The space opens up, and I trip on the step, landing hard on my knees, pain shooting up my legs. A beam of light isn’t far behind. I scramble up the narrow stairway and duck around the corner, where I wait, willing my breath to slow so he can’t hear me.
His feet scrape against the stone. The light illuminates the step right below where I’m standing just as my foot collides with his chest, sending him sprawling backward. I race down and pounce on top of him, slipping the knife from my boot.
Vic spreads his hands in surrender, my knife to his throat. The light from his dropped phone reflects off his mask, his hat lost somewhere along the way.
“You are done destroying lives,” I seethe.
“What? Are you going to kill me?” A condescending laugh erupts from behind his mask. “Go ahead.” He collapses his arms against the stone, as if in defeat. The blade presses into his flesh, a line of blood dribbling on its shimmering surface.
I glower at him, my lips pulled back in a sneer as my chest heaves from exertion. Breaths panting through flared nostrils. Across the top of his mask, printed in red, the choice is given:
My feral glare reflects back at me. The hate in my eyes is startling.
Hero or villain?
I ease the blade away, my hand shaking, realizing how close I was to becoming one over the other.
“She said I had my father’s eyes,” he says from beneath the mask. “That she wished I didn’t because there was evil in those eyes. Those were the last words she said to me before she died.”
I shift back on my heels, stunned by his confession.
This gives him the split second he needs to knock me off him. The knife skitters across the floor. Vic swipes the mask from his head. Rolling on top of me, he swings his fist. An explosion of pain erupts along the left side of my face.
I try to shove him with the arm that isn’t pinned to my side by his thigh, but he grabs hold of it and anchors it above my head.
“Tell me, bitch. Is that what you see when you look in my eyes? Or do you see yourself?”
I squeeze the fingers of my left hand into the pouch on my belt.
“I see nothing. You are a soulless waste of life,” I spit at him.
He backhands me. I wiggle my arm free and dispense the small canister, hoping the nozzle’s aimed in the right direction.
Mist fills the air, drizzling down on me. Vic cries out, covering his face. I scramble out from under him, swinging and kicking. Everything becomes distorted, like we’re inside the fun house mirrors. The single beam of light dances before my eyes. I crawl toward the stairs.
“Lana!” I hear from somewhere above me.
Something thuds behind me. I don’t know which direction I’m facing.
“Lana!”
Feet appear or disappear. Then I’m up. Blinking.
“Put some water on her face.”
Cold liquid jolts me back to the present.
I’m sitting on a couch in the Quiet Room, a silver face inspecting me. Strong arms hold me.
“Lana, can you see me?”
I nod.
“The real me?”
“Uh, you mean, the silver you?”
Arden smiles. “Yes. You’re okay.”
I glance around. Grant has me cradled on his lap, a damp strip of cloth in his hand, and Lincoln stands guard by the door.
I rest my head on Grant’s shoulder. “Where’s Brendan?”
“With Sawyer, tying up the monster,” Arden tells me.
I jolt upright.
Sophia.
Everyone looks confused. Grant releases me as I push off to stand. I sway a little, and Lincoln grabs hold of my elbow.
“Easy,” Arden says, splaying her arms as if to catch me.
I blink a few times to make the room stop swirling. Then I’m moving out the door, everyone following, like they have no idea where I’m going. Maybe I didn’t say her name out loud like I thought I did.
Ashton is seated in a cloud of fabric outside Sophia’s door. “She’s not answering. I’m not sure she’s here yet.” When she sees my face, she jumps to her feet. “Omigod, what happened to you?”
I pull the key card out of my pouch without responding, fumbling to hold it to the scanner. With the click of the door, I push my way in.
Sophia is as still as the beauty she has always portrayed. Her grey eyes closed. Long lashes brushing her ashen cheeks.
I collapse beside her. “No, no, no, no, no,” I cry.
Ashton screams, “Sophia! Someone, help! Please, help!”
Grant is beside her, searching for a pulse. I back away as he begins breathing into her mouth. I scoot along the floor, bumping into her desk. A thud draws my attention. A shoebox with my name written in linear red letters. The movement in the room slows down, and the voices become mute.
I pick up the box and clutch it to my chest with my eyes clamped shut, wishing and wishing for Sophia to wake.
But she does not rouse from her endless slumber.
I am the thief. I am the liar. I am the destroyer of hope and love.
The school delays the start of classes for two days, and in that time, they do a search of everyone’s rooms, confiscating whatever they find. They don’t find much. The students at Blackwood know how to keep secrets.
Including Sophia.
It took me three days to open the shoebox she had left for me. Ashton, Brendan and Grant were in my room with me—with the door closed—when I lifted the lid. Inside were copies of the pictures from my mother’s box, taken when Sophia had snuck into our apartment earlier in the year. She switched out my mother’s medication with pills from the personal pharmacy she kept hidden in a compartment under her bed. Pills Sophia had been receiving from Vic for services rendered. Pills he’d been able to get filled from his mother’s prescription pad while she was dying from cancer in the hospital.
Sophia had placed a letter among the other items in the box. She wanted me to know the truth about Brendan, fearing he was out for revenge—although she didn’t have proof other than the lies that I’d uncovered on my own. But she did have plenty of evidence on Vic. Apparently, he didn’t have anyone inside Thorne Industries covering his tracks; he had Sophia. She promised she never knew about Allie, not until she saw the video. And that was when she said she was done. Except … he needed her to do one more thing before he released her. She had to swap out my mother’s medication one more time. She thought the amphetamines would be harmless, choosing not to leave what Vic had intended. But the pills actually did almost kill my mother. And for that, she’d apologized profusely, begging for forgiveness.
Sophia saved every verbal and written correspondence, including video feed, between her and Vic. Enough to get him arrested, not only for what he had done to my mother, but for Allie as well. Because part of the discovery we presented to the police, through Niall, was a video of Vic pushing Allie down the stairwell.
I never implicated him in the armed robbery of the convenience store, and when no one comes to arrest Brendan for being his accomplice, it’s clear Vic didn’t confess to it either. It’s the one tie Brendan had to Vic that he didn’t know how to break free from. Now it appears to be severed, hopefully forever.
Reginald Thorne came to the aid of his grandson, but to what avail, I have no idea. It’s only been two weeks. But Niall believes there’s enough to keep Vic locked up for a while. However long that is will depend on what someone with deep pockets can spend to clear his name. All while keeping the story spun in a certain slant in the newspapers.