He was coming toward them. And still the endless sludge of firefighters half suited up, the radio static, the cop dull and useless standing there. The man couldn’t take them, not if she screamed, not if she fought. There would be too much attention, too many questions, a cop coming to pull them aside and ask awkward questions. But they might lose Lyra and 72. Every minute, she was in danger of losing them.

He was close enough to speak, above the roar and Harliss’s shouting and the way that things hum into sound as they’re collapsing. “It will be easier, and much better, if you come with me,” he was saying. “You’re in a lot of danger. I’m here to help.” Not the words Gemma had been expecting, but she still picked up on the lie, the worst kind—the kind that pretends to be a favor. She’d been hearing them her whole life.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Pete said, stepping in front of Gemma as if he could protect her, a gesture so sweetly useless she wanted to cry.

They were mirrored in his sunglasses, the two of them. She thought of shattering those glasses and the eyes beneath them, too. His face dissolving. Her fists like superhero hands, extending into trunks, pummeling him.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m on your side.” He took a step forward. He reached for Pete. “I’m going to have to insist—”

The gunshot was a clean, sharp crack that cleaved the air in two. Gemma had heard people describe gunshots as cars backfiring, as firecrackers, but she had no doubt what this was, even before she saw Harliss, still in that strange snapshot way, holding the gun, the barrel pointed to the sky. There seemed to be a pause before people were screaming, although she knew there was no pause, really: there was a gun and a shot and the man holding Harliss had dropped to the ground, and the man standing in front of Pete, telling them he was only trying to help, had dropped, too, because of course they couldn’t do anything else.

Harliss fired a second shot. Now dozens of people were screaming. Half the people in the parking lot were lying down, or ducking behind cars. For a split second Gemma met Harliss’s eyes and the message felt physical, like the first inhale after the breath is knocked from your lungs. She understood why he’d asked her to keep Lyra safe until he was out. She understood that he’d waited more than a decade to see his daughter again and would now go back to prison because of the promise a stranger had made to him, because of the sheerest, slightest chance that it might help.

There was no time, only change, only atoms rotating, only Gemma and Pete and Rick Harliss and a love so turned around and imperfect and blind it could only be called faith. Things that existed outside of seconds and minutes and years. Gemma was peaceful now. She was calm. Both men were still on the ground and the cop was running for the staircase with two firefighters behind him—and yet Gemma saw them, suspended, still, held in that moment by a force much larger and more patterned than they were—and the little kid had dropped his lollipop to scream. There were more sirens in the distance.

Then they were down the stairs and through the crowd in the parking lot and almost at the van. They were beyond the swell of bodies, of voices, of people shouting and crying. They were in a universe made infinitely of itself, and yet small enough to hold these moments, these facts—the smell of smoke in the air, the echo of voices, and Pete’s hand, bigger than hers, stronger, right.

Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 15 of Lyra’s story.

SIXTEEN

GEMMA WISHED THEY COULD DITCH the van and trade it for something less conspicuous. She felt like they were driving around in a giant neon sign. But they made it back to Little Waller without seeing the maroon Volvo. As far as Gemma could tell, they hadn’t been followed.

It had been more than an hour and Gemma was terrified that Lyra and 72 might have left, or been taken. They found the replicas huddled in a booth in the back of a restaurant called the Blue Gator, with paper shamrocks strung between the televisions and green vinyl booths and Kiss Me, I’m Irish T-shirts for sale behind the bar. They were in trouble: 72 was scowling at the table, and a waiter was badgering them to put in an order.

“I told you, it’s not up to me.” The waiter had bad dandruff that coated the shoulders of his black T-shirt. “It’s restaurant policy. These booths are for diners, and that means people dining—”

“It’s all right.” Gemma noticed that Lyra’s face transformed when she pushed through the crowd—Lyra actually looked happy. It was amazing how in such a short time, Gemma felt responsible for this skinny little rag doll with her big eyes and terrible past. Brandy-Nicole. “They’re with us, and we’re leaving.”

“You weren’t followed?” Gemma asked them, as soon as they were safely back in the car. Pete got on the highway immediately, although they hadn’t agreed on a destination. Easier to disappear on the big roads, in the big towns.

Lyra shook her head. “We were,” she said. “But not there. Not into that place.”

“A man looked in from the street,” 72 said. “But he didn’t see us.”

Above them, the sky was shedding its blue, revealing an undercoat of improbable violets and pinks. Gemma found herself praying that the night, and the darkness that transformed cars to headlights and absorbed individual features, would come quickly. She didn’t want to ask about Jake—on one level, she didn’t want to know—but it was far too late to pretend, and she owed it to Jake to face up to the truth of what had been done to him. “What happened to Jake?”