The Outliers (The Outliers, #1)(52)

“Did they actually say they would kill you?” I ask, thinking of that text we got from Cassie at the Freshmart.

“What do you mean?” She looks confused.

“The text you sent,” I say. “You said not to call the police or they would kill you.”

Cassie shakes her head and looks down. “They must have sent that after they took my phone.”

“And you didn’t tell us to go to Seneca or the police?”

She shakes her head again. “No.”

“You keep saying ‘they,’” Jasper says. “How many of them are there?”

Cassie looks up like she’s considering, then counts on her fingers. “Maybe a dozen?”

“A dozen?” Jasper looks nervously toward the door. Even he can’t do anything with those kinds of odds.

“Maybe more. I’ve only seen most of them through the window. A couple of them are women. They all look so normal, which is maybe even creepier.”

“Yeah, okay.” Jasper claps his hands together in a go-team-go kind of way. “I think we’ve heard enough. We are getting the hell out of here, right now.”

He strides over to where Cassie is sitting on the couch and reaches down for her hand. She seems so sad and sorry when she finally reaches up.

“Come on,” he says quietly. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.” Finally, Cassie’s body loosens. She even smiles a little.

And I’m amazed at how he does that: makes it better—makes her better—without actually fixing anything. That’s love, I guess. And it’s something I don’t know anything about.

A minute later, Cassie and I are standing behind Jasper as he sets to work on the last couple sets of screws, harder than ever before.

“What is this?” Cassie asks.

“A way out.” And Jasper sounds so confident now that I almost feel convinced myself.

“And then what?” Cassie looks toward the windows, worried.

“We run,” Jasper says.

“But what if they catch us?” Cassie asks, and now she sounds officially scared. “There is a guy out there with a gun, remember? Or what if they were actually telling the truth about trying to protect me from something? Maybe we’re safer in here.”

“Protect you from what?” I ask, staring at her hard. “You said you thought they were making that up.”

“I don’t know that for sure,” she says, her eyes still on the window. “What if there is somebody or something out there? These people haven’t actually done anything to me. Maybe they’re not so bad.”

My stomach tightens as I look out the dark window. It is creepy out there, that’s for sure.

“Whoever these people are, they have the police or a policeman helping them,” Jasper says. “They grabbed you off the street and have us all locked up here. That’s enough information for me. We need to go.”

Cassie eyes me for a long time, like she’s considering whether or not to agree. Instead, she looks down and takes my wrist in her cold fingers. “Wylie, what happened?”

There’s blood smeared on my forearm from three deep cuts beneath my bunched-up sleeve at the crook of my elbow and a few thicker pink scratches. I felt the pain when I first pulled my arm out from the plywood, but after that: nothing. I wrap my fingers tight around my arm, like a tourniquet, which only makes it wake up and throb.

“It was the wood.” I point to the wall. “I pulled my arm out too fast. It’ll be okay.”

Cassie is staring at my arm still. “Thank you for coming,” she says. “Especially after all our …” She reaches down and links her fingers through mine. “After everything.”

“Of course I came,” I say, turning to look at Jasper as he keeps on working. “What are best friends for?”

Cassie and I were lying on the couch, toe to toe, propped up on pillows doing our homework as we had been each day for the nearly two months since the funeral. And each day, I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to keep coming, to keep pretending that we were friends. But a larger part of me was too afraid of what would happen to me if she stopped.

We both ignored the doorbell the first time. For sure, I was never going to answer it. Not if they rang it a thousand times. Not even if it was more flowers or another kindly casserole dropped off by a neighbor. Because there was also a chance it was another reporter. I don’t know what it was: the cruel irony of my mom getting the Pulitzer nomination posthumously, the fact that she had survived so much danger in the field only to die a mile from her home. Or that she was so beautiful. But the reporters kept coming no matter how many times or how many ways we told them to go away.

Cassie knew this, too. And by the time the person rang the bell a third time, she couldn’t take it anymore. The people with the casseroles were never that insistent.

“I’ll get rid of them,” she said, pushing herself up off the couch. A minute later, I heard the front door creak open, a beat of silence, followed by Cassie’s quiet voice: “What the hell?” Then her stomping outside and down the front steps: “Hey! Come here, you f*cking *!”

Reluctantly, I forced myself up to investigate. Our front door was hanging wide open when I got out there, and Cassie was nowhere in sight. I stepped into the open doorway, my eyes watering from the March cold blasting in. Finally, I spotted Cassie out in the street, standing in front of a dark-gray sedan in her cropped sweater, short skirt, and bright argyle tights. Her barely-still-curly brown hair was lifted in an arc around her head in the strong wind, making her look like a pissed-off Medusa. She had one hand on the hood of the car, the other high in the air. It took me a minute to realize what she had gripped in her fist: a plastic baby doll. We’d gotten a half dozen in all, but not a single one since my mom’s accident.