The Masked Truth(32)

My parents taught me that life—and God—helps those who help themselves. If I’ve gotten any divine boost here, it’s the guy walking beside me: Max. He’s exactly the partner I need to keep my spirits and my confidence up, keep me calm and keep me moving with a clear plan in mind.

That plan is getting our asses to the back door. Finding it takes some work, but Gray and Predator seem to have retreated upstairs, possibly in pursuit of Aaron or Brienne, and I don’t want to be glad of that, especially when both tried to help me. But the truth is that each time I hear a noise upstairs, I think, Good, it’s not us.

We find the back door. It’s locked.

“Bang on it?” I ask.

Max purses his lips and runs his hand over the steel. “It’s thinner than the front one. It’ll make more noise. But will anyone be back here?” He puts his ear to the door. “I don’t hear anything. I did out front—not much, but I heard noise.”

“Most of the activity will be at the front,” I say. “But they’ll cover all exits.”

“Then we have to risk knocking. If I ask you to find a room and lie low—”

“No.”

“All right, I won’t ask. This time, though, I want a plan, because if it’s only a couple of officers covering the back, they might not hear us. Gray and Predator will.”

We whisper out a plan and then locate a safe room. Then Max bangs on the door. The boom reverberates loudly enough that I jump and so does he, and he turns with an “Oh, shit!” look on his face. We both go still, waiting to see if anyone comes to the door. When he notices I’m still standing guard, he waves frantically for me to get to the safe room, but I turn away and watch down the hall.

After five seconds of silence, there’s a reaction … footfalls pounding overhead.

Max’s gaze swings up, tracking the sound. The footsteps are running toward the stairs. Then they’re on the steps, the cadence changing to the boom-ba-boom of someone racing down. Max tenses, still tracking that sound, knowing we have only a few moments, but we need every second we can steal, to see if there is a response from outside, to make sure they know we’re here, that it’s not a random banging, that something is going on and—

The stairwell door slams shut. Max grabs the letter opener from my hand and raps it hard against the steel back door. Three quick raps, three slower, three quick, a pause, then again. I recognize the sound, but it’s not until he turns back toward me that I recall a fifth-grade project and realize it’s Morse code for SOS.

We get to our safe room and hide behind boxes to catch our breath. I grin at him again and whisper, “You’re a genius, you know that?” and he hesitates, with this look as if not sure he’s hearing right.

“Morse code,” I say. “I would have never thought of that.”

“I should have thought of it sooner. Now we have to hope they know what it means.”

“They will. They’ll realize something’s wrong, and whatever Gray has been telling them, they’re not going to believe him now. They’ll insist on talking to one of us, and he can bluff all he wants, but they’ll know it’s all gone to hell, and this will become a rescue mission. Which means”—my grin broadens—“we just need to lie low and wait it out.”

A few minutes later, we overhear Gray and Predator discovering Cantina, bound up. Their curses ricochet through the empty building. We’re three halls and about a hundred paces from the therapy room, so we sneak to the door of our safe room and crack it open to listen. They’re too far away for us to catch more than disjointed phrases:

“… the Mexican girl and the British kid …”

“… say anything …”

“… looking for my gun, I guess …”

“… taken down by a couple crazy kids?”

Crazy kids. Not wild and crazy. Nuts crazy. That’s what you get when people find out you’re in therapy. Most don’t say it outright, but you can see it in their eyes, that wary look, as if you’re going to start ranting or muttering to yourself. Some will say it, like my aunt, when she thought I couldn’t hear. Why does Riley need therapy? She’s just having a rough time. She isn’t crazy or anything. Take her on a vacation and let her relax and everything will be fine.

Mom says that’s just plain ignorance. She’d know—she needed grief counseling after Dad died. My aunt probably told her she just needed a vacation then too.

When Gray accuses Cantina of having been taken down by “a couple crazy kids,” the injured man defends himself. Gray tells him to shut the hell up, just shut the hell—

Silence. Then Gray snorts a laugh and says, “Well, that works,” and Predator says, “I thought it might. Should have done that earlier. Once this is over, I don’t plan to spend my day finding him a doctor.”

“I suppose you expect part of his cut.”

“Fifty percent.”

“That’s why I like you, buddy. You’re a fair man. Now let’s find those kids.”

Max pulls the door shut, and it’s only now that I realize what happened. That Predator shot Cantina.

Put him down like a dog.

I’ve heard that expression too, and again it’s not until now that I realize the full horror of it. I know what Cantina was. I wouldn’t have given a damn if we’d walked in there earlier to find him dead. Succumbed to his injuries.