Minutes later, when I felt human again, I rested my head in the shallow of Tim’s shoulder, hearing the quick-paced thumpthumpthump of his heart beneath my cheek. He was warm and solid—maybe the only thing in my life that was. It felt like heaven.
“Listen,” he murmured again, his lips against my hair.
“Mm?” I said, my eyes closed.
“Later tonight there’s going to be an execution,” he said softly. “So everyone will be in the auditorium.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, wondering why he was telling me this. Unless he knew who it was going to be. Maybe me?
“Here,” he whispered, and pressed something into my hand. My fingers closed around it and I looked up at him, startled.
“What’s this?” I asked.
He told me.
“Huh,” I said as ideas started to tumble through my brain. We talked very quietly for another minute, and then he said, “Babe, I gotta take you back.” He gave me an apologetic look. “I’ll see you later.”
He locked me back in our room. I pressed my face hard against the bars so I could watch him walk down the hall. He’d said he’d see me later. Had that been a promise?
82
CASSIE HAD FINALLY FALLEN ASLEEP, curled up on the damp, decaying concrete floor. I let her rest as long as possible, but had to wake her a little after 1:00 in the morning.
“Wha?” she said sleepily.
“It’s time to go,” I whispered into her ear. “We’re going to grab the Kid and start looking for the tunnel.”
She blinked owlishly in the dim light. “Don’t be dumb. That plan is nowhere.”
I dangled a ring of keys over her head, and her eyes widened. “Tim gave them to me. Keys to the crazy house. If we can get out of here, he’s going to steal a truck and get us back to our cell.”
Cassie’s mouth opened in an O of surprise.
“’Course—we still need a master key, and only Strepp has that,” I told her. “We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Cassie was on her feet, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“In a minute the execution alarm is going to sound.” I had no sooner finished saying the words than it did sound, loudly and harshly, a horrible Klaxon of death.
We waited for the barred door to slide open, and as soon as it did, I nipped across the hall and got the Kid.
“Ain’t we supposed to go?” he asked in confusion.
“Not this time,” I said, and drew him back into our cell to wait for the sound of shuffling feet to fade. We were so conditioned to follow the crowd when the alarm rang that not following made us all jumpy and tense, like rats that weren’t being allowed to run the maze.
At last it was silent—our hall was empty.
“Let’s go,” I breathed, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. In truth, I was so tense and keyed up that it took all my concentration to not start babbling at any second. I was quivering with cold and fear—was I leading Cassie and this kid into certain death? Or was I seizing our only chance?
“And the plan is…?” Cassie asked.
“We’ve got the keys to get us through most of the hall doors,” I explained. “Everyone’s in the auditorium. So we’re going to search for this tunnel like our lives depended on it.” I gave a sardonic smile. “Because they do.”
Cassie looked at me. I was pretty sure she was remembering the time I dared her to jump off the rope swing into the river. She’d broken her collarbone. Or the time I’d convinced her to take the long way home so we could watch the last of the geese streaking southward as winter approached. We’d been late for dinner and had gotten our hides tanned by Pa.
If she was smart, she’d back away from me and sit down in our cell. And I wouldn’t blame her.
Instead she gave a glimmer of a smile and nodded. “I’m with you.”