The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(49)

Instead of continuing on toward our cabin, though, the flashlight turns toward the car. Not Officer Kendall? But a second later, once the light is no longer shining at us, we can see who is behind it. And there can be no doubt. It is Officer Kendall. Sure enough, he’s headed for his car. And away from us.

I close my eyes. Hope that I am seeing things. I have to be. But when I open them, there is Officer Kendall. Still walking calmly toward his car.

Jasper knocks on the window with two of his knuckles. “Hey!” he screams. “Where are you going?”

If Officer Kendall hears, he doesn’t even twitch.

“He’s leaving us here,” I say, barely able to get the words out. My heart is throbbing in my head.

“Hey!” Jasper screams again as Officer Kendall gets into his SUV. He bangs with his whole closed fist this time. So hard I’m afraid he’s going to shatter the glass and hurt himself.

“Jasper, stop.” I put a hand on his arm.

He rests his fist against the glass as Officer Kendall backs up and drives away. We stand in silence until his taillights disappear down the driveway.

“Fuck,” Jasper says quietly. Then sits back down on the floor.

I watch him down there for a minute, looking so defeated. If Jasper’s hope is gone, we are truly lost. But he’ll rally. He has to. I just need to give him a minute. I turn away from him back toward the window.

And there is a face. Right there. Right on the other side of the glass. A man with terrible dead eyes locked on mine.

“Holy shit!”

Jasper jumps to his feet. “What is it?”

The terrible man, bearded and thin with blotchy skin, looks over at Jasper and holds up his dirty finger again. Shhh, that’s the sound he’d make if we could hear him. My heart is racing as he lifts something high in front of him. It takes me a minute to realize what it is: a rifle. As he lowers it, his smile sinks and becomes an awful frown before he finally disappears from view.

“Fuck,” Jasper says again, his wide, terrified eyes locked on the window. “We have got to get the hell out of here. Now.”

We divide the cabin into sections, searching for a way out. At one point, Jasper moves a couple of boxes, creating a little fence around Cassie’s stuff, and I’m glad because I’m afraid if I look too close I might spot something terrible on it, like blood.

I check all the windows again, but they are all nailed shut, each covered with that same wire. Jasper scans the walls for a loose board, a crack in the seals. We both scour the floors for any sign of weakness, some corner we could dig our way out from. I find only the hole in the floor Officer Kendall mentioned, but it’s not big enough to be useful.

We do all of this in silence, neither one of us throwing out theories about who exactly these people are or why they locked us in here. Why Officer Kendall has gone. Because there are no explanations anymore that do not make our situation, and Cassie’s, seem much, much worse.

“Do you think she’s okay?” Jasper does ask at one point. Alive, he means, I can tell.

I do not want him to be asking me this. I want him to know that she’s going to be fine, the way he did before.

“She’s okay,” I say finally, the way he told me hours earlier. “She has to be.”

I carry a chair over to inspect a vent up near the ceiling that would be too small for us to crawl through anyway.

“Hey, I think maybe there’s something behind here,” Jasper calls from the back. “Help me pull this bureau out.”

The bureau is so heavy it might as well be made of concrete. Even with Jasper using his full strength we don’t get it far, only a foot or so from the wall. But enough to see that there is something behind it. A big piece of plywood—two feet by three feet—is attached to the wall like it’s sealing up a hole. A hole that might just be big enough for us to escape through. Jasper crouches down, inspecting the edges of the plywood. There is a screw in each corner and a couple more along each side.

“We need to get these out.” He motions around the room. Find a tool to loosen them. And he’s right that we’ll need to be quiet, too. Don’t want to draw the attention of that man on the door.

Carefully, gently, we pull open one drawer at a time. I find a broken pencil and four pennies in one, a few dirty manila folders in the next. Jasper is at the tall filing cabinet, trying to silently open and close the rattling metal drawers. He looks disgusted by something in the second, poking his head in closer. A moment later he pulls out a giant stuffed owl and sets it on top of the filing cabinet so that it’s staring right at me.

“For you.” He smiles a little, and I’m glad one of us can still joke. “Hey,” Jasper whispers again a second later, and I turn, expecting another absurd discovery. But he’s got a metal ruler. The kind of thing that just might work on the screws.

Jasper tries the ruler, and I’m shocked when it actually begins to turn the first screw. When he looks up at me, the hope is back in his eyes. And I pray that he’s right. That we are as good as free.

Ten minutes later, though, it’s obvious it’ll at least be slow going. He’s got three screws out along one corner and a couple more loosened, but there are a half dozen more to go.

“Let me,” I offer when it seems like Jasper’s hands are starting to give out. Even in the dim light from the bulb in our bucket bathroom, his palms are bright red.