“What do you mean it’s gone?” Sydney asks over speaker phone. I had called Marcella the moment I got inside the car, but it went straight to voicemail. I texted her to call me when she and Brynn were in their hotel room.
“The entire building,” I tell Sydney. “It’s just… The academy was burned to ash. No professors, no school, no—”
“No Annalise,” she finishes for me.
“No Annalise,” I repeat somberly. Jackson’s headlights shine on the deserted streets, and it occurs to me how quiet it is out here. There should be more people. More… life.
“I ended up driving by the investor’s house in Albany when I first got to town,” Sydney adds. “Just to scope it out. But he’s pretty insulated. Big house, big gate, big dogs.”
Jackson eases us to a stop at a traffic light, quietly listening without adding to the conversation. I can feel that he’s waiting to see what I tell her about his father. When we start driving again, we pass the gas station where I first met Jackson. Only now, all the lights are off and the irate lady standing behind the deli counter is gone. Seems everyone is gone.
I follow the station with my eyes until it’s behind the car. A new sense of unease coils in my stomach, although I can’t quite place it.
“You’re not going back there tonight, are you?” I ask Sydney when she finishes explaining about the investor’s property.
“No, it’s too dark. Besides, I haven’t figured how I’m going toget inside,” she says. “I’m not sure whoHawke Fusillois, but he sounds like an absolute dick.”
Jackson chuckles, nodding empathically.
“He’s a big tech guy,” Jackson says, glancing at the phone in my hand. “He builds spaceships and shit. He’s ungodly rich, wants to be president or something. Luckily no one likes him enough for that to happen. He’ll have a full security team for sure, so be careful.”
“Thanks, Jackson,” Sydney calls out. “I figured he was somebody important when I saw men with earpieces walking his property line. Really sealed the deal, though, when the guys with big ol’ guns showed up to relieve them. He doesn’t just have his own security team; he has his own private militia.”
“Huh,” I say. I wonder privately if Hawke’s overinflated bodyguards are a result of insecurity or well-founded paranoia. Maybe both? “Do you have any thoughts?” I ask Sydney. “How are you going to get a private meeting with a guy like that?”
“We’ll figure something out,” Sydney says. “You know we never give up, even if it seems like they’re winning.”
I smile softly, her words strumming my heartstrings. “Never give up,” I say with her. And even though I believe those words, it does feel a little hopeless. If a man that rich and powerful, a man with his own militia, is invested in Innovations Corporation, how are a group of girls and a boy on crutches going to stop him?
“It’s pretty late here,” Sydney says. “I should have gotten rid of the phone earlier, but I still wanted to talk with you.” Ismile, missing her too. “But I’m going to get rid of it and pick up a new one tomorrow. I’ll email you the number.”
It’s then that I notice Jackson has brought us into town. But to my surprise, it’s empty too. There are no other cars at all, no people milling about. It’s eerie—like an abandoned movie set missing the actors. The stoplights flash yellow, casting everything in an artificial golden hue.
Jackson rolls slowly through the small downtown. On either side of the street, the rows of businesses are shuttered with their security gates down or closed signs flipped to face out their windows. The girls and I have only been gone a few weeks; Jackson even less than that. Something has happened here.
“Yeah, I’ll talk to you then,” I murmur to Sydney, and hang up just as she says goodbye. “Jackson,” I say, turning to him, “did it look like this when you left?”
“No,” he says, casting his gaze around at the buildings. “I mean, I didn’t come into town, probably hadn’t for a while. But… no. It was definitely not like this. Where the fuck is everybody?”
“I don’t know,” I murmur.
Jackson pauses outside the movie theater, and my stomach lurches when I see the small diner near the entrance. A few years ago, I’d gotten hit by a car right where we’re waiting. I’d been running from my investor, running from what he’d do to me. I died that day instead, sending myself back to the academy to be rebuilt.
I wrap my arms around myself, stunned by how isolating it feels to have buildings with no people. It was never a big town,but they couldn’t just… disappear. Jackson takes his phone out of his pocket and asks it to call Q. We wait while the sound of it ringing fills the car. With every passing moment, the noise starts to feel louder, more urgent. Jackson curses, putting his phone away again.
“Lock your door,” Jackson says absently, driving quickly the rest of the way down the empty main street. I do as he asks, thinking there’s no one here to try to grab me. But maybe that’s the scary part. We don’t know what got them either.
We pull onto a residential street, and Jackson notices my phone resting on the seat by my thigh. “I’m sorry,” he says. “But you have to get rid of that. They track you on it, especially if Winston knows the number.”
He’s right, but I’m still reluctant to let it go. Still, I quickly delete everything and then pull out the battery. I roll down the window, and the car fills with cool night air. It smells swampy, like overgrown grass or rotting flowers. I think momentarily of Rosemarie’s garden, flourishing with dead boys buried beneath the roses. I shiver.
I throw the battery as far as I can, watching it land in a thick patch of brush between two houses. Even if someone was looking for it, they’d never find it. I take out the SIM card and put it in my back pocket, and then I drop the phone onto the pavement, hearing it smash as the back tire rolls over it.
It’s pitch-dark when we pull up to a house. There are no streetlights, leaving only the moon to guide our way. The house appears to be white or yellow, I’m not sure, but the blinds are closed uptight and there isn’t a single light on in the house. In fact, it’s dark in all of the houses on the street. Jackson parks and we survey the property.
“Power must be out,” he says. He looks sideways at me, his face illuminated by the dashboard lights. “This is where I grew up,” he says, sounding a bit insecure. “I know it’s not much.”
Jackson seems to forget that although I’ve always been surrounded by the outrageously rich, I myself have nothing. Own nothing. I have no family wealth or even a family home. I’ve never even had a dog.
