and rolls off.

I squirm, but the link holding me pulls my head into a vice. Peter roars as he dives for something. The foyer doors blast inward, ripped from their hinges by the bumper of my mom’s van. It skids, forcing my captor to stumble back into the wall. We hit and his grip loosens enough for me to jerk my head and catch his face with the back of my skull. He lets go and I leap away to grab a four-foot length of chain from the wall moulding. More links rush in from the great room and up from the basement.

Jonny takes a kick to the head and goes flying. The Storm Trooper is whipped by a long chain. I am running short on allies.

In the middle of the foyer, behind the wheel of the van, hunches my mom, grinning like a devil as she hits the gas and pins two links between the wall and the front grill.

“Mom,” I scream.

“Get in!” she shouts, her neck craned around the window. It’s easy to see why. From the halls everyone is converging. I swing the chain, but no one’s close enough to lash.

“Back off!” Peter has the mayor’s gun and he’s pointed it at Fenwick, then to another link who starts forward.

I grab Jonny beneath the armpits, just like he once carried me, and haul him through the sliding door of the van. The Storm Trooper seizes Jonny’s ankles and pushes. My mom throws the van into reverse and begins to slowly exit. The links all start to follow too, held at bay only by Peter’s gun.

But then more guns are drawn, several aimed at each one of us. I remember what Peter said about superior firepower. We won’t win this battle.

Peter lifts the gun into the air in a show of surrender.

“Look,” Jonny says, and I’m so relieved that he’s conscious that I smile despite the weapons drawn on me. Then I peer out the rear window where he’s pointing.

“The news truck!” I shout. “It’s transmitting. This is live!”

Eyes flick to the road and the blown gate. Cameramen have moved closer than I’d expected. On the field, only fifty feet away, lenses are glinting.

“You can shoot us,” I say out the window. “But then you’re all going to jail for murder.”

Links glance to the mayor who has extricated himself from the downed Millennium Falcon, shaking his head.

“Every link for himself,” he calls, then dashes back toward the kitchen.

Stunned, the others take a second longer before running. Within moments, they’ve all fled.

“We’re even,” the Storm Trooper says, pulling off her helmet. “As long as I can keep this.”

I laugh as Hannah shakes the sweat out of her hair and stares at me with big, proud eyes.

“Thanks, Hannah, you’re cool.”

I hear the sound of sirens screaming down the road. Several cruisers. But I also hear the roar of engines. On motorbikes, links try to beat the cruisers to the gate, but it’s too late for that. Karl waves. He’s mixed into the crowd but not before he blocked the exit with the delivery car marked with A ZaZa Pizza on the roof. Which must have been how Hannah and Jonny broke in, taking my place in the trunk.

But celebration is premature. The mansion’s triple garage doors begin opening and blue smoke clouds out in the shine of dozens of lights. The first link rips out across the pavement on a motorbike and then turns to head behind the mansion.

“There’s a rear gate,” Jonny says.

“They’re escaping,” I say.

Peter’s gun snaps off shots and one of the bikes tumbles out of control. An ATV’s rear fishtails, the driver rolling into the snow before it overturns. Then Williams tears out on a motorbike and veers toward the back. I have to stop her. What did Peter say about a crime not being solved until the culprit is captured? Yeah, he was right about a lot of things.

How do we stop them? What had the mayor said when Hector asked about taking us to the farm? He’d worried about gawkers being on the perimeter. Not at the main gate. What if the farm isn’t far from here at all? What if it’s just one of the nearby fields?

“Mom, we have to cut them off,” I say.

“Leave it to the police, Janus,” she says.

“No, mom, we can’t. They don’t realize Williams is evil. They don’t know that there’s an escape route. And they don’t know where they’re headed.”

“Jan—”

“They’re getting away. Just pull it, Mom!” I point toward Karl and the delivery car.

“Get in, Peter,” she calls out the window.

Peter folds himself into the passenger side and the van surges down the lane. Luckily, Karl notices us coming and moves the car out of the way so that we miss the bumper by a knife’s edge.

“Which way?” my mom cries.

The van slows at the end of the drive, but we don’t have time to slow.

When I visited my father’s grave, the woods had been on the right. The field on the left. Woods are behind the mansion so—

“Right!” I scream.

We tear past the first cop car. The second cop has a megaphone, urging us to stop. We don’t and his sirens blare as he launches in pursuit, tires spinning on the gravel road. The trees blur past, but the moon shines over a nearing field.

“Get ready for another right,” I say. “Lights off.”

My mom douses the headlights. There’s a small inlet on the right, signaling the start of an old farm road.

“This is it!” I point.

The van skids out as it turns onto the farm road, jostling along the ruts. Branches scratch across the windshield. Sure enough, lights too close together to be headlights bounce toward us. They don’t slow. I know most of all who I want to stop. A bullet cracks the windshield and everyone starts screaming. The van skids to a halt. Peter climbs out with the big revolver and fires a single shot before he throws the gun at an escaping link.

“No,” my mom shouts as I grab the chain and leap from the van into darkness.

Engines saw all around us, but so do the sirens and the distant whumping of a helicopter. On the breast of a motorcyclist, I see the flash of a badge. It’s Williams. She’s turned her bike into the woods and begins to rumble slowly over brush. There’s no way I’m letting her get away.