Snowflakes & Fire Escapes (11 page)

I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I drift off, because I’m jarred out of a deep sleep by the shrill ringing once more. My eyes open, and are immediately met with light.
Ugh
. It’s morning sometime and the sun is shining just bright enough to highlight the empty room around me.

Sitting up, I cringe at the crick in my neck, my back stiff from sleeping on the hard floor. It’s cold, even with the window closed, a cloud of breath surrounding me as I reach for my phone. I pick it up just as it stops ringing, knowing exactly who it’s going to be, and stare at the thing as it starts making noise again right away.

On the third call, back-to-back, I press the button and bring the phone to my ear. My heart beats wildly but I try to play it cool. “Hello?”

Holden, always so composed, is calm no more. “Where the hell are you? Tell me right now! I need to know!”

“I, uh … I’m at home.”

“Don’t lie to me, Grace, goddammit,” he shouts, and the line is cracking up, but it’s clear enough to detect the sheer panic in his voice. “This is serious. I know you hopped a plane. I know you’re in New York. People have
seen
you in New York. This isn’t the time for games!”

“I’m not lying,” I say. “I’m at home.”

A second of silence passes—that’s it, just a second—but the silence screams louder than any of his words. Holden always knows what to say, how to handle situations, but I’ve rendered him momentarily speechless.

Even for a second, I know it’s too much.

I’m on my feet in an instant, swaying from a bout of dizziness, my heart beating way too fast as his voice finally kicks in. “Get out of there, Grace! Get out of there right now! Run as fast as you can. And
hide
. Hide somewhere where nobody can find you. You hear me? I need you to understand.”

“I hear you.”

“Good,” he says. “
Run
.”

The moment he says the word, I hear noises in the hallway outside the apartment door. My vision blurs from panic, the phone hitting the floor. Turning, I rush to the window, shoving it open, the loud groan echoing through the apartment. The voices stall for a second before growing frantic as something slams against door.
Shit
. They’re shouting, cursing, trying to knock down the door to reach me inside. I leave everything laying there, knowing I’ve been caught, knowing there’s no time to grab it, not giving a shit about any of it. I climb through the window, out onto the fire escape, and turn to run.

A startled scream escapes my lips, my body trembling, when I damn near collide with someone there. Inhaling sharply with surprise, a familiar scent hits my lungs, and all at once, I know I’m done.

I’m
done
.

My knees are weak and my chest is heavy and there are tears in my eyes I scarcely understand. They blur my vision, distorting the sight in front of me, like my body can’t handle seeing who it is. I blink the tears back as I look up, meeting a pair of startling green eyes.

Those eyes.

I know those eyes.

Cody
.

The world stops, as I stare at him, seeing his face for the first time in a year. His expression is blank, but those eyes always told stories nobody but me ever bothered to listen to. His face has hardened, aged a century in just twelve months, but I read the softness in his gaze and listen to the confession he doesn’t speak.

Behind me, the door shoves open in the apartment, wood splintering, feet stomping along the floor as they coming closer. Each footstep feels like a punch in the chest. Cody just stands there, right in front of me, less than a foot away, blocking my only way to escape. And I’m frozen, because he’s here, but I’m afraid, because he’s not.

He’s standing in front of me, but my Cody … my Cody’s gone.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he reaches toward me.

I stand still, so still.

My feet are cemented in spot and my voice won’t work.

He grasps the chain around my neck, pulling the locket out from beneath the hoodie.
His
hoodie. His thumb brushes along the snowflake on the outside of it before he pops it open, looking inside.

Nothing.

There’s nothing in it.

He stares into the empty locket for a moment before meeting my eyes, snapping it right back closed. He lets go, letting out a deep sigh, as he looks away from me.

Ten seconds.

He gives it ten seconds, before speaking words that make my world implode.

“She’s out here,” he shouts. “I got her.”

***

Thirty minutes.

That was all I had.

Thirty minutes to say goodbye to my life.

The Marshal stood in front of me in the apartment, while numerous police officers flanked the building, unmarked cars parked all over the street, agents keeping an eye on things to ensure we were safe in here for the time being. He was still talking … he hadn’t stopped talking since the moment he introduced himself at the school … but I stopped listening when he said those words.

Thirty minutes
.

In class sophomore year, we had this drill during fire safety week—if your house was burning down, what would you grab on your way out the door? They gave us thirty seconds … thirty seconds to decide what was most important to us.

It was an easy decision: I took my memories.

My pictures. My mementos. My journal.

I didn’t even need thirty seconds.

But sitting there, thirty minutes ticking away as they waited for me to grab whatever it was I wanted to take, I drew a blank. Because all of that—all of my memories—I wasn’t allowed to keep.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

“It’s a mistake,” I whispered, blinking rapidly as I shook my head. It
had
to be a mistake. This couldn’t be happening. These things … they only happened in movies. They didn’t happen in real life. They certainly didn’t happen to
me
. “It’s all a mistake.”

Witness Protection.

Unfathomable.

“I’m afraid it’s not,” he said, looking at his watch. “Twenty-seven minutes until we’re out the door.”

His voice was all business, yet there was some casualness about it, like this situation didn’t disturb him at all. I clearly wasn’t the first person whose life he disrupted, not the first person whose memories he stole. This, to him, was just another day at work.

But this was my life.

“Time’s ticking,” he said, casually strolling over to the window when I still didn’t make a move to pack anything. “Twenty-five minutes to go.”

Everything was a blur. I blinked and I was on my feet; another blink and I was running for the door. It was stupid. I knew that. There was nowhere for me to go. I made it as far as the hallway, bursting right out the door, when an officer grabbed a hold of me, shoving me against the closest wall.

BAM

It knocked the breath from my lungs, forcing tears to my eyes as I struggled against the hands restraining me, gasping and shouting. “Let me go! Please! I don’t want to go!”

The tears broke free, streaming down my cheeks.

I didn’t understand how his could be happening to me.

“Let her go,” the Marshal said calmly from the doorway to the apartment. The officer loosened his hold on me right away, slowly backing up.

I glanced over at the Marshal, wiping my eyes, but the traitorous tears wouldn’t stop. “I can’t … I can’t do this. I can’t just
leave
. You can’t make me!”

He stared at me for a moment, frowning, before saying simply, “You’re down to twenty minutes now.”

Twenty minutes.

They flew by in another blink. I went into my room and filled up a duffel bag—just one bag was all I was allowed to take. I didn’t know what I threw in it, nor did I care. The rule was ‘don’t pack anything that can be linked to Grace Callaghan.’

The Marshal shifted through my bag when I finished, pulling out a few things and tossing them aside—my iPod, a t-shirt bearing the name of my school, a monogrammed purse that says ‘I love New York’. After he was satisfied, he zipped up the bag, handing it off to the officer in the hallway, who disappeared with it downstairs.

Stepping toward me, the Marshal surveyed my clothing before reaching for the locket around my neck. He turned it over, and my stomach dropped.
No
.

“Please,” I whispered, knowing he saw the engraving. “Just this one thing.”

He said nothing in response to my plea as he flipped it open, looking at what was inside of it. He seemed to contemplate before pulling out the picture, closing his fist around it before securing the locket again, leaving it hanging around my neck. “Time’s up.”

He let go and motioned toward the front door. I didn’t have time to think, barely had time to process anything, when I was ushered out, not having the chance to even look back. I was rushed straight out of the building, toward an awaiting van parked right along the curb. It was black as midnight, and even the windows were all obscured. The Marshal forced me into the backseat and climbed in beside me as engine started up for us to leave.

Glancing out the back window, I stared at the building I lived in my whole life, surveying the fire escape, realizing I’d never see it again … I’d never see any of this again. If these people, if these men, got their way, I’d never step foot in Hell’s Kitchen for as long as I lived.

It was what I always wanted, wasn’t it?

But no … not like this.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

I wasn’t supposed to be doing it alone.

I was supposed to be with
him
.

Him
.

My eyes met his the second that thought passed through my mind, the moment my gaze drifted to the street outside the side window. Cody stood there, just a few feet away from the idling van, where he often hung out with his friends, but today he was alone. Something inside of me lurched, my heart stalling for a beat. Frantic, I tried the handle as I shouted his name, but the door was locked. It wouldn’t open and the window wouldn’t roll down, so I beat on it, banging my fist against the tinted glass as I screamed for him. “Cody! Cody! Please! Cody!”

He stared at the van like he was staring through it, hands in his pants pockets. His scowl cracked after a moment. Slowly, ever so slowly, his lips curved until he was smiling.

He was
smiling
.

In a blink, he was gone.

The van sped away down the street. I spun around in my seat, watching out the back window again as the neighborhood faded away and with it, Cody.

“I’d appreciate it if you put on your seatbelt,” the Marshal said, ignoring my outburst. “It’s my job to make sure you stay safe.”

***

Unlike his son, Cormac Moran hasn’t aged a day. He stands in front of me, in the empty apartment, beside the boy I encountered at the library last night. I stand still, trying not to fidget, but my hands won’t stop shaking and my heart still hasn’t slowed. I stare straight at Cormac, watching him, trying to ignore Cody’s presence beside me.

Trying not to fall to pieces because of him.

He slipped in the window behind me after silently motioning for me to go back in where I came from. He’s spoken not a word to me. He hasn’t even looked at me again. His gaze is trained on the floor, his hands shoved in his pockets, as he waits, like me, for Cormac to do whatever it is he has planned.

I want to scream at him, ask him why he’s doing this, why he’s being this person I know he’s not, but the words are lodged in my throat, beaten back by Holden’s warnings that I stupidly ignored. He said I couldn’t ever come back here. He said this life was over, that I’d never find here what it was I was looking for. I was a different person this past year. Why would I think Cody wouldn’t be, too?

Cormac just stands there, eyes studying me, before his gaze flickers to his son. He stares at him for only a moment, but it’s a moment that says so much. He’s surprised by his loyalty, surprised that his son didn’t just let me go.

I’m surprised, too.

My Cody would have.

“Miss Callaghan,” Cormac says, smiling deviously as he turns his attention back to me. “Or should I call you Miss Kennedy?”

I say nothing, trying to fight the swell of sickness that rushes through me at the fact that he knows. He knows that other girl exists, the one I’ve tried to be, and he somehow knows who she is.

“Maybe we’ll just stick with Grace then,” he says when I don’t humor that with a response. “At any rate, it’s nice to see you home again. I love what you guys did with the place.”

He motions around us, at the vacant apartment.

I don’t find him nearly as funny as he seems to think he is.

“What do you want from me?” I ask, my voice shaking. I don’t want to play this game with him. I’ve already been crushed. I don’t need toyed with on top of it.

“I think you know what I want,” he says, reaching over and grasping the boy beside him on the shoulder. “To be honest, when I heard from Joey here that you were in town, my first thought was just to kill you. Slit your throat, drop you off a building … you know, send a message to your father. I wanted to …
planned
to … until another idea surfaced.”

Hope swells inside of me, mixing with a dash of terror. He might not be planning to kill me right now, but some things are just as bad as death. “What idea?”

“That we could use you for more than just sending a message,” he says. “You see, killing you would destroy your father, but maybe if we give him some hope … give him an ultimatum of sorts, tell him we’ll let you walk away if he recants … it could work in our favor.”

I want to say my father would never do that, but I’m not sure.

“Brilliant, huh?” Cormac grins. “It was my son’s idea. Said there was no reason to be hasty putting a bullet through your skull when we could use that pretty face to get something we want first.”

My gaze darts to Cody, whose attention is still fixated on the floor.

“So settle in,” Cormac continues. “This will be your home again until we’re done with you. Joey will take first watch. You know, make sure you don’t try to disappear out the window.”

Cormac turns, heading out the door, leaving it open behind him. Cody hesitates for a second before starting after his father, pausing only briefly to bend down and pick something up. My phone, I realize. I’d dropped it when I was talking to Holden. Cody snaps it closed, his eyes drifting my way, meeting mine for only a second, before he slips the phone in his pocket and walks out.