The Girl in the Wall (16 page)

“That doesn’t prove anything,” I say, though there is a thick smoke filling my chest. “He could have passed it on to anyone.”

“True, but what if I’m right?”

“You’re not,” I say.

Now she reaches for my other hand. I try to pull them away but she must have been working out these past months because she has them in a death grip and is not letting go.

“I know it sucks to think about but please, for just one minute, consider that it could be John.”

“Fine,” I huff. Sure, I’ll consider it and then decide it’s wrong. And then I remember I have something that can answer this question once and for all. I pull my hands free and this time Sera lets me. I take the stapled pages out of my pocket and start to unfold them. “This is the plan my dad had for the party. It should say here who was in charge of security.”

“Oh, good,” Sera says. “And I apologize in advance if I falsely accused John.”

My hands are shaking as I smooth down the pages. I set the plan on the table and start to read, Sera leaning over my shoulder, reading along with me. Her breath on my cheek, which is not exactly smelling good, should annoy me but somehow it’s comforting me instead. I don’t want to find this out alone.

The first page has typed details of the catering plan with my dad’s notes in the margin. Things like “remember A doesn’t like walnuts” make my throat tight. Page two details the concert. Hudson’s rep said his bodyguard would accompany Hudson who asked that water be available before the concert. I guess he’s not a diva the way some stars are with their requests of champagne and truffles. Suggested security is a minimum if seven guards on the property, dispersed between the yard and the house, and they are happy to supply the five if needed. I don’t want to read what my dad has scrawled in the margin right next to that but I force my eyes over. “John will take over the hiring of security for the concert.” The words draw blood.

A moment later Sera reads them. I can tell because she gasps and then starts rubbing my back in small circles, the way she did when my dad was a no-show at my birthday party last year.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Yeah, me too.”

We are quiet for a moment, then she clears her throat. “It’s good we know.”

“I guess,” I say.

I mean, one of the few people I thought I could trust has turned out to have a death wish against me so it’s hard to actually cheer for this news. But once I get past that I’ll probably see that she’s right. And that’s probably when I’ll start to get angry about it too. Right now, though, I just feel like I’ve been run over by an SUV.

“What’s this?” Sera asks, pointing to a date my dad wrote on the bottom of the page. It’s by the section labeled “Toast.”

“It’s the year of your birth but two days after your birthday,” she continues.

“Right, that’s the first day my dad met me,” I say, thinking of how my mom used to talk about how I was early and my dad was in Japan when I was born. It took him over twenty-four hours to get to the hospital and—

“Oh, my God,” I say, jumping up.

“What?” Sera asks, looking worried.

“I know!” I say excitedly. “I know what my dad’s phone code is.”

And then we hear a noise in the hall. I snatch up the party plan and we streak for the grate as two agents walk in.

“Who turned this light on?” one of them asks.

The other shrugs. “Who cares?”

We are creeping silently into the tunnel. I am holding my breath and it’s not until we are a good twenty feet away that I let it out in a gust. “That was too close.”

“I know,” she says. Even in this light I can see she is pale from the scare. But then she grins. “But you have the phone and you know the code and that’s what matters.”

“Yeah,” I say, the knowledge warm inside me.

I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. Though of course to know that my dad chose the day he met me as his code, I’d have to know that he loved me and that I only fully realized an hour ago.

“I need to get back,” Sera says. “I think you should still stock the weapons after you call, just in case we want to distract the agents when the police are breaking in or something.”

“I’ll do it as soon as I call.”

Sera turns to me and smiles. “See you outside.”

Without thinking I hug her. It’s so familiar yet new somehow too. “Thanks.”

She looks at me for a moment and I know she gets it. That’s the thing I somehow let myself forget these past months: Sera always has my back and she always, always gets me.

I am running as fast as I quietly can through the tunnels. I’ve been gone for ages and drawing air into my lungs is nearly impossible every time I think about what will be waiting for me when I get back. I take the stairs two at a time, trying not to think about it. It’s hard enough to breathe in these musty tunnels.

I know I should be feeling relief about the phone but so much has gone wrong tonight that it’s hard to feel secure about anything. Plus what if it takes them a while to get here? We’re on a pretty tight deadline. At this point I think we need to carry on with our plans and hope the police are there as backup. I know Ariel will get the weapons there and Hudson can get them if I’m—okay, not thinking about that.

Instead I think about Ariel, how good it felt to talk to her, to tell her I’m not sorry and for her to get that. The absolute worst thing about these past nine months and four days wasn’t the social freeze out or the death of my social life. It was losing my best friend.

I slow as I near the bathroom, then pause for a second to catch my breath. I still can’t believe John Avery is behind all this. I mean, I can, the evidence is there, and given how much Mr. Barett yelled at him, I can see why he might not feel that loyal to him. Still, this is pretty extreme. And my heart aches for Ariel, though at least she knows her uncle didn’t do it. Hard to know which is worse really—either way someone she trusted backstabbed her pretty harshly and that sucks.

I peer through the grate and see that no one is in the bathroom. I remove the grate as noiselessly as I can, slip back into the bathroom and put the grate back. Is it possible that the agents lost track of how long I’ve been in here? My hopes lift. They’re tired and distracted and maybe the one who gave me permission to use the bathroom left. Maybe I really am going to get away with this.

I open the bathroom door and they are there, waiting for me. One grabs my arm so hard I squeal and the other is in my face yelling, “Where the hell were you?”

Behind them I can see my classmates and Hudson on the sofas. They look almost as terrified as I feel.

“Answer me!” he yells.

“The bathroom,” I whisper.

“We’ll deal with her upstairs,” the other agent says, jerking my arm so brutally my eyes tear and I’m worried he’s going to dislocate my shoulder. He shoves me toward the door.

Through blurry eyes I twist my head back and find Hudson’s face.

“Brush-busting is set,” I call out to him, hoping he’ll understand that they need to go ahead with the plan. I am pushed out of the room before I can see his reaction.

They force me up the stairs so fast I trip and the tug on my arm to get me upright practically has me seeing stars. I struggle up, my mind back in the game room with my friends. I will not get to see what happens next, I know that. But I made sure they’d have the weapons and maybe I even helped Ariel call the police. It’s possible they’ll get here in time to save everyone, though not me. My window is closing too fast.

My face is wet with tears, my arm is screaming in pain, and fear is a thick fog in my belly. But my heart isn’t back in that room with Hudson and Cassidy, it’s in the tunnels with Ariel.

And it’s my heart that matters.

I tap the phone to life but even as it lights up, it is flashing, telling me I have no power and it is going to shut down. It’s possible I could at least dial 911 in this last millisecond except for one thing: There is no reception deep in the tunnels.

I can’t get us help but maybe I can do one thing before the phone dies. I whip out the party plan and take a shot of the page that says John is in charge of security. That way if something happens to me and the actual pages, there is some proof that he is behind it. The phone shuts down, its light dying out. I take a moment to hide the plan in a corner, just in case I get caught, just to have another way someone might be able to figure out John is behind this, and then I head off to deliver the weapons.

It takes me three trips to get all the weapons in place and sweat is beaded at my temples by the time I am done. I am pleased with the stash though—there are more than enough weapons for everyone.

I head back upstairs and try to find Nico. It takes me a few minutes but I finally track him down in the hall outside my bedroom. I listen for a few moments but hear no other voices and take the risk.

“Nico,” I whisper.

He starts, then whispers back. “Your room in three minutes.”

I head to my room and wait just inside the grate until I hear him come in. His face is flushed and sweaty, and his hair is sticking up all over the place. These things should not make my stomach explode with fizzy, sweet bubbles like a shaken can of soda that send tingles across my body but they do and I take a second to get a grip, to mash down the fizz. Then I step out, my face neutral.

“I got the weapons downstairs,” I tell him. “They’re all set.

“Great,” he says, wiping a hand across his forehead and smiling. He has such a nice smile. “Those of us on the inside are ready as well. When we hear the attack downstairs we will do our part.”

“Good,” I say, starting to pace. It’s impossible to stand still with all the adrenaline I have coursing through me and it helps control the tingles I get when I look straight at him. Less than fifteen minutes now. “You guys should be sure to take off your ski masks, so no one thinks you’re with the other agents.”

He nods, probably having already thought of this.

“Do you think your uncle will try to escape?” Nico asks.

“Oh, I found out it wasn’t him.”

“No?” he asks. “How did you discover this?”

“They shot him.”

His eyes fill with pain for me but instead of hardening me, like it should, it makes my insides go a little melty.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. Then he shakes his head. “I’ve said that a lot tonight.”

“I guess a lot has happened,” I say, trying to sound flippant but not even coming close.

Nico rubs his fingers down my cheek so gently it makes the fizzing bubbles go wild. “It has.”

I step away before I do something stupid, something I will later regret. “I think John Avery is behind it.” The words come out all choked, like my throat is constricting. I still can’t believe John is behind this.

Nico’s mouth presses into a line. “You know, that makes sense. I have seen him tonight, and his assistant, and they did not look scared like everyone else.”

Right, Owen was here. That should have tipped me off.

“I guess they think they have nothing to fear,” I say ruefully.

Nico grins at me. “So they think. They don’t know that the lioness of God is onto them.”

Somehow the really cheesy meaning of my name does not sound cheesy when he says it. And I remember what his name means, victory of the people. I realize it fits him. “There’s a lot they don’t know,” I say.

I can’t tear my eyes away from him, with his hair that sticks up straight, his rough features, his thick fingers able to create such beauty with the flowers he grows.

His brow wrinkles. “Wait, what will you do when the fighting starts?”

“I’ll go downstairs,” I say, having already thought it through. “I thought I’d jump out of the fireplace right after they start, just to give the agents something else they aren’t expecting.”

Nico nods. “It’s a good idea.” He glances at the clock. “I should go now.”

“Wait.” There’s one part of my plan I haven’t told him and don’t intend to. But I need him to do something for me. “Can you hold onto this?” I reach into my pocket for the phone and hand it to him. “I took a picture of something that might help implicate John Avery as the person behind this whole thing. Can you keep it safe for me?”

He does not reach for it but instead just looks at me steadily. “You plan to confront John?” he asks after a moment.

So much for not telling him the other part of my plan. “I have to. But I’m not sure how it will go and if anything happens to me, I just want to know you have this and you’ll give it to the police.”

Now he reaches out his hand, but instead of taking the phone, he wraps his fingers around mine and the bubbles fizz up.

We hear voices in the hall and we both freeze.

“So where did she go if she wasn’t in the bathroom?” an agent is saying as they come closer.

Nico stuffs the phone in his pocket and waves me toward the grate but I stay where I am, waiting to hear the response, my body suddenly going cold.

“No one knows,” the other agent, a woman, replies. “But we checked every inch of that bathroom and she was gone. Then like fifteen minutes later she came out the door.”

My whole body is ice.

“That’s not really…” The voices fade as they turn the corner.

“What are you waiting for?” Nico whispers urgently. “They could come back. You must go.”

“Sera,” I manage to croak through my frozen lips. “They have Sera.”

Nico’s face suddenly looks like he has aged twenty years in the half-second it takes him to process what I’ve said. “You’re sure?”

I nod.

“I will go see if there’s anything I can do.”

But I am already heading for the grate. It is my fault she was caught and I am going to be the one to fix this.

The agents hustle me through the door of a small sitting room in Mr. Barett’s office suite, which I am surprised to see is empty, save for a couple chairs and an empty desk. They shove me down in a high-backed armchair that is unpleasantly firm. Then they just stand there, like they’re waiting for something. I am wondering if I should say something or if that would just make things worse. Since I don’t have anything to say, I decide to stay quiet despite the fact that the silence is starting to feel noxious every time I breathe it in.