“Hello?” Jace said into my ear, and I exhaled with relief. “Abby?” He’d recognized me based on nothing more than the sound of my breath.
“I’m sorry. I’msosorry. But I need help,” I whispered.
“You’re at your dorm?”
“Not in my room, but on the third floor.” Had he figured it out, or did he just think I’d come for my stuff? “Darren’s here. I can’t explain everything now, but Robyn’s unconscious. She doesn’t have any head wounds, so I think he gave her—”
“Robyn!” Darren roared again, and I squeezed my eyes closed. His voice was louder. He hadn’t taken the stairs.
“I’m hiding, but he’s getting closer, Jace, and she’s helpless. I can’t carry her anymore, so I’m going to draw him away from her, but if you could—”
“Don’t move. We’re already on the way,” he said into the phone, then something scratched against the receiver and his voice was muffled. “Faster, Teo, she’s—”
“You don’t want to hide from me, pussycat!” Darren shouted. Wood splintered and something thunked against a wall.
“He’s kicking in doors. I have to go. But—”
“Abby, donotuse yourself as bait. Just stay put, and we’ll—”
“Jace, I’m so sorry. I know I screwed everything up. In case I never get another chance to say it…I love you too.”
“No!” he shouted into the phone, and the first tear ran down my face. “Wait and tell me in person.”
“I have to go.”
“Abby!” he yelled. “Do not hang up the phone. That’s an order!”
“I don’t work for you anymore. I love you, Jace.”
“Ab—”
I hung up the phone, but I could still hear his voice in my head, until Darren grunted from down the hall and kicked in another door.
Trembling, I stood and shoved Robyn’s phone into my back pocket. Darren was a cop. He had a gun and some kind of drug. That’s what I’d smelled in my dorm room. That’s what was in the black bag. My human corpse would do him no good, so he would probably shoot to wound, until he could try to make me shift.
Shifters are strong and fast, but we can’t outrun bullets. Yet I had to try.
I crossed the room and pressed my ear against the door, listening as Darren kicked his way into another room. He was at least three doors down. Five, if he was hitting the rooms across the hall as well. When I heard the soft squeal of another door being opened, I realized he was checking the closets. Which meant he was no longer in the hall.
I quietly opened Julie Cass’s door and glanced into the hall. Four rooms were open, and by my best guess, Darren was in the closest of them. I sucked in a deep breath and closed the door softly behind me, then headed toward the stairwell in the opposite direction. I ran as hard as I could, gripping the slick floor with my toes, my legs pushing me faster than any human could have run, my arms pumping at my sides for balance.
The hall swam around me and my vision began to darken, but I kept running, blinking tears from my eyes, wiping sweat from my forehead.
Hinges squealed, and boots clomped into the hall behind me. “Hey!” Darren shouted. “Abby!” His footsteps stopped and that scared me worse than being chased, because that meant he was aiming.
The stairwell was fifteen feet away. Then ten. I heard an odd click, like plastic being broken, then a metallic scraping sound. Five feet from the stairwell, I heard a softthwup, and pain bit into my left thigh. Three steps after that, I grabbed the doorknob and twisted. I pulled the dart from my leg as the stairwell door swung closed behind me, then I was running again, up the steps instead of down, because I was less likely to fall that way.
Heart racing, I gripped the rail. Two steps later, I stumbled and bruised my shin on a metal-edged tread.
“You may as well give up, pussycat!” Darren called through the door as his boots stomped closer. “You’ve only got minutes at that dosage. Maybe less, since you’re a tiny thing.”
I ran faster, my pulse racing, my head spinning, and by some miracle I reached the fourth-floor landing before he burst into the stairwell below me. But I couldn’t climb any longer without passing out.
“Where’d you stash her?” Darren clomped up the stairs as I threw open the door to the fourth floor. That was as high as I could get, without heading to the roof. “You know I’ll find her.”
The hallway warped and stretched in front of me, like a carnival mirror maze, and I wasn’t sure whether that was from the tranquilizer or exhaustion.
“Not long now!” Darren pushed open the door behind me, but he wasn’t running anymore, and he wasn’t shooting either. He knew he didn’t have to.
