My pulse thunders in my ears and my fingers feel abruptly too cold.
“How far?” I ask.
“Vale is searching the apartment three doors down,” reports Edgar. “Apartment 312. Corey is searching 313, and Carla is with him.”
I swallow. I knew this was coming, but I can’t tamp down my rising fear. “Wait, are all the crew inside apartments right now?”
“Yes,” he says.
I sprint into the entryway, unlock the front door, and pluck Edgar from the doorframe. For a wild moment, I consider grabbing the others and running. But Vale and her crew could emerge at any moment. There’s no guarantee we will escape.
I hurry back into the living room. “Okay,” I say, “Vale and her crew are searching this floor.”
Eames takes two steps toward the front door. “We need to run. Right now.”
“There’s no safe place,” I say. “Not so long as Valecontrols the building. After she’s done searching an apartment, she can just lock it again and move… on…”
My brain snags on a half-formed thought.
After she searches an apartment, she moves on.
I hurry into the kitchen, gazing hard at the farthest wall—the wall that separates apartment 310 from 309. A vent is high up on the wall. Too small for any human. But plenty big for an insect.
I pluck Edgar from my shoulder. “Go to my apartment rental,” I say. “Through that vent. Tell me the moment that Vale and her crew have finished searching it, all right?”
Edgar sounds bewildered but agreeable. “All right. I can’t fly, though.”
“Go as fast as you can on foot.” I reach up on the tips of my toes, placing my fingers against the vent. Edgar’s fuzzy body tickles my fingers as he climbs up my knuckles and into the vent.
“What,” Nonna begins to say, but there’s no time.
“I’ll explain in a moment,” I reply, hurrying out of the kitchen. Eames is tightening his shoelaces while Consul speaks to him. “I’ll find you after,” she is saying, but I cut her off.
“New plan,” I say. “Better plan.”
They all look at me. Consul’s expression is irritated; Eames is wary; Piper looks hopeful.
“Vale and her people are searching from that direction.” I point to my apartment. “Which means they’re going to search 310 before they search this place. So that apartment, my weekend rental place, is going to be empty—and soon.”
“But the moment they finish searching it, they’ll be coming here,” says Piper.
I nod. “We’ll only have a window of a few seconds. In that time, we’ll make the balcony jump again. Then we’ll be safe.”
“We’ll all be trapped on the balcony,” says Consul. “None of the doors open.”
“I—uh,” I say, “might have shattered my sliding glass door. I’m probably going to be paying some repair fees on that rental if we all survive. I sent my spybot into the other apartment. When he gives the go-ahead, we jump. Then we hide.” I meet the eyes of everyone in the room, one by one. “This is our best chance.”
Eames is the first to nod. “Okay,” he says.
Consul shoots him an incredulous look. “You can’t be serious.”
“We don’t have any time,” he snaps. “Any second now, they’ll be here. We can make that jump, we did it before.”
“I can’t.”
For a moment, I don’t realize who has spoken. Then Nonna comes up behind me. She puts one hand on the doorframe as though to steady herself. “I’m not going,” she says. “I can’t jump that far, and I will slow you down.”
I turn to her, ready to protest.
