One second.
Two.
The space where she’d pressed against me already cooling. The taste of her still on my mouth. The phantom weight of her palms still imprinted on my jaw.
The absence of her arrived without warning.
Don’t.
I locked it down.
Buried it in the same place I kept the screams and the thing with no jaw and the way Lily’s eyes had looked when she’d first understood what the dead did to the living.
Sealed it shut.
Turned back to the edge.
Gun up.
Breath steady.
Below, two of them had drifted close to the Suburban, swaying. Heads twitching. Dark fluid dripped from their chins onto the pavement.
I sighted the rear window of the little red sports car and prayed the alarm was armed.
Twenty Nine
It Split The Morning Air -Libby
The gunshot split the morning air.
It hit me as if it had come from inside the room, jolting my body, my shoulder catching the wall. My ears rang. My vision strobed.
Then, the alarm shrieked to life outside, mechanical, impossibly loud. We hadn’t heard anything that loud in days.
My heart slammed upward into my throat and stayed there.
“He did it,” I whispered, the words barely a sound.
Above us, heavy footsteps. Fast. Controlled. Boot heels crossing toward the stairs.
Not panicked.
Purposeful.
Finn.
Moving.
The girls snapped into motion beside me.
“Go, go,” Fiona whispered, already snatching her tote from the floor. She moved with a precision that reminded me so much of her brother it made my chest ache.
Lily’s hands trembled as she lifted her bag. Her face had gone chalk-white, her lips bloodless. “Oh my God—”
“Hey.” Fiona stepped into her space immediately, one hand gripping Lily’s upper arm, fingers pressing in hard enough to register through the panic. “Look at me. He’s got this.”
Steady.
