Once I’m as ready as I’m going to be, I sling the bag over my shoulder, take one last look at the room, and leave.
The gate. The faulty latch. The vine. They’re my only hope.
I check the hallway one more time—still empty—and slip downstairs.
The kitchen is quiet. Breakfast isn’t for another hour. The landscapers are outside, but the back garden is massive. If I’m fast, if I’m quiet…
I ease open the servant’s door and step out into the garden, into the cold morning air. The sky is gray, overcast—the kind of dawn that promises rain.
I move quickly across the lawn, my sneakers silent on the dew-wet grass. I hurry past the greenhouse, the servant’s quarters, past the towering stone fountain in the center of the garden.
I’m at the gate. My heart is in my throat as I reach for the handle. The head gardener wasn’t supposed to come yet for his inspection, but anything could’ve happened.
Please. Please let it still be broken.
I grab the handle and pull.
It swings open. The relief that floods through me is so intense that I almost sob.
After slipping through, I shut the gate softly behind me and start running.
My lungs burn, my legs ache, but I don’t stop until I reach the road. The cars whooshing back and forth is a sensory overload compared to the quiet isolation of the mansion.
After what seems like forever, a cab stops and I rush inside, as if Gabriel were right behind me, ready to wrap those big arms around me and pull me screaming back to the mansion.
“1356 Putnam,” I tell the driver, the words sounding like they’re being spoken by someone else.
The taxi drops me off in front of a familiar building in Bushwick, with a gray brick façade and a rusted fire escape.
Home.
I don’t have my keys. I don’t have money to pay the driver either, not on me, at least. I try to tell him that my cash is upstairs, but it’s lost in translation. He curses at me in Urdu before driving off.
I stand on the sidewalk, shivering, realizing I have no idea what to do next. I don’t have my phone, my wallet, or a plan—just the overwhelming worry that I might’ve made a terrible mistake.
Then again, maybe the terrible mistake was trusting Gabriel in the first place.
I don’t know anymore.
All I know is that I’m on the run.
And I can’t stop.
CHAPTER 17
THEA
The fire escape rattles under my weight.
I’m three stories up, clinging to rusted metal, the crappy latch on my bathroom window clear in my mind. Rain begins pattering down, the gray sky turning darker.
It takes a little doing, but I’m soon at my apartment. I look in through the frosted window that leads into the bathroom. I place my hands on the top and push, and?—
It moves.
“Yes!” I nearly shout the word, the rumble of far-off thunder accompanying my excitement.
Raising the window up a bit, I slip my fingers underneath and pull with all my might. It opens further, and soon it’s enough for me to climb through.