“You sent her in there, alone,” I accused.
“I could hardly go with her,” she pointed out.
“She’s taking all the risk, while, what, you just hide out here and wait?” I asked, outraged.
Ford regarded me with a frown, then her mouth curved into a sneer. “She didn’t tell you about this. Good for her. For that, at least, I can respect her. You are not worthy. I am relieved that she’s finally seen the evidence for herself.”
Leave it to Ford not to mince any words. And I hated how close to the truth she was, whether she realized it or not. And damn it, she probably did.
I gritted my teeth. “Look, it was my fault she left, and she would have told me the plan, but—”
Apparently bored already, Ford turned away from me, heading toward the handicapped stall she’d emerged from. I tensed, unwilling to trust her out of my sight.
When I ventured forward and peeked around the edge of the metal wall, she was standing on the toilet, her hand raised in front of the air vent. The screws were slowly removing themselves from each corner of the vent cover.
Then I noticed a familiar scarf, hanging from wheelchair-assistance bar by the toilet. Ariane’s scarf. The one she’d purchased as part of her uniform here. It had been torn in half and twisted into two loops and tied to the bar, like restraints.
With a chill, I recalled the red and abraded skin around Ford’s wrists. Ariane had bound Ford to keep her here, and now Ford was free. A knot of dread developed in my stomach.
The vent cover flew over my head, narrowly missing me, and I ducked reflexively.
“What the hell…” I stopped, the words drying up in my throat, as Ford hauled a very familiar duffel bag from its hiding place in the air vent. Ariane’s emergency supplies, everything she owned in the world. Her money, her memories of her father, her identity.
Ford should not have that. Ford could not be allowed to have that.
Under the guidance of Ford’s power, it landed lightly on the floor, just a few feet away from me.
Acting on instinct rather than reason, I lunged for the duffel.
“No,” Ford said casually, shoving me away with her mind, which, coincidentally, felt pretty much like being punched in the gut with a giant fist.
I doubled over instantly, choking on my own air and the urge to vomit.
“You…sent her in…and you’re leaving,” I croaked, when I could manage it. Which meant Ariane would be stuck playing Ford forever, or until Laughlin figured it out. I knew her. She wouldn’t be willing to abandon Carter and Nixon to their fates.
This was not exactly the trap I’d feared, but only because I’d been too stupid to see it. I’d been so worried about Ford lying to win the competition or luring Ariane to her side, to them, away from me, I’d failed to see that there was another possibility.
That Ford was a self-involved and deranged sociopath who cared only about herself even at the expense of those she claimed to care for.
Ford hopped off the toilet and scooped up the bag as I coughed and wheezed, trying to catch my breath.
“It is not, I suppose, your fault that you are so shortsighted and dim,” she said, as if attempting to be generous but not quite finding it within herself. “But my sister”—her tongue curled around the word, imbuing it with a bitterness that I could almost taste—“should know—”
She paused, her attention turning inward, her head tilting to one side as if she were hearing something I could not. “No, no,” she muttered.
Seconds later, footsteps sounded in the hall outside the door. “I heard shouting,” a confused male voice said nearby. “It was just a few minutes ago.” An adult definitely. A teacher or staff person, probably.
If I yell for help…The thought flickered like lightning, there and gone almost instantly, but it was enough.
Ford glared at me and the weight of her power slammed down over my body, like being encased in a wet concrete cast, only one that poured down my throat into my lungs and through my skin into my veins. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. Sweat broke out at the back of my neck as I struggled to pull in air even though none of my muscles would cooperate.
Shadows moved outside the frosted glass window and a rustling sound followed. Someone examining the sign on the door. “Do you know anything about this?” a woman asked, a frown in her voice.
“No,” the guy said. The doorknob rattled. “It’s locked.”
“I don’t have a key for this section,” the woman said with a sigh. “You know how Betty is. She who has the most keys wins.” She gave a derisive snort.
“Jamie’s still here. We can borrow his keys,” the guy said, sounding worried. “Just check it out to be sure.”
White sparkles floated across my darkening field of vision. If they didn’t leave soon, I was going to pass out or die. I suspected that Ford would have preferred the latter, even if that would give her the added chore of disposing of a body. I doubted it was anything she’d find too difficult, if not something in which she was already well versed.
The woman sighed again, but her response was unintelligible as they walked away, their steps growing fainter.
My knees gave, and Ford, sensing the change, allowed me to fall but did not release me. She knelt down next to me, rummaging in Ariane’s bag until she pulled something free. My phone. The old one from Wingate.
“I do hope you said good-bye,” she said conversationally, as she snapped the battery into place. “I understand that provides closure for your kind. You don’t understand this now, but let me assure you that, no matter what her fate, she is better off without you. For whatever few years we have left, anyway.”
Few years? What? I wanted to ask, but that would have required the ability to breathe. And right now the struggle to get oxygen was taking nearly all of my attention.
She slung the bag over her arm, tucked the phone up inside her opposite sleeve, and exited the stall with a sharp turn toward the door, her skirt flipping after her.
The click of the door closing sounded loud in the silence, but that was nothing compared to the moment when Ford’s grip on me slacked. I sucked in a huge breath, sounding like a drowning man, and promptly coughed all the air out again.
My vision throbbed in time with my head, and fireworks went off in the blackness behind my eyelids.
Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. That was all I could think. That and: Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
As soon as I could, I hauled myself up to my feet and lurched after her, swaying sideways drunkenly as dizziness swirled over me.
I managed to get the door open only to run smack into someone. A man with round glasses wearing a sweater-vest.
He stumbled back and threw up his hands to protect himself or in anticipation of me falling. I wasn’t sure. “What’s going on here?”
It was the same voice I’d heard before outside the door. The teacher who’d heard shouting and wanted to check the bathroom.
“I was…” My brain stuttered to a halt before a spark lit up in a distant region and connected two pieces of information. “I thought I heard shouting. I was going for help.” I sounded ridiculously hoarse, and my eyes were watering like I’d inhaled a noseful of pepper.
He squinted at me suspiciously, a thick ring of keys still in his hand despite our collision. “How did you get in?”
On firmer ground now but fighting the urge to collapse, I shook my head and tried to feign confusion. “It was unlocked.”
“Is there anyone else in there?” he demanded.