Page 52 of Five Survive

“You really want to make Reyna and Red do it?” Oliver replied. “Besides, you’re the actor here, aren’t you?”

Simon shrugged.

“Act like it, then.”

Oliver looked over his shoulder at Arthur, checking to see if he had any complaints. Arthur nodded his head, just once, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He would do it.

“Right, okay, Simon, you’re there by the closet, Arthur by the sofa. Take the handle, Simon, there we go, let’s practice this a couple of times. So Arthur, I think you’ll have to open the door, push it hard so it opens the whole way. And then once it’s done, Simon you’ll have to close it.”

Simon coughed. “How am I going to close the door without walking down the steps right into his line of sight?”

Oliver faltered, a good point there.

“Rope,” Red said quietly, a stupid suggestion really because they didn’t have any.

“We can make one out of clothes,” Maddy added, and now it made sense.

“There’s some sweatshirts in the top of my bag,” Arthur said. “You can use those. On my bunk.”

“Okay,” Red said, Maddy giving her thego-aheadeyes. She walked around the mirror contraption, past the kitchen to the bunks. She stepped one foot up on the bottom bunk to reach Arthur’s bag, sitting there on the empty plastic frame of his bed.

“Right,” Oliver was saying behind her. “Let’s reset the mirror into its first position here and run it a couple of times so you know what you’re doing.”

Red unzipped the bag, spreading the two canvas sides. Arthur had folded his clothes, not quite as neat as Maddy, and not quite as strict.

“So the door opens,” Oliver continued. “We leave it a few seconds on Simon. Arthur, I think you can hold the mirror on your own now, so Simon can step into view. Simon, make it look like you’re walking down the steps or something, don’t just stand there.”

“Walking, walking,” Simon replied angrily, the sound of his sneakers stomping on the floor.

There were a few baseball shirts at the top of one of Arthur’s piles, more blues, more grays, one dark red. Red pulled out three of them, studied the lengths across the sleeves, and then grabbed one more to be sure.

She stepped down, the shirts bundled in her arms. They smelled clean, and yet somehow they still smelled like him. The same as the hoodie he’d let her borrow after New Year’s Eve when he dropped her home. She’d slept in it that night, under her coat, and in the morning it only smelled like her. Arthur had never asked for it back. Maybe he was used to losing things too.

Red walked over to the dining table, Maddy joining her there, picking up the first shirt.

“Now, Arthur, kick the door across. About eight inches, I think. Whoa, stop, that’s it.”

Red picked up two of Arthur’s shirts by their sleeves, knotting them together at the ends and pulling them tight.

“Arthur, you pull the handle back, Simon, grab yours, pull it forward. Yes. Now, Arthur, get back in position, Simon can hold the mirror now.”

Maddy took Red’s shirts, tying them to the two of hers and stretching the jumble out to its full width. “Rope,” she said, a pinch at the corners of her eyes, the face she made when she said sorry. Not about the rope, Red knew, about the mirror plan.

“It’s fine,” Red told her. “I don’t care.”

“How did it look, Reyna?” Oliver asked.

Red looked up to see Reyna shooting a thumbs-up from the front door.

“You done with the rope?” Oliver’s eyes were on them.

Maddy jumped up with it, hurrying over to tie it to the metal handle on the inside of the front door. Double knot. Then passing the other end to Simon, who was shaking his head for some reason.

“Okay, let’s get this over with. We need to leave the lights on this time, so the sniper can see the reflection. Red, you take the window behind the sofa, this corner, point your phone in a diagonal toward the back of the RV.”

Red followed the order, phone ready in her hand, resting one knee on the sofa, just a few inches behind Arthur.

“Maddy, take the same window, the other end, but point your phone straight forward.”

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