ALEX AND DANIEL WERE long gone. An eight-foot chain-link fence was nothing. Up and over they went, racing across the bumpy grass, splitting up, Alex heading toward one end of the campus and Daniel toward the other, screaming, “Annabel! Annabel!”
Emmie stayed with the Bronco. Her first thought was that she would drive around the fence to pick them up wherever they came out. But the bumper of the heavy Mercedes pinned her neatly to the fence. The headlights illuminated Emmie briefly and then went out.
She was not, surprisingly, afraid of Mr. Thiell. She did not believe that he would hurt his son’s new sister-in-law. But she did not get out of the Bronco, either. She locked the doors as he was getting out of the Mercedes and rolled her window down only an inch.
“Emmie, Emmie,” said Mr. Thiell. “A terrible misunderstanding. You must signal your friends to come back. The buildings are wired. Timers are set. Poor Daniel and his confused young companion will be hurt.”
The cries of “Annabel! Annabel!” echoed in the dark.
But even if they heard her answer, how could they release her? Buildings about to be blown up are sealed tight. Otherwise some curious ten-year-old boy exploring might be there at the crucial moment.
In his hand Mr. Thiell held a small black object, rather like a television remote control. He was smiling.
It’s the detonator, thought Emmie. When Daniel and Alex are close enough to the buildings, he’ll touch the right combination. Boom. They’re dead. Like a kid’s game. Bang. You’re dead. But it won’t be a game. This man whose specialty is games—whole cities and casinos—he himself does not play games.
“Get out of the Bronco, Emmie,” said Mr. Thiell pleasantly. “Or I’ll have to touch the controls.”
Annabel left the bulkhead door open.
She breathed in huge chunks of air.
Wonderful soft smells of summer filled her. She could smell honeysuckle and pine. She could see fireflies.
I’m out.
Fear stayed inside the cellar with the dust and the plastic explosives. She was standing on real grass, soft stems brushing wetly on her bare legs. Compared to the blackness of her imprisonment the starry night was utterly clear. She gazed upon the world as if she had been away a thousand years.
In the end, she had simply hung her whole weight on the knotted wires until they separated. There was no current in them and nothing happened. After all that horror and fear, there was nothing to it. Then she had slid the bar out of its handle and used her shoulders to press upward and lift the bulkhead door.
Annabel Annabel Annabel Annabel. The world reverberated with her name, welcoming her home.
What time is it? she wondered. Midnight? Two A.M.? Four A.M.?
Annabel Annabel. Who was calling her? Was she making it up in the residue of her fear or were people out there looking?
She had no idea where she could be. Around her were buildings whose silhouettes in the moonlight seemed rather formal, as if they should be gathered about a city square, but beyond them she could see the outlines of the hills. She could smell the forest.
Headlights penetrated the sky. Far away and high above, a car had stopped on a hillside. The headlights went out. Stopping for what reason? To watch an explosion?
Annabel began to run.
Who? Who? Who?
Who had locked her up? Who was coming to watch her die?
“Daniel is a very sick boy, Emmie,” said Mr. Thiell to Emmie. She was dwarfed by him and his two thugs. It terrified her to be standing among them. But she had no place to go. “He wanted to take his revenge by killing Hollings Jayquith’s daughter. There’s a certain twisted logic to that. Destroy the person Jayquith loves, just as Jayquith destroyed the person Daniel loved. Daniel knows about the wildlife preserves, you see, because he’s my son’s good friend. It was really very clever of him to utilize the buildings.”
“Stop it!” hissed Emmie. “You cannot get away with this! You cannot transfer any blame to Daniel Ransom! You are responsible for everything. And if anything happens to Annabel or Daniel or Alex, I will know.”
“Ah, Emmie, you’re a young girl whose jealousy of her beautiful older sister is pathetically obvious. Would anyone in authority believe such a sad little case? No. To whom would you carry your little version, Emmie?”
He was right. He would brazen it out. After all—look who would be on his side! Theodora Jayquith herself. Theodora could never allow herself to believe that she had associated all these years with a man willing to murder her beloved Annabel. Willing now also to murder Daniel and Alex. Presidents of countries, CEOs of corporations, Wall Street hotshots—they got away with their crimes; why could J Thiell not get away with his?
“Emmie, Emmie,” said Mr. Thiell sadly. “Your poor sister will have to deal with your nervous breakdown when she gets back from her honeymoon. Is that fair to her?”
The high-beam headlights in the Mercedes went back on. Blinded, they swerved to stare. Who could be in the vehicle?
Yellow light like some evil X ray exposed them on the hillside.
“I used your car phone, Mr. Thiell,” said Annabel in her high clear voice. “The state police are on their way. Also my father.”
Emmie’s knees gave way.
Annabel was out. Annabel was safe.
“Give me the detonator, Mr. Thiell,” said Alex.
From her new position low in the grass, Emmie saw the two boys appear behind Mr. Thiell’s men. Nobody was armed. Nobody had thought it was necessary. They had expected that the boys would get themselves blown up and that would be that. Who needed guns when there were plastic explosives in place?
“You and I, Mr. Thiell,” said Alex, “are going in there. I will have the detonator. Once you and I are inside, I’m going to detonate the buildings. Because there’s no point in trying to get you through the law. The law will smile on you, the way it always has, because you pay it off, what you don’t own already. Nobody knows better than me. My brother Alan—you got away with that. Well, you’re not getting away now.”
Alex is willing to die, too, in order to get his revenge, thought Emmie. She struggled to her feet and backed away from the group. Annabel was in the Mercedes, Daniel and Alex were facing J Thiell and his two men. The men’s eyes were darting, assessing, trying to decide what to do here. Waiting, Emmie thought, for directions from J Thiell.
Or from me, she thought. Because after all, one of them was armed. Emmie Pearse lifted the gun that she had taken from Mr. Thiell back at the country house. “No, Alex,” she said. “You won’t be a murderer, too. You are a good person. That’s the point here. They are the bad guys. We are the good ones.”
J Thiell’s fingers closed on the small black case in his palm. Emmie would have done the same. Send the buildings up now. Why leave even the slightest chance that Alex would manage to escort him onto the grounds? It wouldn’t be a nice way to die.
J Thiell provided them with the greatest fireworks on earth. Black and silent buildings leaped into the sky with color and grandeur and great screaming noise. Metal clashed on metal like a thousand cars crashing.
The explosion ended far more quickly than seemed possible. The night was too dark to see its effect. The stink spread quickly. Baked dust, roasted wood, heated brick.
But no corpses, thought Emmie. The people I care about are alive.
She heard sirens in the distance. Whether or not Annabel had actually reached help on the car phone, help was going to come after the sky lit up like a neutron bomb. Emmie handed the gun to Daniel and ran for the Mercedes. Annabel got out and the two girls embraced. “You’re alive!” whispered Emmie. “Oh, Annabel, I thought maybe—I was so scared for you—it’s been awful!”
It had been awful for Annabel. But no longer. She was floating on relief. She would never tell anyone, even Daniel, that she had believed her own father had ordered her death. Of all the secrets of her life, she now had the greatest: She had believed that Hollings Jayquith was capable of evil.
Her father was good; he just had bad taste in friends.
Her aunt was good; she had just deceived herself over a man, and what woman hadn’t done the same at least once?
Her family loved her. Sidetracked by J Thiell’s manipulations and by Jade’s arrival. But they loved her.
And Daniel … he could love her now … he could admit it … he could say her last name out loud … and stand next to her … be joined to her.
Annabel let Emmie spill out emotions. Annabel kept hers.
Up the torturously narrow drive came the first police car, followed by the first rescue truck and the first fire engine.
Daniel put the gun away. He didn’t feel like explaining it to the rescue squads. No sense confusing the issue.
Mr. Thiell and his men retreated to the Mercedes and the four young people stood on the opposite side of the Bronco. None of them was going anywhere, not with those huge vehicles lumbering up that narrow drive.
“There’s going to be terrible publicity,” said Emmie shakily.
“We’ve been there,” said Daniel. “Publicity is nothing new.”
The immensely powerful lights of the rescue vehicles bathed them. Annabel narrowed her eyes to see Daniel. I wonder what my hair looks like, she thought. I don’t want a reunion when my hair is disgusting.
She had to laugh. Her laugh caught Daniel and he laughed with her, and ran toward her and caught her in his arms. He kissed her in the dark and they tasted the dust of the explosion. They kissed it away.
“What’s new,” said Annabel, “is proof. J Thiell is going to jail.” She traced Daniel’s sturdy profile with her fingers.
“He’ll be out in ten minutes with bail,” protested Alex. “If the local police even book him. They’ll probably book us.”
“No,” said Daniel Madison Ransom. “I’m going to use my name. It’s a name that gets done what needs to be done. It’s time I stopped pretending I’m not there. It’s time I leaned into my name. Shout it out loud. Give interviews. Say my piece. Daniel Madison Ransom is somebody. Not just somebody’s son.”