The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(14)

“Keep sifting that rubble out of the way. We need to get down there. Find out if she’s dead or if she’s managed to escape us. Again.”

Desmond’s voice held an angry bark to it, reminding me of a savage dog. I’m not dead, I thought to her, as though she could hear me. And I’m going to make your life a lot harder.

“With respect, ma’am, there are pieces of stone here too big for us to move on our own. We need a full team here to—”

“Haven’t you heard, Warden? There is rioting in the streets, people looting and gone wild over one little propaganda video made by a team of rebels. And not just any rebels, no, but the same one that girl in the basement happens to lead. She’s a criminal, ladies, and dangerous to boot. Not to mention, she is the only suspect in the assassination of Queen Rina. I don’t care how hard it is; we have a duty to Queen Elena to get her and drag her back to Matrus for questioning. So stop arguing with me and dig!”

I finally got an angle by going to my belly, peering around the wraparound stairs. It was hard to see all the guards, but from the little flashes and the softer exchange of voices, I counted three. I waited for a while. Desmond paced the area around the stairs like a wild beast as I watched, and I fantasized about going to get my rifle and just unloading a clip into her. But I knew it would be a rash move. Killing Desmond would only get me killed by the guards. While I’d held stairs like this before, I’d been in better shape then, in a pitched battle with backup if I failed. If they all charged up the stairs at me, I was likely to be able to take most of them out—but what if one came around behind me or ran away? Or what if one hit me, and Tim and Owen were left to fend for themselves in the basement with unknown injuries?

Or I could take them all out at once… I thought about just tossing a grenade down the staircase at them, a brutal parody of what Desmond had done to me and Owen—and, inadvertently, Tim. But down there, the walls were already compromised. Who knew what another concussive blast would do to the structures down in the basement? It could do nothing. Or it could cut off more than the lights in the front part of the basement. I knew the hidden doors needed electricity to run—what if the wires were already damaged? I still had the tiny elevator, but it needed electricity, too. If I had to risk more structural damage to the house, I wanted it to be farther away from the part where my brother was still effectively prisoner.

I breathed out silently. I was wasting time here imagining fanciful revenge stories and big triumphs. Really, I just needed the guards out of the picture, and that meant using something other than a straight-out fight, which I would never win in my condition.

I crept back to Jeff’s room, feeling secure about my safety for the next few minutes, grabbed my backpack, and dumped its contents onto the bed. I stared at the things I’d collected, my heart already racing at the thought of what I needed to do, focusing on the items, trying to piece them together… Almost before I had my plan fully mapped, I slipped what I needed back into the bag and stared at the bulletproof vest, wondering if it would slow me down too much to put it on now. I went out into the halls again without its unnatural weight on my ribs and prayed I had not made a grave mistake...

Then, once I felt I’d gotten sufficiently far enough away from the back wing of the house to avoid damaging more of the basement, I began setting up traps using the grenades.

It was tricky business, creating a tripwire with a live explosive. I knew a lot about it in theory, based on conversations I’d had with Viggo and Ms. Dale. I was always interested in listening to them talk about this kind of stuff, which wasn’t surprising, considering the course my life had taken.

I knew two good ways to rig a tripwire using the supplies I had, but given that I only had one good hand, my choice was whittled down to one option. I used duct tape to secure my precious supply of grenades to things in the house, swearing under my breath as I fought each time to rip off the long strands with my single useful hand and my teeth. The grenades looked more like silver cocoons than weapons by the time I was done, nesting on a wall under a chair here, a table leg there—I wanted to make sure the tape held them harder than the jerk it would take to pull the pin loose. With this method, I attached the trip wire directly to the pin, running it at an angle to something across a doorway or a hall and tying it off. Hopefully, the guard who passed through it would walk fast enough so the pin was ripped out. I tried my best to make that the only option while not thinking too hard about what would happen if one of traps didn’t go off. My backup plan was desperate but simple: shoot them before they shot me.

As I crept around upstairs, stepping lightly, barely daring to breathe, I felt as though every closed door held a guard behind it, and around every corner I expected to see a search party coming to find me. I kept reminding myself they had no reason to believe I could escape the basement—but this was Desmond I was dealing with. Wouldn’t Desmond think to search the house? My breath hitched at creaking floorboards, and I fought to keep my hand steady on the grenades even as I cursed my ever-present cast. My fingers slipped as I set up the traps, and I checked my watch constantly. Every minute passing told me I had been up here too long. Every time I looked down at my watch and saw that even more time had slipped away, I was painfully reminded that Tim and Owen were depending on me.

Once I had everything in place, or as best as I could get it at the moment, I wavered on running through the trap locations one more time. I had to remember exactly where the wires to the grenades were, or else my whole plan would backfire on me—but it had already been twenty minutes, and I didn’t think I could afford the time. Any moment, they might choose to stop digging and go search the rest of the house. I would just have to trust my memory and risk it.