Chapter Twenty-Five
Faye
I feel like I might throw up the PB&J that Ana insisted I eat this morning. I have never been so terrified in my life, not even when I was sixteen and running for my life.
Ana hugs me tightly, her body trembling. Or maybe it’s mine. I hope not.
I force myself through the narrow window and onto the precarious ledge outside. The air is blessedly still in the golden morning light. I slide a few shuffling steps toward the ladder. “Don’t look down, don’t look down,” I chant to myself, struggling to keep my eyes focused on the ledge letting the street below fade into an unthreatening blur.
I have never liked heights. I can’t remember when the aversion started, but even as a child I didn’t climb trees or play on the monkey bars at school. My palms are clammy and my breathing is labored. This is one of my worst nightmares, but I know this is our only opportunity to get help.
If I can’t get onto the roof and then somehow to Xavier’s building … I just don’t know what will happen to us… to me.
From the little Ana’s dad said yesterday, I know she is the one they want. That makes me expendable
, and if somehow they figure out that the late Xavier Cerelli had been looking for me at one time… well, I don’t think that would work out in my favor either.
Don’t look down, Faye. Don’t look down. Squeezing my eyes tight, I flatten my sweaty palms against the cool brick building against my back and force my feet to move again. Slide. Step. Slide.
When I open them again, I do it—I look down.
A sudden sensation of vertigo overcomes me and I suck in a terrified breath, fighting the dizziness. Snapping my eyes closed again, and jerking back, my head bumps against the wall behind me. I take deep shaky breaths, struggling to calm my terror.
I will not make the mistake of doing that again. Returning my gaze to the ladder, I resume my slow shuffle. Slide. Step. Slide.
The ladder is almost in reach when I hear Ana screaming for me to hurry. Her panicked voice is cut off by the sound of men shouting and the window banging open. They aren’t concerned with being quiet.
“She’s heading to the roof!” someone yells.
“Hurry, Faye!” Ana sounds frantic, and I know that I’m caught. It’s too late, but there is no other option. I have to try to make it.
Glancing back, I can see one of them looking out the window at me and gesturing. I don’t hear Ana’s voice anymore, and that is scares me even more..
As quickly as possible I scramble up the ladder, but it’s farther to the roof than I expected it to be and my jello legs aren’t helping me make it to the top as fast as I want them to. I was hoping to find a place to hide before they can reach me, but I’m not going fast enough and I know it.
“Just a little more,” I mumble to myself as my sweating palm slips from the metal rung and my heart stops for a terrifying moment as I wait to fall. “Only a couple more.”
Pushing down my fear, I struggle over the ledge between me and the rooftop before rolling onto my back, gasping for breath. Without warning, a huge shadow falls over me and I’m caught roughly in the grip of a man’s hands. With a hard shake I’m yanked to my feet. My teeth click together, hard, catching the inside of my cheek and the rusty flavor of my blood coats my tongue. I blink up at him as my whole body starts trembling.
I know this man. He makes the guys who snatched Ana and I look like teddy bears.
This man is big and scarred. He looks angry. Excited and angry. Not a good combination.
My feet don’t touch the ground as he shakes me violently before throwing me toward the darkness of a stairwell leading back inside the building.
I hit the ground in a heap, struggling not to cry out from the pain. I am not breaking down in front of this man. I will not. I will die first.
This is the man who made me an orphan.
The man who murdered my mother.
Because of this man, I have spent the last four years of my life alone and afraid.
I have to be brave. Somehow.
Travis will come for me. He has to. If he doesn’t, I’m as good as dead.
I knew that this day might come, that someone might find me, but I always told myself I would never again see this face. The face that has haunted my nightmares for years.