“She’s coming here?” I ask.
“She told Vince to bring us here and wait for her to arrive,” my dad says.
“We have to get out,” I say, turning to my mom and dad. “This is a trap.”
Just then there’s a loud pop and a flash of light outside. All of us turn toward the windows twenty feet away, at the back of the warehouse. Even Vince looks. We are all still watching when, from the darkness, come the flames.
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “They’re burning the building down.”
When I look back, Vince has lowered the gun as he stares, transfixed by the yellow and orange flames. My mom is inching slowly away. And Vince doesn’t seem to notice. Soon the gun is resting all the way on the ground. He watches the fire, perplexed but chillingly relieved. He is ready for his end to arrive.
“Come on!” my mom shouts, jerking me up by the arm. My dad and Gideon have already started to run toward the front.
I wait for Vince to lunge forward, to snap to life and come after us. To try to block our way. But he just sits down on my dad’s chair. He sets the gun all the way down, too. Rests his head back and closes his eyes.
BY THE TIME my mom and I make it to the front of the warehouse, my dad is already rattling the door.
“It’s locked!” he shouts. “They locked us in.”
“Come on, we need to find another way out,” my mom says. She’s trying to be calm, but there’s terror in her voice. “Try the windows.”
We race from window to window. None will open. My mom grabs a folding chair and smashes it against the glass, but all it does is splinter.
“Stop, stop. It’s shatterproof,” my dad says as she lifts the chair again. “We need to find another way.”
Gideon presses his hands flat against the far wall. “It’s already hot.”
We race around the room, checking every nook and cranny for some key that might help get us out. It’s only then that I find the book jammed inside that small metal sample box. When I flip through, it looks like it could be Vince’s journal. And tucked at the back, torn-out pages from Cassie’s like those that were sent to Jasper. Sent to Jasper by Rachel, surely. To be pinned now on Vince, along with his journal. Or what may be his journal. I only have a second to flip through it, but it seems possible it was written by someone else—Rachel, maybe—trying to make Vince look especially unstable. More proof that he would do anything to exact vengeance—including killing himself and all of us.
This is the way we are to be erased. Tied up neatly with a bow. Everything terrible that has happened will be explained by Vince and Vince alone—unstable, grief-stricken, fringe-believer Vince.
As my dad yanks at the door again, flames dance up the sides of a front window. And the temperature has definitely begun to rise. I try not to wonder what might kill us first—the smoke, the flames, the building collapsing in.
No. We still have a chance. I feel like someone is out there, not far away. And not just whoever started the fire. Someone who will help us.
And so I begin to bang.
“Help!! Help us!!” I take a breath and pound some more. “We’re locked in here!!” I turn back to my family. “We need to make noise. A lot of noise. I think there is someone out there.”
“Hello?! Hello?!” Gideon steps up next to me, striking even harder against the door with his large closed fist. “We’re in here!”
Soon our parents are beside us, too, all of us knocking and shouting. The flames are too high now to look again toward the window.
But then, finally, there is a sound outside.
“Wait, shh, shh!” I wave for everyone to stop.
And then I hear it again, muffled but unmistakably real. A voice. “Get back from the door!”
“Okay!” my dad shouts back, waving us clear. “We’re away!”
There is some loud banging, the door rattling and shaking as if from blows from a hammer. And then, finally, it pops open. Just like that. There’s a moment of silence. And then disbelief. Then Riel rushing in with a large dumbbell in her hand. Leo and another girl are behind her.
“Come on, come on!” Riel shouts, waving us out. My dad, Mom, and Gideon race ahead and out the door. I hang back when she seems to be looking behind me for something. “Jasper’s not here?”
“No, why?” I ask, and already I know the answer won’t be a good one.
“Shit,” Riel says, still looking around. “He’s here somewhere.” She turns toward the other building. Beyond it, smoke has also begun to rise. “Come on. We need to check the other building. And then we need to get away from here. My grandfather sent somebody to start this fire. If they are any good, they’ll be somewhere nearby making sure they got the job done.”
I turn to Leo and the other girl. “Please, tell my parents I’ll be right behind them?”
Leo scowls. “I’m not going to—”
“Go, Leo, please,” Riel says. “You too, Marly. We need you to make sure no one comes in after us. If we don’t come back out, you need to—”
“I’m not leaving you!” Leo shouts.
“Please,” Riel says, rushing over and putting her hands on his face. “Please, Leo.”
“Okay, okay, go,” Marly says, tugging Leo with her. And I’m not sure whether I should be flattered that Riel has chosen me to come along with her, or if she simply sees me as the most expendable.
OUTSIDE, RIEL AND I take turns using the weight to break off the knob on the second warehouse door. It’s not easy: the weight is heavy, the knob strong. But finally it cracks to the ground.
When we push the door open, smoke billows out. It’s dark inside apart from an eerie glow down at the far end of one hallway, beams of light bending through the smoke like a frozen disco ball. Behind us, in the distance, I can hear my parents screaming my name. We don’t have much time. I can’t have them coming inside after me.
Riel and I drop to our knees, crawling below the smoke, our faces down low. I glance back over my shoulder once to see how far we have gone, but behind us there is only haze.
“There’s something, someone . . . ,” I whisper, not exactly sure how to phrase what I feel—except that we are in even worse danger than I felt before.
“It’s bad,” Riel says. “I know.”
“But Jasper . . .”
“I know. He’s here, too,” she says. “Come on, we don’t have much time.”
We inch farther into the building. “Jasper!” I call out. “Are you in here?”
We listen as we continue forward, occasionally shouting into the darkness as we move along the wall where there seems to be less smoke.
I am just thinking that we are going to have to turn back when I am yanked up suddenly from the ground and to my feet. And then there I am: face-to-face once again with Quentin. My arm is in his one blood-covered hand. In his other, he’s holding a knife. Quentin twists me around and puts the knife to my throat.
“What did you do to Jasper?” I gasp.
“Wylie!” Jasper’s voice. “Let her go!”
He’s alive. We found him alive. I feel so relieved that for a second I forget Quentin and his knife.
“We all need to get out. Now, Quentin!” Riel shouts. “This entire place is on fire!”
Quentin shakes his head. “I need to get out,” he says calmly. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
I watch Riel glance past Quentin. It’s quick, only a split second really. But I can feel it wasn’t casual. Wasn’t an accident. And when Riel and I meet eyes again, she is willing me to pay attention. The weight is still gripped in her hand. I’ll need to be ready for whatever she has in mind.
“Russo!” Riel shouts, looking past Quentin again, as if for someone coming from behind him.
It startles Quentin for a moment. Just long enough for Riel to throw the hand weight at him as he turns to look. “What are you—” A thud as the weight bounces off Quentin and hits the ground.
“Fuck!” he shouts, bending to grab his foot.
And just like that the knife is off my throat. I race forward out of his reach.
“You fucking bitch!” Quentin shouts as he charges at Riel with the knife raised.
But Jasper is faster. He has something in his hands. And he swings it at Quentin’s head. With all the force and precision of the athlete he is.
Quentin stumbles from the blow to his head but stays upright for a moment still. He lifts his hand toward his head but doesn’t get all the way there.
“Uh” is the last sound Quentin makes before he crumples to the ground.
Jasper stands over Quentin’s body, stunned and sickened by what he’s done. He looks down at the pipe still gripped in his hand.
“Jasper, come on!” I tug him toward the door. “It’s okay. We have to get out of here. There could be somebody coming. Let’s go!”
WYLIE
HOURS LATER, WE ARE GATHERED BACK AT OUR HOUSE: MY DAD, MY MOM, Gideon, Marly, Leo, Jasper, and Riel. It is still a ways until dawn. Stunned and silent, we alternate between moving like zombies and startling at every tiny noise. We know, of course, that we aren’t really safe at home. But then we aren’t safe anywhere anymore, and we had no place to go.
My mom and dad have showered, and so has Jasper. He’s now wearing some of my dad’s old sweatpants, which is both comforting and totally weird. Marly and Leo help my mom put out all the snacks we have on the kitchen table—mostly crackers and some stale chips. She then starts pouring a glass of water for each of us.
“Sorry, it’s not much,” my mom says, motioning to the food.
“Is anyone even hungry?” Jasper asks, staring at the table like he might be sick.
We do that a lot: stare. Shell-shocked, that’s probably the word for it. For how you feel when you survive, but you know you probably shouldn’t have. And it’s not like this is a car accident, the danger past and gone. They can’t just leave us out here. Knowing what we know. Which means that we have no choice but to go after them before they come to finish the job.
“We’re lucky whoever started the fire didn’t just shoot all of us or something,” I say though I don’t feel lucky at all.
“That wouldn’t fit with the story they set up,” Riel said. “It would lead to too many questions. This whole fire, all of you killed at once, was supposed to be the answer to all their loose ends. They’ll try again definitely. But not tonight. They’re too careful.”
“We need to call the police,” my mom says.
“Hopefully, they’re already on their way out to the warehouses,” my dad says. “You guys did call them, didn’t you?”
“That doesn’t mean they actually sent anyone,” Gideon says.
“We should call someone else then,” Leo says. “We have to tell somebody about your grandfather, Riel.”
“Agreed. But who?” Riel asks. “Who can we possibly trust?”
“We could call Oshiro’s wife, Elizabeth,” I say, mostly to Gideon. It’s half a question, half an answer. “And she could ask Oshiro. He will know people we can trust.”
Gideon nods and gets up to make the call. “Good idea.”
“Everyone should have something to drink,” my mom says. “And are we sure no one is hurt?”
She looks around at all of us until we all shake our heads: no, we aren’t hurt. She is in full-on mom mode. It’s the way she’s always been when she’s worried about a very big thing. She’ll focus on the small ones, the things she can do something about. I’ve always found it annoying. Until now. Now, it feels like the best quality anyone has ever had.
My mom comes over when she catches me staring at her. “Can we talk for a minute?” she asks. When I nod, she links an arm through mine and guides me out to the living room couch. We haven’t talked yet. About anything.
“I’M SORRY, WYLIE,” she says out in the living room. She’s staring out the window as I sit on the couch. Her arms are crossed. “For ever trusting Rachel. For ever making it so you would trust her. When I wrote that note I gave you in the detention facility, I didn’t know yet that she was involved. After the accident, she had me totally convinced that it would be safer for you if I left. And she’d helped me stay safely out of sight for months. I stayed at her cabin. She said it would help you more if I focused instead on gathering allies, building some team. She even helped me find people to talk to, all of whom I realize now were actually helping her.” She shakes her head, disgusted with herself. “Really, she just wanted to use me to get you to trust her so she could get rid of us all at once with this crazy Vince nonsense as cover.”
“She lied, Mom,” I say. “And she spent months, years maybe, getting good enough at it so that even I would have no idea. That’s why you trusted her. That’s why I trusted her.”
Though I know my story is a little more complicated. That it isn’t about missing out on warning signs. It’s about me, still—even now—not trusting myself enough to believe my own instincts.
“I knew Rachel was a bad person, though,” she says, racked by guilt as she sits down next to me. “That was why I stopped talking to her in the first place.”
“You wanted to believe she changed,” I say. “You wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Emotions aren’t perfect things. Even when you can read them, sometimes it’s still hard to believe. And by the way, people get facts wrong, too. All the time.”
“But I’m supposed to protect you,” she says, her eyes glassy as she searches mine. “That’s my whole job.”
“I’d say you did okay, all things considered.” I motion to my body. “I am alive.”
She smiles and wraps me in a tight hug. And all I feel is love. Simple and pure and deep. Her love. And mine. “Where did you learn to be so generous?”
“From you,” I say, my voice muffled into her hair. “I learned everything from you.”
Jasper appears in the living room then.
“I think I need some air,” he says, gesturing to the door.
I stand. “I’ll come with you.”
“Just be careful out there,” my mom says warily. “Stay close to the house, on the porch.”
And I want for that warning to be so much more ridiculous than it is.
“We will,” I say.
JASPER HAS TOLD me that he’s okay at least a dozen times since we rushed away from the warehouses. But it’s so obvious that he’s anything but. I wait until we’re sitting outside on the steps, staring at the sky above the house across the street. It’s just beginning to brighten in the distance. Sunrise coming. That’s something.
“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you,” I say, because I am pretty sure it’s the feel of that pipe in his hand that’s haunting him. “You did exactly what I needed you to do in there.”
“I thought about it before, though. That I wanted to. And that was before I ‘needed to.’” Jasper keeps his eyes on the horizon. “If killing Quentin was the right thing, why do I feel so bad about it now?”
I shrug. “Because doing the right thing sucks a lot of the time.”
Jasper smiles. “Is that all you got, seriously?”
I smile, too. “Sorry, I’m an Outlier. That doesn’t mean I’m great at pep talks. Maybe you should stop looking for proof of the worst of yourself in everything you do, though. You get to decide what you do with who you are.”
“See, that was much better.” Jasper leans against me.
“Yeah, that’s because my therapist said it first.”
After that, we are quiet for a while.
“This isn’t over, is it?” Jasper asks finally.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I think they will keep coming, unless we shut Russo down.”
“And how will we do that?” he asks.
“Somehow,” I say. “Listen, I am really sorry I wrote that letter. Your mom asked me to. But I shouldn’t have, no matter what she said. I knew it was a risk.”
“If you hadn’t written it, you might be in jail,” he says. “And I’d probably be dead.”
“You d
o know that what I wrote—it’s not the way I feel,” I say, not looking at him on purpose.
“No, I have absolutely no way of knowing how you really feel,” Jasper says, turning to look at me so intently I have no choice but to look back. “I’m not an Outlier, remember? You have to spell it out for me.”
“Okay,” I say. I close my eyes and try to breathe. And I remind myself of what my mom once said: that there are all different ways of being brave. “I think, maybe, I’m starting to fall in love with you.”
When I force my eyes open, Jasper is staring at me, eyebrows raised, a small smile at his lips. “‘Maybe’? ‘Starting to’? A lot of qualifiers, huh?” He exhales then with mock exasperation. “I guess it’ll do, though.” He nods. “Yeah, it’ll definitely do.”
It’s the last thing he says before he starts kissing me.
FROM HIS HOSPITAL bed, Oshiro sends officers who we can trust. Uniformed Newton police who have no interest in anything except doing their jobs: protecting local people from imminent harm. It’s dawn by the time they arrive.
We gather in the living room and try to methodically explain what happened in the warehouses by starting the only place we can: the beginning. We focus first on Vince and Quentin and my dad’s research. But there is just so much to unpack. In the end, Riel is the one who gets to Russo, our final destination. She is the best equipped to explain.
“Senator Russo is definitely the person behind this whole thing,” Riel says. “He’s my grandfather.”
“You mean the guy running for president?” one officer asks. He is round, with kind, puffy eyes and a bald head.
He turns to look at his partner, a woman who has a half-sleeve tattoo and the sharp expression of someone who has not a moment for anyone’s bullshit.
“I knew that guy was an asshole,” she says.
“Um, well,” the round officer says. “For us to be able to do something, you got to have some proof that this senator committed an actual crime. Because ethics laws or whatever, those aren’t exactly our department.”
“We have proof.” I turn to Riel. “Right?”
“We will,” she says. “We will.”