Fanny chose that exact moment to holler, “Five minutes!”
But even her forceful countdown couldn’t snuff out the elation bubbling up my stomach and through my chest. It was like I was filled to the brim with fizzy champagne.
Finally with a moment of privacy to myself, I grinned my happiest too. I pressed a pillow over my face, kicked my legs against the mattress, and squealed as if I were still starry-eyed and naïve enough to believe love was a force so great it could overcome absolutely anything and everything.
I squealed once more, then tossed aside the pillow to scoot out of bed. No way was I letting Fanny drag me anywhere wearing what little I was.
Love was a powerful force, of course it was. Love waseverything. My love, not just for Griffin, but for all my friends, was sufficient to move the proverbial mountain. No doubt about that, none at all.
But love also only made the losses that much more painful. Unbearable. Devastating.
Hell if that motivation didn’t give me every reason I needed to fight and keep on fighting—no matter what or whom we faced.
Death might be staring us all in the face right now, but we’d never had more reason to live.
12
Unarmed but Extremely Dangerous
You’re late,” Fanny snapped at us the moment we stalked into the lobby of the admin building, where she’d obviously been pacing while waiting for us.
Gone was the “cool, fun aunt” she’d claimed to be just the day before. Pursing her lips, she scanned us with unabashed judgment. Apparently we were found wanting, though we’d had no choice but to wear the clothes they’d picked out for us. Most of them I might have chosen myself. It was eerie, realizing how closely they must have observed us to know even the insignificant details, like what shade of eyeliner and what brand of tampons I preferred. Had they rifled through our personal stuff? Probably. It’s not like there were lines they weren’t willing to cross. They’d made that much crystal freaking clear.
“We can’t actually be late,” Brady objected. “We’re only, like, a couple minutes behind you.”
Fanny narrowed her eyes at him before spinning on the sole of her Birks and powerwalking away, calling over her shoulder, “We talk while we walk. Follow me.”
“Ordering us around like we’re toddlers,” Layla grumbled under her breath, but when the rest of us trailed after Fanny, so did she.
We passed several large yet elegantly understated desks, all unmanned, before Fanny jabbed the button to call the elevator.
“I only agreed to let you take your own car instead of riding in the buggy with me,” she said, “because I thought you’d be coming straight here.”
As one unit, we bristled. But since this was at least a little bit about Bonnie, Brady spoke first.
“First off, we don’t need your permission or anyone else’s to driveourcars. And second, we literally only drove to the end of the road and then came straight here. So back off already, will ya?”
The elevator panel indicated the elevator was nearly at our floor.
“I know exactly what you did,” Fanny said as she inched toward the still closed doors, as if seconds really did matter. “You drove to the gate to see if you’d be able to drive on out of here.”
It was exactly what we’d done. We’d all piled into Bonnie, the only one of our cars that was currently operational, and driven to the exit to see what kind of security measures awaited us there.
Though much of the campus was currently empty, the gatehouse hadn’t been. And the guard inside had seemed aware we were heading his way. He’d been standing with a phone to his ear, most likely reporting our every move. The boom gate had remained down, but then we hadn’t pulled up beside him to ask him to raise it. We had, however, studied him as closely as he had us. He was no regular rent-a-cop guard. He wore tactical gear and was armed to the teeth.
The elevator doors whooshed open and Fanny all but jumped in, waving to hurry us along even though not a single one of us was particularly slow. We were all fully recovered from our injuries, even me. The bullet holes across my chest had shrunk. The scars now suggested I’d been shot with nothing more significant than a BB gun.
“Well,” Layla told Fanny as the doors shut, “can you blame us? We were gunned down atschool, taken out of there in secret. We come to in private hospital rooms and then we’re transported to a secret campus. You don’t think we’ve got questions? That we’re entitled to have them?Fuck, to get some answers?”
Fanny hiked the omnipresent tablet she always carried farther up under her arm. She should wear some sort of carrier strapped to her chest if it was so freaking vital to her existence.
“Magnum will answer all your questions. He already told you he would.”
I snorted. “And we’re supposed to trust his word? Him, the man who ordered us allkilled?Fanny, you’ve got some major Magnum worship going on, we can all see that, but you can’t be this dense.”
She bristled and whirled on me as the doors were about to open behind her. “You’re a bunch of children who don’t understand the gift you’ve been given. You’re too inexperienced to understand the long-reaching impact of your immortality. With Magnum’s guidance, you’ll change the world.The world!”
She stalked out, emerging into an unfamiliar, ample hallway. My anger simmered beneath my skin such that I almost didn’t follow her out. When my friends similarly hesitated, I knew she’d rubbed them the wrong way too.
