by D. Laine
By the time the shaking stopped, my legs were covered in chunks of plaster, brick, and concrete. I kicked the pile of debris off of me with a cough. The thick dust floating in the air made it difficult to breathe.
My throat was raw by the time the door finally clicked open several minutes later, and I crawled out from under the desk.
“About damn time you came back,” I complained hoarsely. “Probably wouldn’t look good to have a dead suspect chained to the—”
The new officer stepped through the cloud of dust, and I choked on my next words.
“Shut the hell up, Dylan,” Maria snapped. She grabbed the short chain connecting my hands and jerked me to a stand. “It’s your fault I’m forced to dress in this ridiculous getup.”
She ran a hand over the official police uniform with obvious disdain, and I couldn’t help but grin at her discomfort.
“I didn’t realize they made police uniforms in children’s sizes,” I quipped.
“Really? Making fun of the girl with the ability to set you free?” She held up her hand, jingling the set of keys in her grasp. “Not smart of you to do. But then again, you and smart don’t usually meet each other in the same sentence unless someone is making a joke.”
“Fuck you. I’m brilliant.” At her scowl, I faked my most convincing smile. “Please, Maria, get me out of here.”
She wordlessly dropped to her knees and slipped a key into the lock holding me to the wall. I sighed in relief the moment I felt the chains give, and turned to give her my cuffed hands next.
“Nope. Those are staying on,” she told me.
“What?”
“You’re suspected of murder, Dylan,” she reminded me. “How am I going to explain transporting you without any restraints?”
“Shit. So that’s the plan? Where’s Jake?”
“He’s waiting outside in the Hummer. You two are on your own once I get you there.”
“Marcus here too?”
“Yeah.” She stopped with her hand on the door. “It might be wise to steer clear of him. You’re not exactly his favorite person right now.”
“What did I do now?”
“We’re breaking you out of jail again,” she told me. “I think that’s enough, don’t you?”
“For doing my job,” I informed her. “Our job.”
“What’s rule number seven in the handbook, Dylan?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“Don’t get caught,” she reminded me. “So please. Be on your best behavior so we both don’t get caught.”
With that warning, she swung the door open. The air in the hallway was better, but still thick with dust and floating particles of plaster and concrete. I kept my head down and let Maria lead me like the authority she was supposed to be.
My stomach clenched tightly when two officers turned the corner and barreled toward us. I braced myself for the inevitable body slam I was about to take, but it never came. The two officers jogged past, muttering something about prisoners stuck in the holding cell.
In the distance, I heard radio chatter between several more officers. They all sounded strung-out. Worried. Preoccupied.
This earthquake couldn’t have come along at a better time. It made this jail break the easiest any of us had ever pulled off. Even Maria looked pleasantly surprised when we pushed through the back door of the jail and stepped outside.
Night had fallen while I’d been locked up. The darkness only helped us. Even with the flashing red and blue lights lighting up the town like an aurora, no one noticed us nor the two monster vehicles parked in the alley.
Maria released her hold on my handcuffs to open the Hummer’s passenger side door. “Here you go.” She dropped the set of keys onto the seat before turning to me. “See you back on the base.”
I glanced inside the vehicle to find Jake waiting impatiently. At Maria’s quickly retreating back, I shouted, “Thank you, Maria! I owe you!”
She lifted her hand in the air to give me a dismissive wave without bothering to look back. I couldn’t see Marcus through the windshield of their Hummer, but I assumed that was probably for the best.
“Let’s go, Dylan,” Jake urged.
I climbed into the seat, snatching up the keys with my fingers. When I glanced at Jake, he shook his head at me.
“This is the last time,” he told me.
“I know.”
He pulled into the street behind Marcus and Maria as I worked at freeing myself from the cuffs, and I wondered if he had meant it the same way I had. Tonight was the last time any of us would do anything normal again. The beginning of the end was almost upon us, and nothing was going to be the same come tomorrow.
PARTS OF DOWNTOWN were flooded with flashing emergency lights. We avoided those areas, and stuck to the dark and deserted streets as we drove out of town. I expected to hit a wall of vehicles on the interstate caused by the evacuation, but when we merged onto the four-lane highway, all I saw were the taillights of Marcus and Maria’s vehicle in front of us.
“Where is everyone?”
Jake glanced over at me. “What do you mean?”
“The town. The evacuation.” I shook my head numbly at the deserted road laid out in front of me. “Nobody left?”
“They never forced an evacuation, Dylan.”
“What?” I spun in my seat.
“It was voluntary,” he reminded me. “Most chose to stay to help with the cleanup. And . . .” Jake trailed off with a subtle shake of his head, and I braced myself for what he hesitated to tell me. “I checked The Nest like you asked when you called me from the jail. The car you described—the Metro—is still in the parking lot.”
“Shit.” I threw my head against the seat with a huff. “She never left.”
“It didn’t look like it. I’m sorry.”
Thea would die along with the rest of the town. Along with everyone within a two-hundred-mile radius. None of them knew what was coming. I had tried, but no one was listening. They all would perish. Thea would perish. And . . .
“What about your sister, Jake?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know. I can only hope she evacuated, and pick up her trail later.”
“You won’t find her.” I turned slightly in my seat. “Phase two is going to kick in with this eruption. The tags will be activated. Shit’s about to get bad.”
“I know,” he muttered. His grip on the steering wheel tightened.
I hated this situation for him. I hated that he had been forced to give up now, when he had been so close to finding her. But there was nothing we could do now. We didn’t know where she was—if she was even still in Bozeman. Jake’s sister remained a mystery, but Thea . . .
I knew Thea was there. Probably with David. I doubted he’d listened to me either. But what could I do now?
The answer came to me quickly, and my decision was instant.
“Stop the car.”
“What?” Jake glanced at me peculiarly.
“I said stop the car,” I repeated. “Pull over.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, we’re running from an inevitable volcanic eruption.”
“Call Marcus, tell him to pull over.” I turned to level a determined gaze on Jake. “You’re going with them.”
“The hell I am,” Jake fired back. “Dylan—”
“Do it, or I’m jumping out,” I threatened.
“Dylan, you can’t—”
“I mean it, Jake.” I disengaged the automatic locks, prompting Jake to ease off the gas. When he didn’t break, I yanked the door handle.
“Goddammit, Dylan!”
Jake swerved to the side of the road, braking hard as I held on to the door. He sputtered every curse known to man until we came to an abrupt stop. Ahead of us, the taillights of the other Hummer continued until they were swallowed up by the night.
Jake lingered to type a text message—likely to Marcus—as I threw the door open and jumped outside. I knew what Jake was telling them. If I wer
e a better friend, I would insist that he go with them and drive to safety.
I also knew that he wouldn’t listen to that suggestion any more than I would if our roles were reversed. He was the one person who would follow me to the ends of the Earth, even if it meant certain death for both of us.
JAKE GRITTED his teeth while I stared out the windshield at Bozeman as we approached. From the distance, it appeared that sections of the town were without electricity. Other sections were lit up like a Christmas tree. Red and blue mixed in with the bright white, and I suspected first responders and police were out in full force.
I was an idiot for going back. But my feeble heart wouldn’t let me leave without Thea.
“Change your mind yet?” Jake asked from the driver’s seat.
“Nope.”
“Last chance,” he informed me.
“I know.” I watched as he turned off the highway and took the road that would take us to the university.
The electricity was working here, and bright light flooded the inside of the Hummer. It reflected off of something to my left, and my gaze drifted to the center console. Propped up against the gear shift was a photograph—one of a girl I recognized.
“Hey, Jake, what were you doing research on Thea for? I told you I had it under control.”
He made a hard turn and gave me a distracted, “I’m not.”
“Oh, really?” I plucked the photograph from the console. “Then why do you have a picture of her?”
He glanced at me quickly and shook his head. “That’s the age progression photograph I had done up of my sister this morning. That’s not—”
I stared down at the photograph in my hand. My head tilted to the side as I tried everything in my power to persuade myself that what was happening wasn’t actually happening. I tried to convince myself that the girl in this picture wasn’t Thea.
Sure, it looked like her. It was a beautiful brunette girl with wide, green eyes. Now that I was looking closer, I could tell that it was one of those computer generated images that looked like a robotic wax version of the real person. Sometimes they didn’t look anything like the person they were supposed to be. Other times there was just enough similarity for you to recognize them as someone you knew.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how I looked at it—I wasn’t mistaken. I recognized the girl this photograph was supposed to represent. I definitely knew her.
I knew her well enough to know that the little mole on her neck that the computer thought still belonged was no longer there. I knew her well enough to know that the smile in the picture was too flat. When she smiled, it reached her eyes—eyes that until now I didn’t realize were identical to the ones glaring at me from the driver’s seat.
How had I never noticed?
On some level, I had never expected Jake’s sister to be found. Though I had never told him, I thought she was dead and that our search for her was nothing but a wild goose chase. I never expected—
“Dylan?” Jake’s voice boomed in my ear. “The girl you—” His eyes squeezed shut against the words he couldn’t say. “She’s my sister?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
We had entered a darker part of town now, and all I saw of his glare was the whites of his eyes and the rigidness of his jaw that told me he wasn’t in the mood for fucking around.
But I had my own internal crisis to deal with as well. Jesus Christ. What were the chances? The girl I had been—
“Dylan?”
“I know who your sister is,” I told him quietly. “But, hey . . . that’s good news, right? The fact that we’re going to get her right now. That’s good,” I reminded him. I returned the photograph to the spot I’d plucked it from and continued, “At this point, it shouldn’t matter that she’s also the girl I’ve been sleeping with. Really, you should be happy that—”
“Dylan!”
“Jake?”
His hands wrung the steering wheel so tightly I feared his hands would be rubbed raw. I waited through the silence patiently while Jake cooled down. We sped through three red lights before he broke the silence.
“Was it . . .” He stopped to clear his throat. His eyes stayed on the road. “Did you . . . I mean . . . is it like normal . . . for you?”
“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted.
Jake’s jaw clenched tightly and he turned his razor sharp eyes on me with a scoff. “Use and toss, Dylan. That’s normal for you, and I swear to God, if—”
“No, no, no,” I gushed. “We’ve been seeing each other a lot, and we didn’t sleep together just the one time. We’ve—”
“Dylan,” Jake gritted.
“Sorry.” I pressed into my seat with a sigh. The lights of the university appeared in the distance as we approached in silence. Finally, I said, “It wasn’t like that with her, Jake.”
He grunted something unintelligible, but it sounded enough like a noise of disbelief to kick my defensiveness into gear.
“I’m serious,” I added. “You of all people should know that. Would I have ever returned to the scene of a crime for someone before—other than for you? No,” I answered my own question without giving him a chance. “I wouldn’t have, and we both know it. But the truth is, I—”
“What?” Jake slanted a set of questioning eyes toward me and I turned to stare out the windshield. I watched the road since Jake had his gaze fixed on me. One of us had to watch where he was going. Or that was what I told myself.
Honestly, I had never developed feelings for anyone other than Jake, and that was a completely different scenario. I’d never allowed myself to get close to anyone other than him. The thought of losing him was enough to give me insomnia. I didn’t want the excess baggage that came with caring for anyone else. I looked out for myself and Jake—that was it, until a few weeks ago when Thea entered the mix.
I had known for days now that she meant more to me than just another random hookup with a local, but admitting it out loud caused my throat to tighten on the words.
“I care about her, alright? Is that what you wanted to hear? Does that make the fact that I hooked up with your sister better?”
“A little,” Jake admitted before he went back to being the responsible driver I knew he was. “Good to know she wasn’t another plaything you tossed to the side after—you know what? Never mind.”
I grinned. “Yeah. You really don’t want to know the details.”
“Stop. Don’t forget you’re talking about my sister. And if you ever, ever do anything to—”
I lowered my head with a chuckle. “Giving me the big brother talk already?”
“If you thought you had it bad with Marcus,” he continued unfazed, “you haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Fair enough. But I doubt you’ll have much to worry about anyway. I’m confident she won’t want anything to do with me now. You know, since I killed her roommate . . . and her ex-boyfriend.”
Jake pulled into the parking lot adjacent to the science building. I directed him to the closest door, and he braked to a sudden stop. We met at the front bumper of the Hummer at the same time another tremble shook the ground beneath us. Small one. Not bad enough to keep us from moving toward the door. Only bad enough to disrupt some of the damage that had already been done to the building from the last major quake.
“About that . . .” Jake’s hand clamped down on my shoulder as I led him farther into the building. “She doesn’t know me. You’re the one she’s going to recognize when we find her. I think you need to be the one that does most of the talking. At least until we get her out of here.”
“Yeah.” I stopped to grab hold of a tipped over bookcase blocking the hallway. With Jake’s help, we shifted the heavy pile of wood and books to the side. Above us, the lights in the hallway flickered. “But you have to be the one that keeps her from running when she sees me.”
“That bad?”
“I was arrested for m
urder right in front of her,” I shot over my shoulder. “What do you think?”
“We’re going to need to tell her the truth,” Jake replied.
“Eventually.” I stopped at the end of the hallway to gather my bearings. With the destruction, I was having a hard time recognizing where I was. Even the plaques with arrows on the wall that normally directed me toward the geology department lay on the floor under a thick layer of ceiling plaster.
Down one hallway, the lights were completely out. Down the other, the lights flickered against a smoky backdrop like a spooky tunnel leading into the pits of hell.
“This way,” I told Jake as I took a step toward hell. “If she’s here at all, we’ll find her down here.”
22
THEA
It had to be karma—dying this way after all the years of not believing my parents when they said this would happen. Not that this was anything as profound as the apocalypse, but to die buried under a mountain of bone-crushing rubble was pretty messed up.
The only thing that helped me to keep my wits was hearing David’s voice somewhere to my left. He kept me awake. He kept me breathing through the pain. He kept me alive.
“How’s your air, Thea?” he grunted.
“Okay.” I coughed, contradicting myself.
David responded by increasing his frantic attempts to free us. I didn’t tell him that every time he moved a chunk of debris, the weight on top of me worsened. I didn’t tell him because then he would stop, and if he stopped he wouldn’t find a way out. I wanted him to be okay, even if it was too late for me.
“I can almost reach my phone,” he wheezed.
“Good,” I whispered. Mine was smashed in my hand and as worthless as I was right now.
I cringed at the grating sound of metal sliding over metal. David grunted again, and the weight on my legs worsened. I bit down on my tongue until I tasted blood.
“I’m almost out!” he shouted back to me, but I didn’t respond this time. “Thea?”
