Snowflakes & Fire Escapes

by J. M. Darhower

  “Wonderful,” I mutter. “Probably sitting down there planning my execution.”

  Cody shifts around, one leg draping over the windowsill, dangling inside as he gazes down at me. I don’t look at him, but I can feel his eyes trained my way.

  “You really think I’d let that happen?” he asks, smoke filtering inside the apartment as it rolls from his lips when he speaks. “You really think I’d let Cormac hurt you? That I’d let him kill you?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper, and it’s true. I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of person this Cody is. I don’t know if he still has a heart.

  Cody laughs bitterly under his breath. “You should know. You should know me.”

  “I thought I did.”

  Cody tosses what’s left of his joint away, not bothering to put it out, and slips back inside. My breath hitches when he crouches down beside me, so close I can smell him again. Slowly, my head turns his way, and his face is so close my nose nearly brushes his. His eyes burn so bright, so green and alive, even if they’re now slightly bloodshot. This close, he still looks like my Cody. This close, I can still see his soul inside.

  “I’m the same person, Gracie,” he says, matter-of-fact, putting stress on that name even after I told him not to call me it. “I just grew up.”

  Before I can even process what he said, his hands are cradling my face, palms pressed against my cheeks. I feel my skin grow warm beneath his cold hands. I want to yank away, to put some distance between us, but my muscles are suddenly frozen. My lips part, and all I can do is gasp as he slowly, slowly leans toward me, inching closer to my mouth, so close I can feel his breath.

  Inside of me is anarchy.

  Butterflies take flight in my stomach, every inch of me tingling from his touch. One of the most terrifying days of my life, and somehow his presence wipes away the fear. He’s one of them, and I hear the warnings in my head, but my heart still doesn’t understand.

  How can I still love him so much?

  What’s wrong with me?

  “You know me,” he whispers, the words barely a breath. “You always have.”

  It’s smoke and mirrors, I tell myself, a trick of hand from a sneaky boy who’s playing a dangerous game. Words are just words, but somehow, I feel them. I feel them seep through my skin, settling inside of me like they’re actually true.

  “What are you doing, Cody?” I ask quietly as he inches even closer, his lips so close to brushing against mine.

  He stares into my eyes for a moment before whispering, “What I have to do.”

  I don’t have time to question what that means. A shrill ring echoes through the apartment, shattering the moment. I exhale sharply as Cody’s hands instantly leave my skin. He stands up, putting that much needed space between us.

  Stepping back, he reaches into his pocket, and I tense when he pulls out a phone. My phone. It’s ringing. Holden. Cody flips it open, and I start stammering, words catching in my throat when he reaches for the button to answer it. Shit.

  Bringing the phone to his ear, he stands in silence, staring down at me as he does. I can faintly hear a voice streaming through the line, Holden speaking, but Cody doesn’t react. He merely listens for a moment, his expression blank, before he clears his throat.

  “You want her,” he says, “come get her.”

  That’s it.

  That’s all he says.

  He doesn’t even give Holden a chance to respond.

  Cody snaps the phone back closed and drops it to the floor in front of me. I pick it up, surprised he lets me have it back, but he’s already preoccupied. His hand is in his shirt, and I realize he’s clutching that gun again. He pulls it out, and my heart races frantically when he holds it tightly in his hand. There’s noise in the hallway, voices I realize belong to Cormac and someone else.

  Cody startles me then when he grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet. I barely have time to steady myself when he’s shoving me toward the open window.

  “Go,” he hisses. “This time, it’s your turn to run.”

  “But—” I try to dig my heels in, confused, but he’s stronger than I remember him being, or maybe I just grew weak. “I don’t understand. I thought you said … I mean …”

  “There’s no time for this. Get the hell out of here while you can.”

  He pushes me through the open window, but I stall there, refusing to go any further as I turn to him. “Come with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Please. Just … come along. Run away with me. We can leave together. We always said we would.”

  “Now’s not the time for childish dreams, Gracie,” he says, a hard edge to his voice. “You need to run.”

  “But—”

  My argument is silenced abruptly when he pulls me down, yanking part of me back through the window, smashing his lips to mine. I freeze as he kisses me deeply, not the soft kisses from him I was always accustomed to. He kisses me like he needs it as much as the air he breathes, like he might die of thirst without a taste of my lips. It’s a kiss that says hello and a kiss that says goodbye, a kiss that covers every moment in between … a kiss that brings tears to my eyes.

  It’s the kind of kiss you give someone when you need it to last a lifetime.

  It’s over quick, just as the door to the apartment behind him opens. He shoves me hard, making me stumble across the fire escape. “Go!”

  I don’t want to go.

  I don’t.

  But I know he’s giving me a chance to escape, and that’s not something I can waste. Turning, I bolt down the steps, only making it a few floors before chaos erupts. Looking down, I watch as cars swarm the neighborhood, vibrant lights filling the afternoon sky like they had done a year ago outside of my school. I’m frozen, my eyes trailing the turmoil, as SWAT teams descend upon the building.

  It’s only a minute—maybe less, I don’t know—before a loud bang rocks the neighborhood, so violent it shakes the fire escape. I grip onto the railing, my stomach sinking, as my gaze darts up toward the fifth floor. Through the open window I hear the shouting, the succession of bangs that sound like gunshots. My heart is in my throat and my knees are weak, nearly giving out on me.

  Anarchy lights up the apartment, rivaling what I feel deep down in my soul. I scream at the top of my lungs, scream for Cody. Frantic, I try to run back up the steps, everything falling into a haze, when the fire escape rattles around me, arms encircling my waist.

  For a moment, I think they’re his.

  I think somehow he made it down here.

  Somehow he’s here.

  But the arms aren’t right, they’re too heavy, and the smell is so different, like too-strong mint. A familiar voice tries to soothe me, the only voice who spoke to me for almost a year.

  “Calm down, Gracie,” Holden says. “You’re okay.”

  “Cody!” I scream, trying to fight my way out of his grip, but I can’t. He hauls me off the fire escape like I’m made of nothing, pushing me into the back of an unmarked van idling along the curb. It happens in a matter of seconds, faster than the first time I was whisked away, but this time there’s more fight in me.

  Maybe I’m stronger than I thought.

  “Stop the car,” I scream, tears streaking my cheeks as I lash out, trying to open the doors as the van speeds away from the apartment building. I’m trapped, but I’m not going to surrender … not after what just happened. I ball my hands into fists and strike out at Holden, screaming at him. “We have to go back! We have to go back for Cody!”

  Holden blocks my punches, waving off the concerned looks from the driver of the van. I consider unleashing my rage on him, jumping into the front seat and making him turn the goddamn vehicle around, when Holden snatches me by the arms, restraining me. “Calm down.”

  “I can’t!” I scream. “We can’t leave Cody there!”

  “We have to,” he says. “He knew what he was getting himself into.”

  I don’t want to accept that answer, but
he doesn’t give me much of a choice. He threatens to handcuff me if I swing at him once more.

  I fall apart in the back of the van, crying as I shove away from his arms. I don’t know what’s happening and Holden isn’t uttering a word. I don’t know if Cody is hurt, if he’s alive, if he was going down with his father. I don’t know what the hell happened, why he let me go, if he’d meant to all along or if seeing me again brought out the boy I used to know.

  I don’t know.

  I know nothing.

  The van speeds out of Hell’s Kitchen, following a familiar path, the same one we took last time.

  After a moment, Holden starts patting me down, feeling me up, like I’m a perpetrator and he’s looking for guns. “Where’s your phone, Gracie? Please tell me you have your phone.”

  Frowning, I reach into my pocket and grab the phone, throwing it at him. It whizzes by his head, smashing into the side window, but of course it doesn’t hurt anything. The glass is shatterproof. I know—I’ve tried to break it. Holden doesn’t flinch, picking up the phone when it lands on the floor. He flips it right over, pulling off the back, and lets out a deep breath. “Thank God.”

  I watch as he pulls something out, something the size of a fingerprint, and holds it up. It’s some kind of microchip, one of the smallest I’ve ever seen.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “This, Gracie, is justice,” he says. “This little card holds all of Cormac Moran’s secrets, every dirty deed he’s done over the past year.”

  I stare at it, stunned. “How did it get in my phone?”

  As soon as I ask that question, I know. I know how it got there. Cody.

  “He called me,” Holden says, “earlier today, from your phone. He said you were okay, that he was keeping an eye out, and he arranged for us to come for you. He said he had information … more information than he had a year ago.”

  I gape at him. “What?”

  “He gave us information last year, Grace … information that helped take down his father’s organization … information that gave us your father, information strong enough to make him turn. But this, the information on this chip … this is enough to take down Cormac. He put his ass on the line, you know, and he sent it out with you, just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  Holden’s attention is fixed to the small microchip. He’s quiet, like he doesn’t want to answer my question, and I don’t need him to. Not really. I know why Cody sent it with me, but I want to hear the truth.

  I want him to say it.

  I hold my breath as he does.

  “In case he doesn’t make it out of there himself.”

  ***

  “Snowflake,” I said with disbelief, staring at the Marshal as I stood in the dusty front yard of an old house in what looked like the middle of the damn desert. It was scorching hot, and I was sweating, and he had to audacity to tell me I was now a resident of a town called Snowflake. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not kidding,” he said. “Snowflake, Arizona … population 5,590 at last count, so I guess that makes you 91.”

  “Snowflake,” I said again, looking away from him to glance around. I couldn’t see any other houses from where we were standing. Less people lived in this entire town than lived on just my block back in Hell’s Kitchen. “Look, Inspector—”

  “Holden,” he said. “Not Inspector, not Marshal … just Holden.”

  “Look, Holden,” I continued, “I appreciate this and all, but I don’t think I can live here. No, I know I can’t live here.”

  “It’s a nice town,” he said. “Quiet, quaint … the people are friendly and mind their own business. The crime rate is low and the weather is nice. It’s everything you could ever ask for.”

  No, it wasn’t, I thought.

  I would ask for so much more.

  “Besides, I thought you’d get a kick out of it.” Holden smiled playfully as he reached over, tugging on the locket around my neck. “Thought you liked snowflakes.”

  I took a step back, away from his reach, and grasped ahold of the empty locket when he let go of it. I said nothing. What could I have said?

  He would never understand.

  Sighing, he took a step toward me, closing the distance I just put between us. He was persistent; I’d give him that. “I know it’s going to be an adjustment. You’re only seventeen and your life has completely changed.”

  Almost seventeen and a half now, I thought, but I didn’t correct him.

  “But you’ll get used to it,” he continued. “And who knows? Maybe this is all a blessing in disguise. Life works in mysterious ways, Gracie.”

  I was taken aback by his usage of that name. “Why’d you just call me that?”

  “What? Gracie?”

  I flinched when he said it again. “Yes.”

  “The locket,” he said. “It’s written on the back, so I assumed you preferred it.”

  I did prefer it, but I kept that to myself.

  Another thing he wouldn’t understand.

  I preferred it because Cody called me it.

  Nobody else ever did.

  ***

  I never wanted this life.

  The pale girl with the bright red hair … I never wanted to be her. Even when she’s wearing makeup, when she has a reason to put on dresses and nice shoes, I was never very comfortable in her skin. I never wanted to be the girl who navigated the world alone. I didn’t want to have to settle for less than what I believed I deserved. I had a wall of dreams and a give-them-hell attitude, and I had plans … plans I wanted nothing more than to see through.

  I never wanted to be in this place.

  But I never truly belonged there, either.

  Home was never Hell’s Kitchen. Home was somewhere where I could see the stars, where I could stare up at the sky and know, with just a glance, that there was something else beyond this all. Home was the one place I felt safe, and protected, where even surrounded by brimstone and hellfire, I could feel Heaven’s touch on my face.

  Home.

  I miss it.

  I miss so much of it.

  I miss the smiles.

  I miss the snow.

  It’s been a little over three weeks since I was dragged back out of the neighborhood I grew up in, kicking and screaming, whisked away to a new life, another new beginning, where I had to learn to be another new girl. They took me straight to the intake center in Washington, processing me back into the system, this time as a bona fide witness.

  Grace Kelly.

  I chose it because of the Princess of Monaco, hoping I’ll live at least half the life the real Grace Kelly lived. She left her world behind for a new adventure, walking away from the thing she wanted most for something else, something I like to think she eventually loved even more.

  I hope that’ll happen for me.

  With my new name comes a new placement, something I knew, but something I don’t want to think about. I’m not supposed to know when it’ll happen. I’m not allowed to know where I’m headed after this. All I know is that for the moment, I’m back here … back in this place.

  Snowflake.

  I stand along the side of Highway 77, a few yards south of the city limits sign, leaning back against the side of Holden’s black Dodge Charger. It’s near nightfall, the sun having gone away. In fact, it hid most of the day.

  It’s amazing how quick things can change. I was gone for only a few days, but when I returned to Arizona, nothing was the same. Winter had moved in practically overnight, ushering in the second I ran out. Gone was the scorching sun, replaced with a ground covered in frost and a cloud-covered sky.

  It feels colder here than it felt in Hell’s Kitchen. The nippiness in the air makes my nose run and my skin tingle with pins and needles. I’m wearing the hoodie, my hands pulled up inside the sleeves, the hood over my head, pulled down low, shielding my eyes, mostly because it’s cold, but partly because I still don’t want anybody to look at me.

  It smells li
ke him again.

  Or maybe my mind is playing tricks on me.

  My gaze is off in the distance, far down the highway as it disappears into the growing darkness. I’m so emotionally worn down that I’d give about anything to be anywhere but here right now. It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m standing along the side of the road, while nearly everyone else in the world was at home with the people they loved.

  “We can wait in the car, you know … if you’re cold.”

  My head turns, eyes seeking out Holden when he speaks. He’s standing in the middle of the road, near the broken yellow line. The highway is vacant. We’ve been out here ten minutes and I haven’t seen another car yet.

  “I’m fine,” I say quietly. “How much longer is it going to be?”

  He shrugs a shoulder casually, hands in his pockets, as his pristine dress shoes toe the asphalt, kicking small rocks off of the highway. “Shouldn’t be much longer, I’d say.”

  He hasn’t told me why we’re out here, why he drove me to this spot or what we’re waiting for, but I think I know. Contrary to how I acted when I ran straight into the arms of danger, I’m not an idiot. I think it’s time … time to move on.

  Because with a new placement comes a new handler. Holden’s job ends right here, at the city limit of Snowflake, where he kept Grace Kennedy safe. Grace Kelly belongs elsewhere, the responsibility of someone else.

  That makes me sadder than I thought it would.

  Another person I’ll leave behind, never to see again.

  “Do you have a family, Holden?” I ask curiously. I’ve never given his life outside of his job much thought. Tomorrow’s Christmas … doesn’t he have anyone waiting somewhere for him?

  “I have a brother,” he says. “Other than that, no.”

  “No wife? No fiancé? No girlfriend? Nothing.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugs. “Guess I’m already married to the job.”

  “But you get laid, right?”

  The question comes out of nowhere. I feel like a fool the second it’s vocalized, but he laughs, not offended in the least.

  “I do just fine,” he says, shaking his head, grinning. “But I don’t think that’s a conversation we should be having.”