Page 44

AMITY

I carefully step around the side of the small building, conscious that the laptop we need is in my backpack. The wind whips my hair and it’s cooler now; I wish I’d brought Vale’s hat. I should be searching for any other way off this roof. I try not to make noise stepping in the black gravel.

I can’t see what’s going on so I creep to the other side to check.

What I see feels like a punch in the stomach. The guard is holding his arms out straight, pointed at the edge of the roof, with a gun in his hands.

Vale appears from the ladder, pulling himself up. He rises slowly, his hands in the air. His left eye is still swollen shut but he’s got his shirt back on and he looks okay besides that. They are talking but with the wind whipping up here I can’t hear what they’re saying.

I glance around again but there’s nothing to see. The stairs are locked, but maybe the keys to the stairs are in the office .

I check on Vale, wondering what to do, and he sees me, I think. I start toward him, but he gives a subtle shake of his head. He continues talking to the guard, slipping one hand in his coat to ease a gun out and carefully place it on the ground.

Vale doesn’t want me to come over there.

Instead I duck inside. If all Vale did was climb up onto the roof, he’ll be okay, right?

They’ll just make him leave or whatever?

Then I remember with dread the way the Brotherhood guards treated him before, his wrists in a zip tie, and I search frantically for keys.

Glancing out the window, I see they’re still standing there at the edge, talking.

I yank the drawers open, my hands shaky. Inside the main, wide drawer there’s a ring of keys on a key chain. I grab them and turn to leave, edging around the back of the building.

In order to get to the stairs and try the keys, I’ll be out in the open. The guard’s back is to me but there’s no guarantee he won’t hear me or see me. I should go, just take the laptop and make my way as carefully as I can to the stairs.

The thought of leaving Vale still tugs at me. What if we could get away together, and I could somehow get the laptop to the PS without him realizing? The thing is, they’ll still want me to go back to the PS and he’ll be here. We won’t be together either way, and he’s probably safer without me.

I might be able to slip away and he won’t know for sure that I was a spy for the PS.

He could think I left. Something in my stomach tells me he’ll know, he’ll figure it out, and his father too.

But I can hope. Maybe he’ll think I took off for New England or the West Coast. That I’m off somewhere, swimming free.

Their voices murmur as I step out and move toward the stairs. Vale is talking to the man, trying to keep him distracted while I get over to the stairwell. Just a little farther and I can get the door open, and maybe he can get out behind me.

I reach the door. Too nervous to glance behind me, I try the keys with trembling hands. Before I can find one that fits, the door pushes open suddenly, knocking me back. Stunned, I fall, my face burning where the metal door hit me.

There are boots everywhere as men pour out of the stairwell.

“Ami,” I hear Vale yell, and I roll to my side, moaning. I push myself to my knees as Vale runs to me, but there’s an unfamiliar hand closing around my arm, jerking me to my feet. Jeremy, the guy we talked to earlier, has a grip on me, and a gun in his other hand, pointed at the ground.

“Get your hands off her,” Vale snarls. Jeremy lets go but smiles, calm and scary.

There’s half a dozen men now, all with guns.

Vale’s gun is still back at the edge of the roof, and there are three men standing in front of the door.

I wonder what would happen if I ran for the ladder at the side of the roof.

They’d shoot me. That’s how it works up here, right? Shoot first, ask questions later.

Jeremy wipes sweat away from the corner of his forehead with the back of his hand. They must have run up all the stairs.

“Well, well, imagine this. My honored guests, up here on the roof.” His eyes dart around, as if looking for someone else. There’s a noise, an alert from his pocket, and he checks his phone.

He stares down at the phone and types something back, exchanging a smirk with the guard next to him.

“Let’s just see what our friends have been up to, shall we? Hand over the backpack, my dear Anna,” Jeremy says, getting my name wrong.

I stare at Vale but there are no answers in his eyes. I take in one man after another, all the guns trained on us. I have no choice. I hand him the backpack.

Vale makes a noise in his throat and Jeremy unzips the backpack, grinning wider than ever.

“Ah, a laptop,” he says. I don’t understand why he’s smiling so widely.

“It was me,” Vale says, from where he stands. “She was just doing what I told her to do.”

I know what he’s up to but I don’t want that. I don’t want him to take the fall for me. Not when I was planning to leave him up here.

“No, I?—”

“Don’t listen to her. She’s just my girlfriend. Let her go.”

Jeremy cocks his head. He’s handsome, his blond hair curling around his ears in a way that would make girls back at my high school sigh, but the way he’s acting has me more nervous than ever. He pulls his phone out again.

“Just a little longer,” he says.

Vale’s eyes dart around, no doubt wondering what I’m wondering.

A little longer until what? We all stand here.

Jeremy, that stupid grin plastered on his face, holds the backpack with the laptop.

His fingers tap on the edge of the zipper.

The guards stand stiffly with their guns out, silently waiting.

“Jeremy,” Vale says, low and urgent. “Just let her go, she’s not involved.”

“She’s obviously involved,” Jeremy scoffs. “But I wouldn’t worry so much about your girlfriend if I were you. I would worry about yourself.”

And weirdly, a flash of fear flickers through Jeremy’s eyes. My stomach drops. He’s the one with the guns trained on us, what does he have to fear? Maybe Vale was able to call for backup from the Forge?

With that, the stairs echo with footsteps. This time it’s not a mad rush of boots, but the footsteps are lighter, the rhythms precise. I stiffen.

The sound of it, the tap of feet all together in perfect rhythm. I heard it at school when the CSOs came to talk to us about Clearance and job opportunities. I heard it when Mom used to take me to work on days off school.

I heard it at Security headquarters, at a daycare for the babies of the Officers. I went to help out the caregivers and get my babysitting license. I’d walk up and down the long room with a baby on my shoulder, looking through the clear glass that showed the gymnasium down below where they trained.

The gym was enormous and the Officers would do their morning jog, their boots a steady rhythm on the floor. The sound echoed through the glass, where I could feel it in my body. It was the same tap, tap, tap. The same steady tempo, every day .

Some days I’d be walking a baby in a carrier, other days carrying a lonely two-year-old or bouncing a playful toddler.

But the steady drum of their jogging during their warm-up was always the same, and that’s what I hear, coming up the stairs, steady and true.