blind bake /blind bak/: verb
1: baking a crust without filling, weighted to hold its shape.
2: running into danger you cannot see, trusting the map someone traced onto your palm.
In the warm dark of the car, Yas and I are hunched over the burner phone on speaker, both of us straining for any morsel of information as to what’s going on.
Through the speaker, Bastian’s breathing comes in controlled bursts as he links his climbing rig up. The rhythm is familiar now, almost comforting, except for the part where each exhale could be his last.
I hear the whine of power lines straining as he zips across, the wind rushing past the speakers…
… and then the dual thump of Bastian’s boots hitting the other side.
“He’s across,” I whisper. “Fuck me, he actually made it.”
I hear boots on gravel. A rusty door screeching open. Then nothing but Bastian’s breath and the thunder of my own heartbeat filling the car.
Yasmin’s grip tightens where she’s clutching my hand. “Come on,” she whispers. “Come on, come on, come on.”
A scuffle. A man’s gurgle. A crash, wood splintering—and then the worst silence I’ve ever heard.
Until a voice cuts through the static. Young. Scared. Cracking on a single syllable.
“… Bastian?”
My whole body goes liquid. That’s Sage. That’sSage, alive and terrified and saying his brother’s name like he’s seen a ghost rise from the grave.
I suppose he has.
I could burst into tears right now. Hell, I might do exactly that—or I would have, if Yasmin’s hand didn’t suddenly bear down on mine even harder.
“Oh, fuck,” Yasmin breathes. Her hand releases mine and I hear her twisting in the driver’s seat, the leather creaking as she cranes toward the window. “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck.”
“What?” My pulse spikes. “Yas, what is it?”
“There’s a guard. Coming back to the building.” Her voice is pitched high and thin, threaded with panic. “He must’ve— The fire must not have been enough to keep him—fuck,fuck—” She’s fumbling for the phone, jabbing at the speaker button. “Bastian! Bastian, there’s a guard coming back, do you copy?Bastian!”
But through the tinny speaker, all I can hear is the muffled sound of Bastian and Sage talking, their voices overlapping in what sounds like an argument. He’s not listening. He can’t hear us over whatever’s happening in that room.
“He’s not—” Yasmin’s breath hitches. “Eliana, he’s not listening.”
I hear her hand slam against the steering wheel. Once, twice. The horn gives a strangled bleat on the second hit.
“I should go,” she says. “I should—but no, Bastian said to stay in the car. You can’t drive, so if I leave, then— Hesaid?—”
“Yas—”
“What do Ido?”
I have maybe three seconds to make up my mind. That’s hardly enough time to decide if I’m the kind of person who sits in the dark while the people she loves die, or the kind who does something impossibly stupid and probably gets herself killed in the process.
But then again, I already decided, didn’t I? I decided a long time ago.
My hand grabs the door handle before my brain catches up.
“Eliana,no?—!”
“Stay with the car, Yas.”
