Shutter (9 page)

After a few minutes, the thumps and footfalls stilled. My gaze drifted to the clock: nine thirty in the morning. Dad usually went to bed by ten, and while he slept light, more than two thousand square feet stretched between our bedrooms. I eyed my bedroom door hinges.
Right
. With any luck, he wouldn’t hear me pound out the pins and remove the door.

Grabbing one of my hunting packs, I tucked a few spare uniforms inside, some pajamas, that sort of thing. Basic gear, like my Maglite, and all the cash I had—fifty bucks and a debit card, which I’d use once to get more cash. On a whim, I added Ethan’s camera, the creased family picture I kept under my pillow, and the keys for the family house at the Presidio. I shook as I packed my bag, jumping when the air conditioning kicked on, or when I heard something crash in the front room.
If Dad comes in and sees …
but I didn’t have time to think about that.

He’d taken the guns from the safe in my closet, but I could con a loaner out of Ryder.

After stowing the pack under my bed, I showered. Not even the water’s scalding heat stripped the soulchain’s chill away, and I tried to ignore the new links coagulating on my stomach. I pulled my long hair into a ponytail, lined my eyes, put a shell of concealer over my bruise, and dressed in fresh hunting blacks.

I left my father’s mess untouched, thinking once he sobered up from his rage, this landscape would shock him. And when he didn’t find me among the wreckage, he’d be completely livid.

At eleven o’clock, I put my ear to the crater Dad punched into my door. The apartment was dead silent—no water running through the pipes, not even a chattering television. I took a paperweight from my desk and the screwdriver Dad had accidentally left under my bathroom sink, the one I never bothered to put back in his toolbox. (I knew it’d come in handy someday, just not
this
way.) Kneeling on the floor, I placed the screwdriver’s head under the first pin. My hands shook a little.

Okay, here goes
.

I tapped the screwdriver with the paperweight once. The
ping
rang out, loud as a detonating bomb. Wincing, I paused and waited to hear Dad’s heavy footsteps, a shout, or the fumble of his keys against my doorknob, but the apartment held its breath.

The first tap pushed the pin an eighth of an inch out of the hinge. I bumped the screwdriver again, harder this time, winning another quarter inch of the pin. I stopped. Listened. And when my father didn’t materialize, I struck the pin until its edge sank into the hinge, until I could pull it free from its mooring.

One down, three to go
.

The second pin came quietly; the third shrieked like a banshee. I wiped my brow with the back of my hand. The fourth and final pin sat six feet up, too high for me to reach. Dragging my desk chair to the door, I stacked a few textbooks on its seat and climbed up to hammer out the pin. When I wriggled it free, a pinch of adrenaline hit my veins.
Easy, girl
. Now wasn’t the time to get sloppy—prying the door out of the jamb wouldn’t be a quiet job, either.

Stepping off the chair, I stuck the flathead screwdriver between the door and the frame and dug. Wood groaned on wood, protesting as I gained ground. The door wrenched free with a bark. I clung to it for ten seconds before expelling another breath. Nothing moved in the hall beyond. I propped the door against my bedroom wall, slipped my pack on my shoulders, and moved out.

Six steps separated my bedroom from my darkroom. I found the door unlocked and the interior pristine, smelling of acrid chemicals and drip-dried paper. My best hunting camera waited where I’d left it on the desk, along with my bag. I clutched the camera to my chest, its worn, pebbly casing a comfort, grateful my father hadn’t thought of my darkroom.

I slung the belt around my hips and clipped my camera beside my bag.
Now for my cell phone
, another item I didn’t want to leave in my father’s possession. If he thought to scroll through my photo albums, he’d find the hundreds of candids I’d taken of Ryder and my cover would be blown. Forever.

I crept out of the hall and into the great room. A shadow filled up my peripheral vision. Nerves jangling, I turned my head and almost jumped—Dad sat on the floor, his back to the window, head down. Sunlight filled the empty vodka bottle in his hand. His shoulders rose and fell evenly.
Sung to sleep by his favorite lullaby
. If he’d consumed even half that bottle in one sitting, he’d sleep off the whole day and give me plenty of time to escape the island.

He really did underestimate me.

The thought made me a little sad.

I snuck back into his office to collect my cell phone from his desk. My pinkie finger brushed up against one of his Colts—the gorgeous matte-black furnished handguns with
Semper Vigilans
inscribed on the slides and the Helsing insignia carved into the grips. I couldn’t use both, but one? Sure. He’d taken mine away, after all; not my fault he hadn’t locked these up, too. I took the gun on the right, ejected the magazine from the one on the left, and stowed the weapon in my pack.

Time to go
.

Dad still sat motionless as the true dead. I checked the alarm in the foyer, but in his rage upon returning home he must’ve forgotten to arm it again. Point for me. Grabbing his Humvee keys off the foyer table, I tapped the elevator call button with my knuckle. Relief wracked me, almost discomfiting, until the elevator’s bright
ding!
hit the room like a gong and shattered my confidence.

Dad shifted and groaned, rubbing his face with his palm. The elevator’s doors opened. I stepped backward into the car. Dad’s head lolled against the window, his eyes slitting.

Please, please be too drunk.
I jammed a shaking thumb into the button for the parking garage. Dad didn’t move as the doors slid shut. The car whirred, floors ticking down to one. I hopped on my cell phone, calling Ryder on speed-dial and begging him to pick up.

My heart tumbled as the line kicked over. “Oi,” Ryder said, his voice crusted with sleep.

“We need to go.” The elevator slowed, and I stepped out into the parking garage, ignoring the glare of the building’s security cameras. Nothing I could do about them now.

“Bloody hell, Micheline,” he said, his bedclothes rustling in the background. “It’s almost noon, you should be sleeping.”

Someone in the background told Ryder to shut up. Probably Jude.

“No time for sleep.” I clicked the key fob for Dad’s Humvee. The vehicle chirped at me. “Dad put me on house arrest. If I don’t get off the island now, we’re as good as dead.”

He cursed, then sighed. “Where should we meet you?”

“At your dorm,” I said, climbing into the Humvee. “Pack a bag, we might not be coming back.”

FRIDAY, 12:31 P.M.

I
RARELY SAW THE
academy campus at noon, with sun-scorched, empty sidewalks and buildings, heat and light ricocheting off everything. The extra sunlight made me squint, even with my sunglasses on.

Daylight was
so
overrated.

As I drove Dad’s Humvee through the quad, headed for the geyser-style fountains in front of the administration building, I didn’t see anyone—students, faculty, or staff—on site. Only the security cameras saw me drive Dad’s Humvee over the fountain embankment and into the pool beyond. Not that Dad wouldn’t know who opened the windows, kicked out the ballistic windshields, then proceeded to park his Humvee under the largest spout. Water beaded on the instruments in the front panel and dash, and his leather seats wouldn’t be the same after eight hours in a chlorinated shower, either.

I stepped out of the Humvee. The pool’s shallow water splashed against my boots. I flipped off the security camera as I shouldered my bag.
Now we’re even, Dad.

It was worth the soggy walk over to the boys’ dorms.

The boys usually snuck me through the emergency exit; Oliver had disabled the alarm years ago. As I waited, I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes, the hours and hours of being awake catching up with me. Images of my father as he lifted his hand to strike were juxtaposed with those of the ghost reaching through its black shroud, dropping teeth to the floor.

My eyes snapped open. On second thought, I’d hold off on that nap a little longer.

Not more than five minutes later, the door snicked open half an inch. I slipped inside, finding Ryder leaning against the frame, dressed in his hunting blacks. His gaze zeroed in on my cheek.

“He
hit
you?” Ryder reached out and rubbed some of the concealer off my skin, which ached. I stepped back, wondering if the pain wore as raw on my face as it did in my chest.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, turning up the stairs. He caught me by the arm and pulled me back, gently. I tugged out of his grip. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Ryder said.

I turned away. “Don’t worry about it—”

“Stop running away from me,” he said, grabbing my arm again. He stripped the duffel off my shoulder and set it down. “How?”

“Backfist. I barely saw it coming.”

“Are you okay?”

I tried to speak. My chin trembled. Ryder opened his mouth, then must’ve thought better of what he meant to say. Instead, he pulled me into his arms and rested his chin on the crown of my head, his breath warm on my hair. My heart’s limp eased into a flutter, the infant wings of something fledgling and oh so dangerous.
I shouldn’t let him comfort me, not like this. If someone sees …

It was one thing to hug one of the boys for an instant—the kind of hug I’d give Dad when PR needed a photo op—but being held? Risky territory, especially with Ryder. My father’s rules kept us imprisoned in adjacent cells; we were able to reach through the bars, but we couldn’t ever be truly, madly, inseparably together.

Right then, I didn’t care. His skin was still shower-hot and warmed me up a few degrees, and he smelled like the eucalyptus-mint soap he used. I closed my eyes and soaked him in.

“Don’t tell anyone”—I whispered the words into Ryder’s shirt—“but sometimes I hate him.”

Ryder blew out a breath. I knew he felt like he owed my father a lot; after all, Dad plucked Ryder out of an abusive home and practically raised him. Dad gave Ryder a future—not just the opportunity to do something more than menial labor, but the chance to excel. And since Ryder probably would never tell Dad how grateful he was, he showed it through his stellar killboard score, perfect grades, and willingness to follow Dad’s every rule and expectation.

So Ryder surprised me when he whispered, “Me too.”

*   *   *

T
HE BOYS’ DORMS WERE
silent as a mausoleum; “lights out” came at ten o’clock sharp. Ryder and I snuck up to the top-floor apartment he shared with Jude, Oliver, and Travis Knight—another boy with a top killboard score who hunted in a two-person crew with his girlfriend, Elena Morales.

Most of the dorm rooms looked like barracks, but not the rooms on the top floor. These apartments were reserved for sons of the old families, however distantly related; the offspring of our officers; or any boy with an aggregate killboard rank of twenty-five or higher. Ryder had dominated the academy killboard for the last eighteen months, with Travis ranking a close second. Jude placed sixth or seventh, generally—he was a dismal student, but he loved putting bullets and knives in bad things. Oliver hunted with us part-time because he assisted his father in the labs, so his rank usually hovered in the thirties. Seeing as the academy had some five hundred students eligible to reap with a crew in four academies nationwide, Oliver wasn’t doing half bad, even hunting three days a week.

As for me, the Helsings’ kills weren’t logged on the killboards—out of fairness to the staff, Dad said. Demoralizing, he said. But if my scores were posted, I’d be vying with Ryder and Travis for the top spot. Exorcisms counted, too, which gave me an edge.

We found the other boys in the kitchen. Oliver looked over an immaculately packed duffel and counted shirts under his breath. Jude dug around in the fridge and surfaced with one of those energy drinks he liked that tasted like barfed-up Skittles mixed with a little carbonation.

When Jude looked at me, I mean
really
looked at me, he said, “
Shee-yit
, Princess. What happened to your face? Wait, lemme guess—you fell down the stairs?”

“Keep it down, will you?” I said, glancing at the hall and the bedrooms beyond.

“Travis is at Elena’s,” Jude replied, tossing me the energy drink. The manufacturer probably spent more on a designer can than on its contents, but I needed the caffeine.

“Now?” I asked, glancing at my watch. “It’s way past curfew.”

“
Bow-chicka-wow-wow
,” Jude said. I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to comment on anyone’s love life, Jude,” Oliver said.

“Only the lack thereof,” Jude drawled, taking another can from the fridge.

“Just because I don’t sleep with everything that moves does not constitute a lack,” Oliver said, zipping up his duffel.

“I wasn’t talking about you, Einstein,” Jude said. “I was talking about the two frustrated little pop tarts by the door—”

Ryder must’ve had some look on his face—Jude grinned, dropped his drink, and hurdled the counter bar, Ryder half a second behind him. They vanished into the hall, followed by a scuffle and a hard thump as someone got slammed against a wall. The pained grunt sounded like Jude’s. I doubted any of us would last long in unarmed combat against Ryder; he was too agile, too strong, a kinetic genius who read shifts in an opponent’s weight, eyes, and feints better than anyone I knew. When it came down to the wire, fighting was just physics and Ryder knew all the equations by heart.

Fierce whispers snuck into the kitchen, but I only made out Jude’s barking laugh and his declaration of “that old man can’t stop you from—
oof
.”

“They’re subtle,” I said, thinking I didn’t like allusions to the relationship between Ryder and me being anything more than friendly, because it wasn’t. Much
more
than friendly, I mean.