EVENT SUMMARY & YOUR CHOICE:
At the end of Chapter 51, Travis told Maya that her place at St. Jude had been arranged by the old man, Augustin Vale, that the strangers who followed her were his own men sent to protect her, and that Vale's doctor had secretly tested her tissue for a perfect heart match. He asked her to stay and help him bring his son home.
You chose [BRANCH 2]: Don't trust him, and secretly slip away in the night.
Maya sat very still.
"Thank you for telling me," she said. Her voice was perfectly steady. "I need to think."
"Of course." Travis looked as if he had been waiting for a verdict. "Take all the time you need. There's a room at the end of the east wing. The key is on the inside of the door."
"Thank you."
"Maya." He half rose. "I know how it sounds. I know how it all sounds. If I were you, I wouldn't believe a word."
"I believe that you believe it," she said, and was surprised by how gentle she sounded.
He closed his eyes briefly, as though she had hit him.
She went up the stairs alone.
…
She lay on top of the bed in her clothes and stared at the ceiling.
A man with a file thick enough to hang himself.
A man who watched me for two years.
A man who says the old man is a monster, and the old man says he is.
She had spent twenty-three years learning one rule: when two powerful men tell you the other one is the villain, run. Neither was her friend. Both had wanted something from her since before she knew their names. Each had a gentle voice and a locked room. She had walked out of one house a week ago and into another, and now she lay in a soft bed in a castle with a key on the inside of the door, and what was the difference?
The key is on the inside.
He says.
She sat up. She listened.
The great house was silent. No footsteps. No voices. Somewhere below, a clock ticked.
She looked at the window. It was a long, narrow casement, with a stone sill. It gave onto the back lawn. Beyond the lawn was a wall, and beyond the wall, the black line of the pines.
I could go.
Tonight.
Before I'm trapped again.
And the voice in the back of her mind that had been whispering all evening, small and cold and quite reasonable, said: You can't trust anyone. You know that. You have always known that.
Mark is the only one who asked nothing of you.
And you left him.
Her eyes stung.
I'll find another way, she told herself. I'll go to the police. I'll go to Chloe. I'll go to Principal Evans. There's a way. There's always a way that doesn't involve walking into the arms of a man with a gun.
She got up, put on her coat, and eased the window open.
…
The night was cold and clear. A half moon rode above the pines, and the garden lay silver and black beneath it. The grass was wet. A late bird called from somewhere in the orchard.
She climbed out over the sill, hung by her fingers, and dropped.
Her shoes landed in soft earth. She crouched, listening. Nothing moved. Somewhere in the house a door closed, softly, and she held her breath for a long moment.
Then she ran.
She ran across the lawn, bent double, and over the low wall at the bottom, where the stones had crumbled, and into the trees. Branches whipped her face. Her shoes slipped in the mud. She did not look back, and she did not stop until the lights of the castle had shrunk to a faint yellow glow behind her, and she could hear nothing but her own ragged breath and the thud of her heart.
I'm free.
I'm free.
She laughed, shakily, and leaned against a tree.
It took her two hours to reach the road.
…
The bus did not come until five in the morning. She stood alone at the lonely crossroads in the grey light, hugging herself, watching the empty lane. She had no phone: she had left it on the bed, in case it carried a trace. She had forty dollars in her wallet. She had a folded child's drawing and a letter she had not dared to open.
When the bus finally pulled in, hissing, she climbed aboard like a sleepwalker and sat in the back with her forehead pressed to the cold glass.
By seven she was in the city.
By eight she was at her own door.
The flat was exactly as she had left it. The mug on the sink. The cactus on the sill. The bed she had not slept in for a week. She shut the door and locked it, and slid down the wood, and sat on the floor with her knees drawn up, and for the first time since Friday, she let herself cry.
She did not hear the car pull up in the street below.
She did not hear the soft steps on the stair.
She did not notice that, round her collar, at the base of her skull, a small black disc had begun, very faintly, to pulse.
…
The knock came at half past nine.
Three polite raps.
She looked up, with her cheeks wet.
"Miss Maya?" The voice on the other side was cultured, quiet, a little sorrowful. "It is Dr. Hale. I beg your pardon for the hour. I have been asked to see that you are well."
Her blood froze.
"I'm fine," she called. "Thank you. Please go."
"Mr. Vale was most concerned. You left so suddenly." A pause. "He is not angry. He wishes only to be certain that you are safe. I shall not stay a moment."
Don't open it.
Don't—
She stood up, soundlessly, and crossed to the window. The fire escape was just outside. If she was quick...
A key turned in the lock.
She spun round. The door swung back. Dr. Hale stood on the threshold in his grey raincoat, with a leather satchel, and behind him, filling the corridor, two big men in dark coats.
"Forgive me," said Dr. Hale, and his voice was truly, awfully sad. "I am afraid we have a spare."
"The landlord—"
"Is a friend of Mr. Vale's." The doctor stepped inside. "You should not have gone, Miss Maya. It was a very foolish thing. A child's thing."
She backed away. Her back hit the wall.
"I'll scream."
"No one will hear." He opened the satchel. In it lay a small glass vial and a syringe, laid out neatly on a cloth. "It will be quick. You will feel a little sleepy. That is all."
"Please."
"I am so sorry," said Hale.
She struck out. She caught one man across the face with her bag and kicked at the other, and screamed, one high, ragged cry, before a big hand clamped over her mouth. She bit it. He cursed. Another arm locked round her waist, lifting her off her feet.
"Hold her still."
"I'm trying—"
She felt the needle go in at the side of her neck, a small cold sting.
No. No. NO—
The room began to tilt.
Travis, she thought, with a lurch of terrible clarity. Travis, he told me. He told me, and I...
The walls ran like watercolor. The floor came up to meet her.
Somewhere far above, a voice said, Gently. She must not be bruised.
Then the dark came, soft and total, and swallowed it all.
