Jenna Black - Resistance

Nadia cast a wary eye on the security cameras as she slipped out the door. She had to assume that Lily had disabled them so as not to catch the planned murder on them, but how many of the cameras had she disabled? All of them? Or just the ones that might have caught her doing something incriminating? If any of the cameras were active, Nadia’s escape attempt would end before it truly began.

Closing the door behind her as softly as possible, Nadia cautiously stepped out of the dormitory hall and went for the main staircase. She had to pass through another security door to get there, but Lily’s key card once again did the trick.

The main staircase and the lobby it led to were both dark, only a few dim night-lights offering any illumination at all. That was a good sign, Nadia decided. It meant the staff of the night shift didn’t frequent this area. Nadia suspected they used a service stairway to gain access to the second floor, where the dormitory was located.

Creeping forward, listening for any sign that she was not alone, she headed toward the office, where she could use the phone to call for help. She hated to put anyone else in danger, but escaping the Sanctuary penniless, on foot, and in uniform wouldn’t do her a whole lot of good. She held her breath as she passed a door with a discreet placard declaring it to be the security center, but, though she heard voices, no one leapt out at her.

Like just about everything else in this damn place, the office was locked, with entry allowed by key card only. Nadia put her ear to the door, trying to guess whether anyone was inside. She didn’t hear anything, and the longer she lurked in the lighted hallway, the more likely someone was going to happen along, so she quickly ran her key card through the reader and pushed the door open, canister held out in front of her like a gun.

She needn’t have bothered. The room was dark and empty. She let out a sigh of relief as she closed the door behind her. She leaned her back against it and closed her eyes, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart and take a deep breath. She still had a long, long way to go before she was out of here. There was no time to indulge in relief or search for calm.

Nadia plucked the nearest phone from its cradle, glad that she’d had the foresight to memorize the number for Dante’s secure phone instead of depending on the address book in the phone he’d given her. A quick check of the time showed her that it was past 2:30 A.M., and she hoped and prayed that Dante was a light sleeper and would hear his phone ringing.

Her knees went a little weak when he answered on the second ring, and she had to sit down on the edge of the desk to stay upright.

“Nadia?” he asked, sounding not at all like someone who’d just been woken up at 2:30 in the morning. “Is that you?”

“Yeah,” she said. There was a quaver in her voice, and the hand that held the phone was shaking slightly in delayed reaction. But she was still in dire trouble, so she ordered herself to delay the reaction even longer. It didn’t stop her hands from shaking.

“I’m in trouble,” she said. “I need help.”

“What’s happened?”

“Someone just tried to kill me.” Her voice was shaking more now instead of less. She had to get ahold of herself. “I’m fine, but I have to get out of here before they try again. I didn’t know who else to call.” And she didn’t know what she was hoping Dante could do for her. He was at least a four-hour drive away. It wasn’t like she could afford to wait for him before making her move.

And that was when her mind finally processed the fact that there was noise in the background on Dante’s end of the line, noise that didn’t sound like it belonged in a bedroom.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“About fifteen minutes out from the Sanctuary. Hold on and I’m going to put you on speaker. I’ve got Nate and Ag— Miss Belinski with me.”

Nadia was glad she’d already sat down or she might have collapsed in shock. “What?”

The background noise became louder and tinnier. “We’re coming for you, Nadia,” Nate’s voice said.

It should have been good news. They were only fifteen minutes away instead of four hours, and that greatly increased her chances of escaping. But they wouldn’t be coming for her in the middle of the night unless something gave them reason to fear for her life. The dreadful suspicion she’d been trying to hold off crashed through her mental barriers.

“Has something happened to Gerri?” she asked, willing them to tell her no.

There was a silence in the car, and she imagined them looking at each other, each waiting for someone else to answer. It was Dante who finally did.

“Her car went off the bridge into the East River.”

Pain stabbed through Nadia’s heart. “No,” she moaned, pressing her free hand against her sternum as if that would somehow ease the pain. It didn’t.

“I’m so sorry,” Dante said softly.

Nadia wished he were here with her, wished she could throw herself into his arms and sob until her eyes could produce no more tears. But she didn’t have time to lose herself in grief. Not here, not now.

There was a mother lode of anger beneath the grief. Anger at her parents for not letting her talk to Gerri. Anger at the retreat staff for taking her phone away. Anger at herself for not having told Gerri the truth in the first place. But most of all, anger at the Chairman, who had ordered both her death and Gerri’s. Nadia tapped into that well of fury to hold the grief at bay.

“Are you all right?” Nate asked, though he had to know the answer was no. “It’s not a coincidence that you’re calling right now, is it?”

Nadia remembered she hadn’t been on the speaker yet when she’d told Dante what had happened. She hoped Nate would take the news as calmly as Dante had.

“Don’t get hysterical,” she answered. “I promise you I’m fine, not a scratch on me. But someone just tried to kill me.”

“We don’t have time for you to freak out,” Dante said, and Nadia presumed he was talking to Nate based on the sharpness of his voice.

“I’m not freaking out, and I’m not getting hysterical!” Nate snapped. “I’m just so pissed off I want to punch someone. Maybe it doesn’t bother you that someone just tried to kill Nadia, but it definitely bothers me.”

“Don’t start, guys,” Nadia said, wondering how the two of them had managed to survive a four-hour car ride together. And what had Dante said about Agnes being with them? She’d have asked about it, except she didn’t think they had the time to waste. She’d get them to fill in the many details she was missing when she got out of here.

“We, uh, still haven’t exactly figured out how we’re going to get you out,” Dante said. Nadia was glad he wasn’t rising to Nate’s bait and was keeping focused on the problem at hand.

Nadia chewed on her lip. There was no way she was getting out the front entrance, not with the little guard station they had there. She doubted even the Chairman Heir had the authority to order them to let her go—only her parents or the Chairman himself could do that. The fence was electrified, so there would be no fence-climbing as there had been at Tranquility—even if Nadia thought she had the upper body strength required to get over a fence.

“The watchtowers,” she murmured under her breath, visualizing the retreat’s grounds with the towers set into the fence. The towers themselves wouldn’t be electrified, and Nadia doubted there was more than one guard manning each one.

“Huh?” Dante asked.

“They’re the weak spot,” she explained. “I can get over the fence by jumping from a watchtower.”

“Umm, aren’t there people in those watchtowers?” Nate asked.