Chapter 19 - Charge
Debris and fire rained down from above, leaving chunks of the rooftop in the garden and glass shards blowing to our feet.
My hands flew to my ears at the dreadful sound. We cringed back, but it seemed that we were just out of range of the blast. The wreckage didn't touch us.
"Oh my god."
I lowered my hands slowly, gasping for breath.
Where there was once a window looking into Maire's bedroom, there was now a giant, smoking hole that ate half the house. Anything that might have been in there, any evidence, any clue that I might have seen: gone.
"Was there a bomb in the house while you were poking around?" Gabriel uttered, horrified.
The thought terrified me for a moment too, but then I shook my head.
"We heard it ticking before it blew, and I didn't hear anything while I was inside," I whispered. "Whoever tried to bash me over the head planted it the moment I ran out the door."
An inferno was steadily growing. I could feel its thick, smoky heat—a searing warmth that pressed at my skin and tried to crawl into my lungs. The sensations were so overbearing that I didn't hear the police sirens until they were roaring down the street.
"They're here already," Gabriel stated, surprised. "How did they respond so fast?" He looked at his phone. "My call didn't even go through."
The first police car halted to a stop. Frantically, I looked over my shoulder, eyeing the distance from Maire's garden to the tree-line at the end of the street. If I was picturing the correct aerial view of Bottle Island in my head, those forests could lead to the town centre.
"They're not here for the explosion," I said, already moving, dragging Gabriel. "They're here for us. Run."
One of the doors to the police car flew open. A voice on a loudspeaker blared into the night that we were under arrest.
"We're under arrest again?" Gabriel huffed, yanking my sleeve as we hurtled into the trees.
"What did we do this time?" I panted.
We didn't have the energy to complain about anything else after that. We were more focused on not tripping over our own feet.
By now, I had practically gotten used to being smacked in the face by tree branches. Every time I was on a life-or-death sprint through the forests, it was like the low hanging tree limbs suddenly increased tenfold. I would never get this many scrapes if I was calmly walking.
"Stop right now!" a voice boomed behind us. The sirens had faded, but too late did I realise it was because the police cars had gone around, circling by to the other side of the trees.
"Shit," Gabriel muttered, coming to a stop the moment we skidded back onto a dirt road. Police cars were parked in every viable direction. They had trapped us in.
At that point, I was breathing so heavily I had to rest my hands on my knees, gasping for air. We could try bolt again—there were certainly gaps between the cars and another route to the town, but I was so tired. I didn't have the stamina for this.
Agent Tam climbed out of a passenger seat.
"Alright, hands up."
"What happened to custody for our own protection?" I wheezed. "You need handcuffs for that now?"
"That was before we had incriminating evidence handed in to confirm your homicide charges," she shot back. "Hands up."
I complied, because there was really no other option.
"You mind telling us what the evidence is?" Gabriel asked.
Agent Tam pointed at the car. "Get in first."
***
"At least put me in a holding cell," I yelled after Agent Gatti's retreating back. "Come on, really?" I tried to throw my arms up, but my right wrist was handcuffed to a small metal hoop drilled into the middle of the table. "Come on!"
Agent Gatti shut the door, leaving me in the interrogation room.
"Stupid federal agents," I muttered bitterly, then, louder, I yelled, "Your evidence analysis sucks!"
He probably couldn't hear me through the closed door.
The good news was, no one else had been murdered. The bad news was, it seemed like the killer was starting to act on their threat of getting me charged for Maire's murder.
Agent Gatti had pushed me into this room and cuffed me to the table so I didn't make a run for it again, then rehashed all the questions that Officer Louws had already asked me about the night of Maire's murder.
It turned out, the evidence they had received were screenshots of a text exchange, allegedly detailing a plot that Gabriel and I had hatched to kill Maire.
And it had been found on Annabelle's laptop.
Well, perhaps found was not the correct word. No—her laptop had been left on the kitchen counter, when its screen started flashing a white light erratically, emitting a terrible whine from the speakers. Desperate to find the source of the problem, Mr. Martinez had hit a random button on the keyboard to wake up the screen, and the bizarre noise with its flashing lights stopped.
Only to reveal a whole array of images that had already been opened on her desktop: a collection of screenshots showing a group chat where Gabriel and I had tried to convince Annabelle into joining our extravagant murder.
Never mind the fact that the screenshots could have been made by anyone with a subscription to Photoshop, and Annabelle had insisted her laptop had been remotely hacked, but Douglas and Kaydee had already left a written statement with the police detailing their involvement in this case, ruling out most of the evidence already pitted against us.
This new evidence meant nothing, and yet Gabriel and I had been arrested for murder, conspiracy, and kidnapping, kept chained to a table in different rooms until the agents figured out their next step.
With a huff, I sat back into my chair, my arm pulled in front of me uncomfortably. When Dad had to handcuff people during interrogations, he would cuff them to the chair. Sure, that meant they could potentially escape if they didn't mind having a chair attached to them, while I couldn't run out attached to a table, but this position was torture.
The door opened then, and I stiffened, thinking Agent Gatti had returned. I relaxed when it was just Officer Peri, carrying a brown paper bag and a glass of water in her hands.
"Hey, sweetie," she said quietly. "I thought I would bring you some food."
I didn't say anything as she sat down on the other side of the table, opening the bag to bring out a sandwich and some familiar looking pill bottles.
"Grabbed these too," she explained. "We had to stop by your house to search it. Just in case the killer thought they were being funny by hiding your father there."
I raised an eyebrow. "I thought I was being charged as the killer."
Officer Peri sighed deeply, shaking her head. The motion caused bits of her hair to fall loose from her short ponytail, curling around her face limply. "Look, Luca. The federal agents are in charge now. They'll clear you soon, I promise. Just sit tight."
I didn't have time to sit tight. I had twenty-four hours.
"Have you found anything?" I asked quietly, opening the bottles with one hand. I put the pills in my mouth and gulped down all the water in the glass.
"Nothing yet," Officer Peri answered, though I had been expecting it anyway. "We're getting warrants now to start checking residential properties."
Perhaps under normal circumstances, the people of Altswood would have volunteered to have their houses checked. But the situation now was that most people believed Gabriel and I were guilty of something. When the police force came knocking around asking to have a look when the townspeople didn't even know what was wrong, it was only natural that they demanded to see a warrant.
"What about Maire's house?" I asked. I gave my arm another subtle, experimental tug, but the cuff held tight. "Is anything salvageable?"
I doubted that the killer would have blown up an entire house just to scare me. There was something that I wasn't supposed to find in there.
Officer Peri shook her head. "Blackened smithereens."
I pressed my free hand to my mouth, breathing in, then out. "What caused it? I heard ticking."
"It might not have been ticking you heard, but popping," Officer Peri replied. "We didn't find a professional bomb, just remnants of a plastic casing. We're guessing it held a blend of chemicals that eventually reacted explosively."
I hissed through my teeth. Just like Rebekah, this killer had created a bomb. Honestly, how did so many people on Bottle Island have the scientific knowledge for such a feat?
Immediately, my brain screamed, Douglas! He reads textbooks for fun! but then I remembered that Douglas was cleared and he really had no purpose in getting himself further involved in this mess.
"Okay," Officer Peri said, standing. "Eat, Luca. I'm going to go bring Gabriel something too."
Officer Peri left the room, the door clicking after her. I noticed that there was no sound of a lock turning. I supposed they didn't need to lock the door when I was chained to the table.
Grumbling, I dug into the paper bag and found a sandwich, unwrapping it with a twinge of gratefulness. Still, I made sure to keep my face sullen as I chewed, even if there was no one watching me.
It was a matter of principle.
I was finished within five minutes, and then I had nothing to do except sit in silence. I tried calling out a few times, insisting that a holding cell would definitely be more comfortable than this, but no one came.
I supposed if we were to be placed in the cells, it would be an undeniable statement that we were killers, and the agents, despite their insistence on hauling us in, still weren't sure.
I lolled my head back on the chair. I spread my legs long underneath the table, trying to get comfortable.
It wasn't working very well. I was restless and irritated and wasting my time.
The killer had given us twenty-four hours, and every minute I remained in here was one minute I would never get back, one minute I could have used to find another clue outside.
One minute was all it took to end a life. One minute was all it took to save one.
I could hardly keep my twitching limbs still. I wanted to scream until my throat became raw, I wanted to yank at the handcuffs until my veins were turned inside out. There was an impatience gnawing just underneath my skin, a feeling that made me want to tear myself apart, just to have something to do.
The silence, the nothingness, dragged on. I was bored out of my mind. They could have at least left my phone with me, but I guess criminals had to have their belongings confiscated.
At some point, I curled my free arm onto the table and used it as a pillow, resting my eyes. I must have nodded off, because the next thing I knew, I was startling awake with stiff limbs and drool along the side of my face.
"Gross," I muttered, wiping it off. When I ran my fingers along my cheek, I could feel the deep grooves that my sleeve had made.
I sighed. What time was it now? Midnight? 2AM? The room was starting to get colder, and Gabriel's thin jacket wasn't meant to double as a blanket.
I tried to tug the zip higher, but it became caught on the fabric. On instinct, my right hand lifted to help out. My wrist burned as it got yanked back.
"What even is this thing?" I whispered, brushing my free hand against the ring in the middle of the table resentfully. I had never ever seen my dad use it.
My little nap had spirited some energy into my focus. I drew my arm back as far as it would go, and peered underneath the table, where the butt end of what looked like a screw held the ring into the wooden face.
"Huh," I said slowly. If something could be screwed in, it could be screwed out, right?
I maintained a steady crouch, gritted my teeth, and stretched to make contact with the screw. My right arm was screaming in pain from being pushed against the blunt edges of the table, but I could just reach, as long as I held my excruciating position.
I tried to spin the screw with my fingers. It was screwed in far too tight for me to even budge it. I needed a damn screwdriver, but I couldn't conjure tools out of thin air. I would have to make do with something thin, flat, and long.
I patted through my pockets, searching for stray bookmarks or spare change. Empty. I felt around for any jewellery I might have been wearing, but my collar and earholes were all bare.
Damn it, I thought, clutching my neck. Of all days—
My hand stopped, feeling the zip on the jacket. Perfect. It was as thin as a blade.
With the zip in my hand, I stretched towards the screw again, this time needing to get my torso close. My right arm felt like it was about to be torn off, but I craned my neck up and pulled the zip, until I had jammed it right in the small indentation of the screw. It wasn't a perfect fit, but it gave me enough to work with. I clenched my teeth, using all my strength to start twisting. There were a few false starts where the zip slipped right out of the indentation, but finally, I felt the screw jerk loose. From then on, it was easy to twist the rest of its length out with my fingers.
When the screw fell out of the table, it wasn't a short tool like I had expected, but a hollow, pipe-like nail. I dropped it on the floor and crab-walked out from under the table, rubbing my right wrist vigorously to ease the pain. This time, when I yanked my arm, the ring in the table came hurtling out. My handcuff might have still been attached to my wrist, swinging with a small ring and a long piece of metal that had once been screwed into the table, but I was free.
Honestly, how did Altswood not have a rampant crime problem before this year? I thought. Still, I wasn't complaining as I opened the door, peeping my head out warily to survey the main station area. There was only one officer at his desk, typing into his computer, and he had his back to me.
I slipped out of the room.
Praying that the officer wouldn't turn around, I hunched low and crept as silently as possibly towards the back hallway. I didn't see which room they had put Gabriel in, but there were few options. I opened the next closest interrogation room.
At the sound of the door's slightest creak, I watched Gabriel jerk awake, running a hand through his hair to get it out of his face. He blinked at me, uncomprehending.
"Luca—"
I slammed my finger to my mouth, shushing him. The motion violently shook the handcuffs that were still dangling on my wrist, and Gabriel's eyes widened upon seeing them.
What the hell? he mouthed.
He watched in extreme confusion and partial horror as I unzipped my jacket, tore it off, and kneeled in front of him. I shot him an amused look that said, Where is your dirty mind going? then crawled under the table.
Loosening the screw under his table was a more difficult task—it seemed to be jammed in tighter, and even coated over with a layer of paint. I took to stabbing the zip around the edges of the screw a few times to loosen the paint, before using both hands to jam the zip's thin edge into the indentation. At last, it turned, and I wasted no time in twisting it loose. Once the screw dropped to the floor with a plink, I surfaced from underneath the table, then yanked the ring out from the topside as if I was pulling a garden weed.
Gabriel blinked in bewilderment, bringing his freed hand to his face as if he couldn't believe it. The handcuffs clinked at his wrist.
I pressed my finger to my lips again, shushing him as I pulled the jacket back on. With my head, I motioned for him to hurry up.
We slipped back into the hallway, silent as a pair of wraiths. When the lone officer remained unperturbed with his environment, not realising any disruption occurring in the background, I turned to Gabriel and mouthed, Phones?
He pointed at a box on top of a filing cabinet in the main station area. I nodded, and gestured for him to stay there.
Carefully, I tip-toed closer to the filing cabinet, freezing each time the officer so much as twitched his nose. I didn't know why I thought freezing would do anything. It wasn't as if ceasing my movements would make me invisible.
An eternity later with my snail movements, I was close enough to the cabinet to attempt my heist. The cabinet was the same height as I was, so I couldn't quite see into the box that was balanced on top of it. I didn't think there would be a problem though: all I had to do was dip my hand into the box and grab.
But I felt plastic under my fingers. They had put our phones into evidence collection packets.
Shit, that's going to make a sound.
I had no other choice. I silently lifted the entire box off the cabinet, and retreated.
Gabriel was gesticulating furiously at me, demanding to know why I had swiped the box itself. I pointed just as intensely, telling him to get into the boardroom now.
He stuck a thumb at the door, checking if I meant that I wanted us to go into the very room that our parents had been abducted from. I pointed aggressively again.
We slinked into the boardroom.
"Grab the phones," I whispered as soon as I closed the door after us, lifting it slightly so it wouldn't click.
"Aren't we leaving?" he asked, scrambling to get the phones out of the collection packets.
"We are, but the front door makes a loud sound," I explained. "We're climbing out this window."
The irony was not lost on me.
"Where are we going?" Gabriel grimaced. "I imagine they will split manhunt efforts on us now."
"Hopefully not if we can solve this freaking case before they realise we're gone," I muttered. I held my hands together, trying to stop them from shaking vigorously. The adrenaline of my great escape plan was wearing off. "It's time to start talking to people. We need to find that woman at the post office—Crystal Aston."
Beatrice had two sources of potential conflict. Poetry Club, or her academics, and Crystal slotted into both.
There was no point worrying about appearing suspicious with our questioning now. We had the police on our tail already, it couldn't possibly get any worse.
"No," Gabriel immediately argued. "Any of those club members could be the killer, Crystal included."
"Good," I said. "Then our job is done."
"It won't mean much when we're dead." Gabriel's voice nearly rose, but he quickly switched to a low hiss when his eyes darted to the closed door.
"How are we supposed to solve this then?" I asked. "We're not getting anywhere by just rummaging through people's old belongings."
I had him there.
"Besides," I continued, "I just got attacked by someone taller than I am. Crystal is shorter. She's one of the few we can be sure isn't the killer."
With a withering sigh, Gabriel chucked me my phone. I tried to smile smugly, tried to inject humour into my stubbornness, but my throat was too dry to manage. With trembling fingers and a boatload of effort, I managed to pull up my pre-downloaded directory, searching for the house address of Crystal Aston. The time read 1:02AM.
"Okay," I breathed. A bolt of pain hit my chest. I tried to shake it off. "Get the window. We're climb—" I suddenly ran out of breath, needing to take a moment to recover.
Gabriel touched my elbow, concerned. "Luca?"
I shook him off. "I'm fine. I— Geez." I doubled over, clutching the table so I didn't face-plant into the carpet.
"Luca!" Gabriel skidded onto his knees so he could get a good look at my face. I had no doubt all the blood had drained from my complexion. "What's wrong?"
I wheezed in. I tried again, and again, and again. Each time, I could barely fill my lungs.
"Meds," I managed to say. "Officer Peri's desk. Can you... get them?"
Gabriel realised what was happening. He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, looking torn between keeping me company and getting the pills that would stop the breakdown he was currently witnessing.
"Yes, yes, of course," he breathed. "I'll be right back."
He slipped out of the door, leaving it open an inch so the click wouldn't reverberate back into the station. I tried to keep my breathing under control, lest the officer at his desk think there was a stray, panting animal in the boardroom, and turn around to see Gabriel slinking around his co-worker's desk.
Purple spots appeared in my vision. I sat down and pressed the flat of my hands to my eyes. I would rather see nothing than see the swirling, psychedelic mess that was trying to invade my senses.
But I guess this time even closing my eyes wouldn't work.
In vivid detail, the swirls became a rolling pattern, and then they became blobs, and then they became clear, high-definition moving images. I was seeing my nightmare again, the one where I was being shot at by my doppelgänger. This time, I was no longer the victim. I was no longer the one being pinned down, I was no longer the one staring at the barrel of a gun.
I was the one holding it.
"No," I whispered, but my voice wasn't loud enough to be heard. "No, no, please—"
My phantom fingers pulled the trigger again and again, each bang louder than the previous, each bang choking me further from my oxygen supply. I was embedding bullets in my own lifeless body, again and again, until it wasn't myself that was dying. Suddenly, I was seeing Dad instead, who gasped inward at the impact of the bullets. A second later, I was seeing the Mayor, who blinked up in betrayal, before his face morphed into Mrs. Kingston, who only stared at me as if she had expected this to happen.
You're killing them, the hallucination seemed to be saying. You're not working fast enough and you're killing them. You killed them. They're going to die because of you.
I tore my eyes open desperately, inhaling so harshly in my bid to breathe that my throat ached. I knew that every thought running through my brain was only my panic talking, I knew that it was only my anxiety going into overdrive, but knowing didn't help.
I was so light-headed that I didn't register Gabriel returning until he crouched in front of me and our noses collided.
"Should I take you to the hospital instead?" he whispered frantically.
I shook my head. My fists were clenched so tightly that they were completely numb. I forced myself to open them.
"This is... normal... about twice a year," I managed. "Did you—"
Before I could painfully finish my question, Gabriel pushed the pill bottles into my hands.
"I can go get water—"
"Don't... bother," I cut in. I squinted through my funhouse mirror vision, tried to read the labels past the vivid purple streaks that flashed like lightning strikes. I found the one I was looking for, unscrewed the cap in one twist, and knocked back two pills dry.
I exhaled once. Closed my eyes again. This time, I saw only darkness on the other side of my eyelids.
Eventually, my fingers calmed to a moderate trembling, my breath came in and out in an acceptable fashion, and the cold sweat slicked from my head to my toes faded.
Gabriel smoothed his hands along my face. I opened my eyes.
"Okay?" he asked softly.
I nodded, swallowing hard.
"Don't look so concerned," I managed to say, smiling crookedly.
His frown only deepened. "You still don't have any blood in your face," he murmured, massaging my cheekbones to help. "Luca, if you want, I can handle this—"
I shook my head. "We're in this together. Where you go, I go, alright?"
Though he was worried, Gabriel swallowed his protests and nodded. He trusted me enough to believe that I was fine even if I didn't look like it.
Nothing else mattered. I wasn't going to let my hallucination turn into reality.
"Pull me up," I whispered.
Gabriel hauled me upright, letting me lean on him as the blood returned to my head. When I was steady on my feet, he moved to the window, throwing the pane open. Casting a final look back at the closed boardroom door, ensuring that no one had heard us, Gabriel swung a leg out and jumped onto the hard ground outside.
"Come on."
He stretched a hand in to help me. I climbed through the window and landed solidly, the cold air lacing my blood like a dose of ambrosia.
From then on, we ran into the night as fugitives.