Number Six.
There’s nothing quite as frightening as the monster just out of sight. It’s why we fear the gap between the floor and the bed, why closets are closed at night, why dark alleys are avoided. We can’t fight what we can’t see; we can’t prepare for it, either.
And now that unseen threat is on the third floor.
Hurriedly, I shove Matthew’s ringware into my shoe. It’s too big for any of my fingers and my pockets are fullof the radios and other stolen tools. Then I take the hallway at a sprint, rushing into the stairwell. I reach into my pocket and pull out the can of pepper spray. It’s half empty, but still the best weapon I have.
The stairs are the riskiest part of my journey—if I’m going to run into any of Vale’s crew, it’ll be in the stairwell. I race down eight flights, half expecting gunfire at any moment.
Then, finally, I’m on the right floor. The dark hallway opens up before me—apartment doors on the left, open air to the right. The chlorine smell of the pool wafts upward from the lobby.
I angle myself sideways, ready to duck behind a corner if anyone fires at me. Edgar lands on my shoulder so his buzzing won’t alert the intruder.
I swallow, trying to wet my too-dry tongue. I peer around the corner toward Nonna’s apartment.
And there she is—the sixth.
She’s a little shorter than I am, with an average build. She has dark gold hair pulled into a knot at the base of her neck and wears high-waisted jeans and a flowered blouse. Her back is to me, thank goodness.
I can’t see a weapon, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t armed. Pepper spray in hand, I take a step closer. Then another.
I move with all the care of a deer wandering into a wolf’s territory.
I have to take her down before she notices me. My index finger twitches against the pepper spray’s trigger. Just a little closer. Just—
And then the woman turns. She raises her gun before I can so much as blink, and then I’m staring down a pistol’s barrel for the second time in less than an hour.
Let me tell you, it doesn’t get less terrifying with practice.
“Don’t you move,” she says.
I don’t move.
Now that I can see her face, I’d put her somewhere between forty and fifty. A few strands of graying hair shine at her temples.
I wait for the inevitable “Who are you?” but it never comes.
“Where are they?” she says, and that takes me by surprise.
“What?” I say. Eloquent as ever.
Before she can answer, Nonna’s door opens. A flashlight’s beam falls across us both.No, no, no. They’ve opened the door, they can’t open the door.
I open my mouth to shout a warning. But it’s not Nonna in the doorway. Eames stands there, his mouth agape and eyes wide. He isn’t looking at me.
“Aunt Connie?” says Eames.
13
It takes a few seconds for my brain to switch tracks.
This isn’t the mysterious Number Six. It isn’t one of Vale’s crew at all.
Aunt Connie. Eames and Piper’s aunt.
“What are you doing here?” asks Eames, sounding shocked. “How did you get out of the apartment?”
Aunt Connie—my brain keeps calling her that, even though she’s not related to me in any way—lowers her gun and turns toward Eames. “You’re all right?”
