Page 66

CHAPTER 64

WHEN SHE RUNS back out into the hallway, Carpenter has passed her. She holds her flashlight in her teeth, her hands filled with the bow and arrow, and runs down the hallway. At the doorway, she looks out to find Carpenter by the chain-link fence, circling. The pale blue light of approaching dawn fills the sky behind him.

Ava spits the flashlight out. There’s enough light for her to see by.

When Carpenter hears the clatter of the flashlight hitting the ground, he turns to look at her. She’s standing just inside the doorway—covered in darkness—and it’s likely he can’t really see her. Only her shape. He points the gun at her to keep her where she is. He’s still grinning, knowing she won’t shoot her pistol, won’t risk the natural gas reacting with the spark of the firing pin.

He doesn’t know she’s traded her gun for a bow.

The last spurt of lighter fluid comes out of the bottle, and he discards it. He leans over, placing the gun barrel only inches from the liquid, close enough that the discharge from the Colt will ignite the fluid and carry the flame through the doorway and down the hallway. When it reaches the point where the air is thick with gas, the hallway will burst into flame—probably blasting her out the door like a cork shooting off a champagne bottle.

Ava draws back the bow. She aims it at Carpenter’s chest, center mass, but then reconsiders. He’s the only one who knows where Marta Rivera is.

She needs him alive.

Carpenter moves his finger inside the trigger guard.

Ava doesn’t have time to think. She lets her body remember the hours and hours of training, the years of competition, the way the bow became a part of her.

She lets the arrow fly.

Carpenter must hear the twang of the string, because he hesitates, looking toward Ava’s shape in the doorway.

The arrow sinks into his forearm, sliding through the radius and ulna bones and stopping two-thirds of the way through. Carpenter roars, dropping the gun with a clatter and staring at the three-foot-long arrow poking through his arm.

“What the fuck?” he screams.

Ava tosses the bow aside and sprints toward Carpenter, who falls to one knee, clutching his forearm. The tip and shaft of the arrow are coated in blood. He hears her pounding footsteps and reaches for the gun with his left hand. Just as he puts his hand on the grip, Ava’s boot comes down on his fingers.

Carpenter gasps, looking up at her looming over him.

Ava lifts her other leg and drives the sole of her boot directly into Carpenter’s face.

He falls backward, the mask askew, his nose spilling blood. Ava grabs the arrow, holding both sides of the shaft, and drags Carpenter the remaining few feet to the fence. He howls in pain and reaches for Carlos’s Colt, but it’s too far away now.

When she makes it to the chain-link fence, she pulls out her handcuffs and latches the wrist without the arrow to the metal bar at the bottom of a panel of fencing.

“You’re under arrest, you motherfucker,” she growls.

She reaches down and rips the mask off his head. The transparent plastic of the face shield is cracked from where she kicked him. She tosses the useless mask aside then yanks the bolt cutters from Carpenter’s belt. She scoops up Carlos’s Colt and shoves it into her belt, then sprints toward the building, where she picks up her flashlight and keeps running. She debates for a moment who to help first, Rory or Carlos, but Rory is closer to the leak and might be in more imminent danger. She leaps down the steps, taking two at a time, and finds the chained doorway.

She places the bolt cutters around a link and hesitates, fearing the metal-to-metal contact might make a spark.

But she doesn’t have a choice.

The gas is so thick here, she can’t imagine what it must be like on the other side where Rory is. She presses the two sides of the cutter together and grunts at the effort. The chain snaps and falls to the floor. She rips the door open and shines her light inside.

“Rory!” she shouts.

But there’s no answer.