The Girl in the Wall (18 page)

“And we have the gasoline ready for the fire,” John continues. “We should have Ariel any minute so that will be taken care of as well. Are there people assigned to the doors?”

“Yes, that’s been taken care of,” The Assassin says. “They’ll get started downstairs locking up the windows and doors in about twenty minutes, and then the only escape will be the roof.”

My insides are a tangled mess. First, this sounds grisly and awful and I realize that it’s not just my classmates being killed, it’s a bunch of agents too, the ones who know too much or are just expendable. But second, the thing cutting into me like a dull razor, is the fact that they are talking about this in front of me. Which has to mean that they are close to killing me.

“I think we’re set then,” John says, smoothing his tie. “Just take care of her and then you can follow up downstairs.”

Panic is clawing its way up my throat as The Assassin turns to me, casually reaching for his gun.

The door bursts open.

“Stop!” someone shouts. Someone tall and blond and really, really angry.

I have never been so glad to see Ariel.

Unfortunately two more agents run in after, one who seems to have bits of glass in his hair. In chaos, the agents try to grab Ariel. Ariel slips away, rushing over and throwing her arms around me. That’s when I close my eyes, sinking into her, the smell of French lavender suddenly the most amazing smell in the world. Around me I hear shouts, a chair falling over, footsteps, but in this moment, leaning on Ariel’s shoulder, I feel safe.

“I’d like everyone to shut the hell up.”

My eyes snap open, the security ripped away like a blanket being torn off me. It’s John Avery speaking, whose face is red, whose eyes are burning, and who is looking right at Ariel. The agents go silent but Ariel glares back at John. She lets go of me and puts her hands on her hips. I sink back against the desk, my legs shaking too hard to hold me up.

“How could you?” Ariel’s voice is strong ’til the last word when it cracks just the tiniest bit.

John hears it, I can tell by the way his posture softens. “It’s business,” he says. “And you have made it much harder than it should have been.”

“It’s not business, you killed my dad!” Ariel shouts. “That’s about as personal as it gets.”

John’s face is blank. “He deserved it.”

“What about me?” Ariel asks. Her hair is coming loose and tendrils fall over her forehead. “Do I deserve it too?”

John looks away, which kind of surprises me. Or maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know. But it has to mean something to Ariel that he does obviously have some genuine feelings for her.

“And it’s not the first time, is it?” Ariel asks. “You were the one who planned Mexico, weren’t you?”

John sighs. “What does it matter now?”

“I want to know,” Ariel says, impatiently brushing her hair off her face. “You can at least give me that since you killed my dad.”

John rests a hand on the back of the chair he’s standing next to. “Yes, I planned Mexico,” he says. “It was a much simpler operation but there was a snitch at the last minute and the police got there before we could finish.”

“Would you have had me killed then?” Ariel asks, her voice ragged at the edges.

John doesn’t answer.

“You would have had to, right, since I’m the one who’s going to inherit the company?” she asks.

I draw in a breath at this news but John actually squeezes the back of the chair as though he would collapse if he weren’t gripping it.

“How did you know?” he asks. “I’ve had every copy of that will destroyed.”

“And destroyed the lawyer who made it too, right?”

John is clearly taken aback by all Ariel has figured out. The corner of Ariel’s mouth turns up but her face is too cold for it to be a smile.

“My dad made sure I knew,” she tells him.

“He said he wasn’t going to reveal his choice to you until you graduated college,” John says, his cheeks losing their pink.

“I guess you don’t know everything about him,” Ariel says.

John steeples his fingers for a moment. “It doesn’t really make any difference now.”

A thick silence hangs in the room for a moment. It’s the closest he’s come to saying he plans to have Ariel killed and from the way she recoils just slightly, I see that she hears it too. But then she pulls her shoulders back and stands even straighter.

“After Mexico my dad got more security,” she says.

John nods.

“So you had to work harder to come up with a plan,” she prompts.

John loosens his grip on the chair but his face is pale. “Yes, he was suspicious of everyone after that. I wasn’t sure I would get another opportunity, but then he put me in charge of security for the party. I knew it would be my last shot. And a good one with all the extra hostages.”

“So you did it right,” she says bitingly. “Hiring a bunch of sadistic mercenaries who were happy to kill unarmed kids.”

The Assassin shifts, clearly not in love with that description of himself. “Are we done listening to this?”

John starts to speak but Ariel interrupts him. “It was the perfect plan except for one thing.”

This time John looks right at her. “What would that one thing be?”

“There’s proof that you were the one who was in charge of security,” she says. “When the police find that they’ll start a manhunt for you.”

I expect John to be angry but instead he actually smiles. “I find that unlikely. But even if you did have some kind of evidence it will burn when the house burns.”

“It’s not on paper,” Ariel says. “It’s on a phone. And it won’t be in the house when it burns.”

“That’s not possible,” The Assassin says quickly. It’s funny how his voice is different around John Avery, nervous and almost timid. Which is actually pretty scary. “We collected every phone.”

“Except for my father’s,” Ariel says. “That one you never found.”

John turns to The Assassin, his eyes now serpentine, and once again I see the man capable of killing all these people.

“Is this true?” he hisses.

“We were going to tell you,” The Assassin says. “But we figured it just got thrown out with the body.”

Ariel winces at that.

“You figured wrong it seems,” John snarls. He has become something feral.

“I—” The Assassin begins.

“Go find it and bring it to me,” John snaps.

“Okay,” The Assassin says, moving toward the door.

“Good luck,” Ariel singsongs. It’s like poking a caged tiger but there’s nothing he can do besides glare at her on his way out.

“Where is it?” John asks Ariel.

“Like I’m going to tell you,” she scoffs.

“I’m not asking again,” he says, his voice deadly.

Ariel leans forward, her face close to his. “Go to hell.”

John steps back, his face now red, his eyes lit from a flame within. “Kill them immediately.”

The first agent grabs Ariel while the other starts for me. But just then the door to the room flies open. I think it will be The Assassin or other agents ready to shoot us, so it is a complete shock to see that the person in the doorway is Hudson. His hair is sticking up straight like he’s been running his hands through it, his cheeks are pink, and he is panting, as though he has been running. He is also brandishing my bottle of hair spray. He takes stock of things, of John in front of him, the agents frozen in attack position, me and Ariel cowering—and he starts fighting.

He gets John right in the face with the hair spray, which must sting because John goes down with a howl of pain, his hands over his face. Next is the agent after Ariel whom Hudson sprays and then kicks in the knee. The agent staggers backwards, clawing at his eyes. Last is the agent after me who throws a punch that hits Hudson in the jaw. I wince but Hudson doesn’t miss a beat as he sprays him in the eyes, then punches back, hard enough that the guy staggers backwards and trips over the desk, his hands scrubbing at his face, his elbow knocking the bottle out of Hudson’s hands.

“Run!” Hudson shouts, racing for the door.

But standing there in the doorway is The Assassin.

For a moment we all freeze as he pulls out his gun. I see the defeat on Hudson’s face, see Ariel slump. But this is not over yet. I lunge forward, the Swiss Army knife in my hands, my fingers pulling out the blade so that it is sharp and ready. I stab it deep into his chest, the slick sound of slicing flesh and popping tendons nauseating. But I don’t stop until the blade is buried in him.

Blood spurts from the wound and he staggers back, screaming in pain.

Hudson grabs my arm. I grab Ariel and we fly down the hall, toward the stairs. A group of agents at the top of the staircase start toward us but then we hear it, the yelling from downstairs.

Our attack has started.

The scene in the game room is sheer pandemonium. A crowd clusters around the bathroom but just as we get there Aisha flies out and someone slams the door behind her. Ravi is right there with a folding chair that he wedges under the door knob, effectively locking it from the outside. A loud cheer arises from my classmates and I hear pounding on the door.

The agents in the room are up and trying to get their guns but Cassidy’s group is ready, mostly attacking from behind with heavy objects, like bookends, though I see a stiletto heel raised high. I did well choosing the weapons. More agents are coming in but Franz gives a signal to a group of four students who are waiting by the doorways and as soon as the agents walk in they are sprayed in the face, then tackled to the floor in that moment of weakness. Some agents make it through and a group led by Ella is there to meet them.

The room is a cloud of hair products and scuffling sounds and yelling. It’s funny, no one has even noticed I’m here. They’re all too focused on the task at hand. I see Ravi wrestling with an agent who towers over him and they both go down. Ella is backed into a corner by two agents but Lulu comes behind them with a can of shaving cream and her aim is true. The agents are blinded by the cream and Lulu and Ella run. I grin. That was just what I was thinking when I put the shaving cream in the stash of weapons.

Then I hear it, the first shot, followed by screams. In the far corner of the room, near the stage that was set up for Hudson’s concert, an agent has a gun and someone goes down. Instinctively I start over, to see if there’s anything I can do to help but Hudson grabs my arm.

“We need to start clearing the escape route,” he yells to me over the chaos of the room.

He’s right, that’s the most important thing to do right now.

We start for the doorway to the living room, Sera is with us, but in front of us is an agent pulling out his gun. I’m closest so I waste no time rushing over to kick him in the back of the knee, hard. The solidity of his flesh hurts my foot so much I cry out but he’s the one in real pain, going down in a crumple. I wrestle his gun out of his hands, not sure I can actually do anything with it. I could see myself accidently shooting one of my classmates. But better for me to have it than him.

I turn around and come face to face with Cassidy who is staring at me, eyes wide like she’s seeing a ghost. I stiffen, ready for her to yell at me, but instead she just raises an eyebrow muttering something about a weapons source.

“Your makeup is a mess,” she tells me.

I laugh but then more shots ring out across the room, followed by shrieks and someone’s gut-wrenching wail.

“I’ve got that,” Cassidy says, taking the gun out of my hands with a practiced manner. She lifts the gun comfortably. “Looks like all those hours at the shooting range are about to pay off,” she says, closing one eye and taking aim at an agent who has his own gun raised.

“Shoot to maim, not kill,” Hudson says.

“I’m making sure no one can shoot back,” Cassidy snaps as Franz charges an agent with a letter opener a few feet away.

She fires and sure enough the agent, who was hit in the shoulder of his shooting arm, goes down hard.

“Grab his gun!” Cassidy yells to Ravi and Ella who are standing closest to the fallen agent.

“You’re a good shot,” Hudson tells Cassidy.

“I know,” she says, taking aim at another armed agent. “Go clear the escape route already.”

Hudson, Sera, and I head for the door. The air is still thick with hair products but it’s underlined with the smoky salt of gunpowder and the metallic smell I can now identify as blood. An agent runs into the room and Carson, the star linebacker, charges him, a large picture frame held high, which he smashes over the agent’s head. I jump back to avoid being hit by debris.

“Nice one,” I tell him.

He does a double take when he sees me, then grins. “Yeah, I’ve never been big on art.”

I catch up with Hudson and Sera who are at the doorway to the living room, which appears empty. Of course it makes sense that any agents would have come in here by now. The challenge will be getting to the front door.

I can’t help glancing back toward the doorway near the staircase but there is no sign of Nico. I wonder how they are faring upstairs but there’s no time to dwell on it, not now.

“Okay, Hudson and I will clear the way,” I say over the sound of more gunfire. “Sera, make sure none of the agents sneak up behind us and then start getting everyone to follow.”

She nods, wincing at the sound of a nearby bullet.

“Let’s go,” Hudson says.

We head into the living room and he goes straight to the fireplace and grabs a poker for each of us.

“These look like medieval weapons,” I say, liking the heft of mine in my hands. This could really do damage.

More shots come from the living room and we head to the doorway, then look out into the foyer. Behind us I hear people coming out of the living room, following Sera.

“It looks good,” Hudson says, but just then two agents run down the big staircase.

We duck back in, hiding on either side of the wide doorway.

“You ready?” Hudson asks.

Dumb question and I just roll my eyes. I’ve been itching to take some of these people down since the second this whole thing started. I lift my poker and when the first agent comes through I bring it sailing down, right across his belly.