Page 68 of If Anything Happens To Me

“Then what?” Hayley asked.

“He’ll come to investigate, and because the cameras are broken, he won’t see us hiding by the door. We can grab him, knock him down, tie him up,” I said. “Whatever it takes to get away, we’ll do it. Then we call the police, get Detective Tyrone to come and arrest him.”

“Detective Tyrone?”

“Yes, she’s in charge of my sister’s case. I wanted to call her as soon as I found Iris in the woods, but Iris wouldn’t let me,” I said.

Hayley nodded. “The boy—Fitch, I still can’t get used to knowing his name—threatened us, right from the minute he took us,” Hayley said. “Told us that if one of us ever got away and told the police, he’d kill the other.”

“Iris took it to heart,” I said. “No matter how much Matt or I begged her . . .”

“Matt?” Hayley asked. “You mean, Fitch’s friend?”

“Yes,” I said, flinching. “I thought he was my friend, too. But never mind, that’s over. How do we disable the cameras?”

“We can’t reach the birds,” Hayley said.

It was true. The attic walls were at least twelve feet high. And we didn’t even know for sure in which birds the cameras were hidden. I glanced at Abigail. She seemed to be asleep again, but was she? Or was she really eavesdropping? Would she tell Fitch what we were planning?

Hayley and I had been standing with our heads close together. If Fitch was watching, he might know we were conspiring, so we stepped apart and went to different parts of the room. I walked around the perimeter of the attic. I studied every inch of the walls again and saw how the old wood was splintered in places, how some of the rusty nails protruded.

My grandmother used to say that if we stepped on a rusty nail, we could get lockjaw. That made me oddly paranoid—seriously, how many nails, rusty or not, are lying around on the ground? But for a long time, I never walked barefoot without looking down at my feet. As I circled the attic, I have to admit, I was a little groggy from the tests, but I imagined Fitch slamming into one of these nails and getting lockjaw.

And that’s not me—I never wish bad things on anyone. It bothered me that I was having such a terrible fantasy, but I told myself, and I knew it was true, that I had to somehow disable Fitch in order for us to escape. I had vowed to Iris that we would free Hayley.

Thinking of Iris made my stomach flip—where was she? Had Fitch finally succeeded in destroying her? This was a monster who buried girls in the dirt. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

But lockjaw—what was it, anyway? It might keep someone from being able to talk, but it wouldn’t exactly take them down enough to keep them from hurting us. So I kept moving, because I wanted to find a weapon to use.

I had to thank my grandmother for giving me the idea that danger could hide in ordinary objects, like a nail hidden in the grass. On my second route around the room, I paused in front of the sibyls. The sisters were lovely—beautiful in their own distinct ways, but with the same sisterly similarity I saw between Iris and Hayley, between me and Eloise.

I studied Athena, Daphne, and Circe. Having met Daphne downstairs, it was easy to tell who she was. In the painting, her hair was dark and neatly curled, instead of flowing long and white the way it was now. I gazed at her peaceful face, her kind eyes, and wished she could tell me what to do, what she knew that might protect us.

And in a way, Daphne did help. Because my gaze went from her face to the window beside her panel, and in the particular way the yellow streetlight was shining through, I saw a small crack. It was in the middle of the glass, shaped like a starburst. I wanted to go closer and examine it, but I was afraid Fitch might be watching.

“What is it?” Hayley asked, picking up on my excitement, walking over to me.

“Don’t look now,” I said. “But I think there’s a tiny crack in the window.”

“I’m listening,” she said.

“Abigail said it’s supposed to be hurricane glass, but if there really is a flaw, the window can be broken,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “But even if we broke it, what would we do? Jump? It’s how many stories down to the ground?”

“Four,” I said.

“So it wouldn’t really help us,” Hayley said.

“It might,” I said. “We could at least signal to someone outside.”

“Right,” Hayley said. “We could wave a sheet until someone on the street noticed.”

I closed my eyes, pretended I was outside. How many times had I passed the Miramar in my life? I could see the sprawling Victorian mansion rising tall on the edge of the harbor. I pictured the old yellow hotel, shabby after being in the salt air and wind for a century and a half, with the white-curlicued gingerbread trim broken off in places, some black shutters hanging by one hinge. And zigzagging its way up the side was that creaky, rusty-looking stairway to the top.

“There’s a fire escape!” I said.

“Seriously?” Hayley asked. She didn’t live around here, so of course the hotel wasn’t emblazoned in her mind the way it was in mine. The Miramar was a shoreline landmark.

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