“And then what? What will we do? Where are we gonna go?” I hated that I was saying this, but it needed to be said. “Tyler, please. Just stay here. You’ll be safer that way.”
He ignored me. Flat-out acted like he hadn’t even heard me.
“Here,” he ordered, tugging the crank on the window, because that was the kind of window it was. It didn’t move, not even an inch, as if it were glued in place. “Shit,” he cursed, growing more agitated by the second. The helicopter sounded like it was right on top of us now, making it almost impossible to hear ourselves.
No longer uncertain, Tyler reached for the broken computer monitor. Without skipping a beat, he hurled it through the window. The noise of shattering glass was swallowed by the helicopter that was right overhead. I kept looking behind us, checking the hallway, and the door beyond, waiting to be swarmed by the agents outside. My entire body was shaking, and I thought I was going to hyperventilate as I wheezed for each breath.
Tyler, though, was single-minded. Shielding his eyes, he used a heavy book to break out the remaining shards and then pulled off his hoodie, spreading it over the bottom edge of the opening.
“Come on,” he told me, cupping his hands together beneath the windowsill and motioning for me to step into them so he could hoist me over the edge.
Without the window’s glass in place, the sounds from outside echoed all around us. Not only could we hear the helicopter, with its constantly rotating blades, but we could make out voices shouting and car doors slamming. They were coming.
Behind us, the sound of the trailer’s front door crashing made me jump, and without waiting, or looking back, I went for it, lunging toward Tyler. I dropped my foot into his hands and let him throw me through the broken window. I didn’t have my balance, though, and when I landed on the other side, I fell on my hands and knees in the pool of broken glass. My heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest, and I barely had time to glance at my hands to see if I’d been hurt when Tyler was coming through the window right behind me, landing more gracefully than I had.
Somewhat shakily, I stood upright, relieved that we’d made it.
Until I heard Agent Truman, and my skin prickled. “We’ve got you surrounded. There’s no point trying to run.”
Even if he hadn’t said we were surrounded, I saw his gun. And he aimed it the same way the agent from the bookstore had. At Tyler.
I sagged, letting his frigid words settle over me. Letting the weight of their meaning—like an iceberg—crush me.
This was it. There was no more hope of leaving Tyler behind, because now all I could do was turn myself in and hope Simon was wrong.
“Kyra!” Tyler had to shout to be heard above the helicopter overhead.
When I turned to him, in the darkness behind the trailer, I was confused about why he’d said my name in the first place, because he wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes never strayed from Agent Truman.
Yet all the same, I felt him slip something into my hand. Agent Truman continued to stare Tyler down, unaware of what had just passed between us.
And then, buried in the constant whomp-whomp of the helicopter’s blades, I thought I heard Tyler say, “You know what to do.”
I wasn’t sure I did at first, but then I squeezed my fingers around the laces of the ball Tyler had placed there, and I remembered that night at the ball field, when I’d tossed the ball at Tyler . . . when I’d nearly ripped a hole through the backstop.
Without a word, Tyler’s eyes slipped to mine. I don’t know how he conveyed it, or even if he did, but I swear he told me You can do this with that look.
And I believed him.
Agent Truman’s expression narrowed suspiciously as he surveyed us, and his gun moved to me. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he commanded. “I won’t shoot you,” he added, making a disgusted sound like a grunt. “But I will kill him.” The light from the helicopter landed on us, falling in a wide, spectral circle that encompassed all three of us, and Agent Truman moved the gun then, aiming it directly at Tyler’s head while a ruthless expression distorted his face, and I had no doubt that he meant what he said.
I didn’t think then; I only reacted. Like when I was on the mound. Like when the stands were filled with people cheering but I couldn’t hear a single one of them because all that mattered was me and the person holding the bat.
I focused on the gun.
The gun and the ball in my hand and the beating of my heart.
I breathed, and then I moved.
And I was fast. Man, was I fast.
Agent Truman couldn’t have dodged the ball even if I’d have given him fair warning. It was out of my hand like a shot. And any control I thought I was lacking had all been in my head.
I was precise. Crazy, uncanny, laser-like precise.
The ball, when it hit Agent Truman’s gun, and the fingers he had wrapped around its grip, exploded. It came apart—the laces, the leather—exposing the layer of worm-like yarns underneath the leather skin.
Agent Truman’s face went ashen as his knuckles exploded as well. Even above the helicopter, I was sure I hadn’t imagined hearing that sound.
And then he crumpled to his knees, and before anyone else could stop us or before he could pick up his gun with his other hand, Tyler and I ran. . . .
Disappearing beneath the canopy of trees into the jet-black forest behind us.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I WAS STILL SHAKEN, BUT I KEPT RUNNING, WITH Tyler right behind me. My legs and my lungs were burning even though it didn’t seem like we’d gone all that far. But the woods kept getting deeper and denser and darker.