The Rule of One (The Rule of One #1)(55)

“Mira, get back here!” Ava orders, keeping her voice low. “You’ll be seen!”

At first I see only the three reflections of my knife through the triple-glazed windows. Then my eyes adapt, and I realize I’m staring into an unoccupied bedroom. I spot a telescope. An unmade bed. An open door.

Ava sneaks into the foliage and stands to my right, her breathing quick and forceful like a seething wild boar that has been outrun. And overruled. Silenced, she leans her forehead against the glass and holds her hands over her brows, blocking out the glare.

“Find anything?” she finally mutters.

Through the bedroom door I make out the profiles of three figures huddled inside the living room: Rayla, the man named Xavier, and a teenager who must be his son. The glow of a hologram flickers between their heads. I piece together from the slivers of images—the steel chair legs, two ankles bound in fetters, one-way glass walls—that this footage is surveillance from a prison. An interrogation room.

Shut up, shut up! my mind tells my shaking hands. My sinking heart. My burning blood. It’s not him. It can’t be.

Rayla shifts her weight and rakes her fingers through her tousled hair, exposing the high-angled image of a frail man slumped over a table in the center of the barren room. His hands are lacerated and cuffed, his head bruised and shaved. His chin stoops over his chest so I can’t see his face.

Look up. Look up. Look up. I have to see. I have to know.

Xavier barks out an order that I can’t hear through the thick layers of glass, but I see his son raise a steady hand and use his fingers to zoom into a close-up of the prisoner. I see Rayla mouth two words over and over: “Look up. Look up. Look up.”

“Look up, dammit!” Ava cries out.

The man lifts his head as if he hears her call.

His skin is pasty and sweaty. Chin patchy with a rough beard and dried vomit. Cheeks hollowed. Lips chapped and busted.

But it’s my father’s eyes that tell me of his torture. The way they stare blankly before him, focusing on nothing. Empty, like no one is behind them.

Father, Father. Oh God.

Bile rises up my throat, and I swallow it. Swallow the truth and what I’ve done.

Suddenly his sunken, bloodshot eyes snap to the surveillance camera. They begin to blink a code. The rapid fluttering of his lids lasts for six more seconds before two Texas State Guards charge into the room, stuff a bag over his thrashing head, and the footage cuts to black.

“Don’t touch him!” I scream.

I smash my fist against the window over and over, trying to break the glass, oblivious to the noise I make. I will break everything to get to him.

The smart glass instantly darkens, shutting me out. Leaving me to stare only at the vague outline of my reflection next to Ava’s.

“They saw us,” Ava says.

Neither of us moves. We stand crippled by the reality we’ve tried so hard to censor.

“Mira,” Ava says beside me.

I can’t look at her. I can’t look at me. I need to unknow. I need to unsee.

The smart window switches to clear again, and Xavier gapes down at us, his breath fogging the glass. His head swings like a pendulum as he looks from Ava to me. Ava to me. Ava to me. His son, golden eyes fixed on mine, walks slowly toward the window, as if approaching mythical animals. Unicorns. Bigfoot. Twins.

“Impossible,” he mouths.

Once you see you can’t unsee.

Rayla lingers in the background. She wants them to get a good look at us. Like we’re creatures in a zoo.

I resent this. I resent her.

“Xavier, we need your car,” I hear her command.

I lose feeling in my fingers. I begin to suffocate, choking on my guilt. I cover my face with my trembling palms and turn away from all the eyes.

“Don’t follow me,” I say to Ava, my voice shrill and distant.

I need to unknow. I need to unsee.

Dry heaving, I feel spit dripping down my chin as I trip my way toward the dying field, away from the house, away from the eyes, with Ava following behind.

It should be me in there, Father.

It should have been me.

“Are they going to kill him?” I ask from the backseat of the car.

“We don’t know,” Rayla says, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.

Ava moves restlessly in the passenger seat as if walls were closing in around her. And I sit still. Very, very still. The monotonous pa-plunk, pa-plunk of the four tires hurtling over potholes masks the silence. Aggravates my brooding thoughts of what’s happening back in Dallas.

We’re going the wrong way.

“Why can’t the Common save him?” Ava asks. She pops her left thumb. Her right. “You obviously have people on the inside. They can help him escape . . .”

“Listen to me,” Rayla says, her eyes never leaving the road that takes us north. “Darren is out of our reach now.”

She says this like it’s final. Like it’s not my father. Like I’m not the reason.

We’re going the wrong way.

“He’s not out of reach!” I snap. “He’s still alive!”

In one explosive motion I reach for the door and flick up the lock. Before I can pull the handle, I hear a click. Locked.

“Let me out of the goddamn car!” I shout, my words trembling, my head splitting, my stomach queasy from going the wrong way.