“You, too. Thanks, Roddy.”
When his flashlight bobbed down the stairwell, I exited the stairwell and found Ty reclined in a borrowed classroom chair beside the door to my room. His head was tipped back and his eyes were closed, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He cracked open one eye with a smirk as I scanned my card key, slipped inside, and quickly shut my door.
Vero was waiting inside, wearing her hat, coat, and shoes, the black duffel bag ready beside her feet, the contents zip-tied shut.
“It’s about damn time,” she whispered, snapping a blanket off her bed as I put on my coat.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear my phone.”
She grumbled something unintelligible that sounded a lot like I bet. “Here, help me tie these.” She passed me a blanket from a folded stack and grabbed another for herself. “So…？ How was dessert?” At my mortified look, she said, “Oh, please. Don’t even tell me you didn’t sample the menu.”
“I might have had a little taste,” I admitted.
“And?”
“And … it was really good.”
She narrowed her eyes at me as she took my knotted blanket and tied it to the end of her bed frame. “Really good? That’s all you’ve got? You’ve been gone for hours, Finn! He’d better have treated you to one of those fancy chocolate fountains and an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet!”
“The buffet was incredible,” I blurted.
“How were the serving sizes?”
“Vero!”
“You promised you would tell me everything!”
“Fine,” I said, unlocking the window. “If you must know, the serving sizes were huge, I went back for seconds, and his biscuits were utterly spectacular.”
“I knew it!”
“Keep your voice down.” The last thing we needed was to attract any attention. I lifted the lower sash of the window, shivering as an icy breeze poured into the room. The grounds below us were empty, the campus disconcertingly quiet. I tossed out the makeshift rope we’d made from the blankets and leaned out to watch it fall, a little queasy as I stared down the three flights to the bottom. The rope was barely long enough to brush the ground.
Vero slung the empty duffel bag through the window. It landed with a soft thump.
“You go first,” she said.
“Me? Why do I have to go first?”
“So if we fall, you can catch me.”
“What do you mean, if we fall?”
“Knots aren’t my strong suit.”
“I can’t believe this was your idea.”
“You have a better one?”
“Ty’s probably asleep by now. We could probably sneak right past him.”
“You want to take that chance?”
I gritted my teeth, remembering Ty’s smug grin moments before. I put one foot out the window. My heart leapt into my throat as I took hold of the blanket-rope and straddled the sill.
“Hurry,” Vero nudged, “or we’ll be too late to make the drop.”
“Don’t push!” I hissed as I eased the rest of my body out the window. I began sliding down the rope in short increments, gripping it between my feet as I felt for the knots. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I’d survived my run-in with Feliks in the gym only to plummet to my death from a rope that could have doubled as my son’s woobie.
My fingers fumbled over the last knot, dumping me flat on my bottom in the frozen grass. I got stiffly to my feet and brushed myself off, wincing at the throb in my tailbone.
I looked up at our window and gestured for Vero to hurry.
She checked the knot on the bed frame twice before straddling the sill and sliding over the ledge. She reached back up, trying to close the window behind us. Her body gave a sudden lurch. We both gasped as the knot slipped and suddenly, Vero was hurtling toward me. I held out my arms, determined to catch her, and at the same time unsure exactly how that would work. My mind flashed back to the tower of cars that had squashed Ike. I was certain this was karma crashing toward me just as Vero’s body jolted to a stop. Her glove clung to the sill of the second-story window. She hovered for a moment, looking down at me with wide eyes as her fingers slid to the edge of the brick. With a squeak, she plummeted backward into my arms, and my lungs emptied in a painful burst as we smashed into the ground.
Vero lay sprawled on top of me, breathing fast as she stared up at our window. “You okay?” she whispered.
“I should have stayed in bed with Nick,” I said into the back of her coat.
She rolled off me and helped me to my feet. I limped after her, carrying the duffel bag, as she tossed the blanket-rope into the dumpster behind the dorm.
We hurried across the drill field, careful not to linger too long in the open. Ducking into the first stretch of trees we could find, we hunched in the shadows, watching the tower. Vero held up her binoculars and scanned the fire escape, making a slow pass up the side of the building to the roofline.
“It’s too dark up there. I can’t make out a damn thing,” she whispered.
I checked the time, weighing the risks. EasyClean wasn’t due to arrive for another thirty minutes. And if Samara had intercepted our email, I’d know. She would have banged on Nick’s door hours ago to wake him up. “I’ll take the bag to the roof,” I said. “You stay here and keep an eye on the stairs. Text me if you see anyone coming.”
“Be careful,” she whispered as I crept to the first rung of the fire escape. The metal was slick. I hoisted the bag onto my shoulder and climbed as fast as I dared, avoiding the glittering patches of ice on the landings. By the time I reached the final flight, my lungs were on fire, the steam on my breath whisked away by a cutting wind. I glanced over the metal handrail. Moonlight glinted off the lenses of Vero’s binoculars through the trees. I gave her a quick thumbs-up, hoping she could see me. Her phone light flashed in response.
I took a steadying breath and climbed the last few steps to the roof.
Wind whipped over the waist-high ledge surrounding the deck, tossing my hair over my eyes as I looked for a place to hide the bag, somewhere out of sight, where only someone who was looking for it might see it. The landscape of the roof deck was sparse. The shallow jogs in the low wall didn’t leave many options, but the large concrete enclosure in the center of it … that might work.
There were no windows in it, just a heavy steel door and a sign that read PUMP HOUSE. A giant spool of fire hosing was mounted to its side, and the nook behind the hoses seemed just big enough to conceal the duffel bag. I hurried toward it, eager to hide the bait and get back to Vero, when a shuffling sound came from the far side of the pump house.
“Damnit, where the fuck are you?” someone whispered.
I backed slowly away from the pump house and spotted movement in the dark. A man was on his hands and knees behind the spool, his denim-clad legs sticking out as he searched for something. Ice crackled under me as I crept along the edge of the roof to see more of him. My breath caught as Wade stood and reached above his head, his jacket riding up as he searched the eaves under the pump house roof. The slender handle of a familiar Glock peeked out of the waistband of his jeans.
“There you are, you sneaky bastards.” He turned, a silver Zippo in one of his hands and a pack of Marlboros in the other. We both froze, staring at each other across the narrow slice of the roof.