Out of This World

Chapter 21

Kel also shoved back hard, and the resounding crash and glass splintering made the floor between us shudder.

Still on my butt, I covered my face with my arms, but before I could even draw a breath, Kel was there, hauling me to my feet, running his hands over my body. “You okay?” he demanded.

I didn’t want to let go of him, ever, but he forced me to back up so he could continue to check me out. I looked up at the gaping hole in the ceiling where the heavy light fixture had once hung, and shuddered. “That was close.”

His hands tipped up my chin. “You’re okay.”

“Define okay.”

“You. Just the way you are.”

How was it he always knew what to say? God, the things I felt for him…

“Come on.” He pulled me to the window.

I looked down, and felt myself pale. “This way?”

“Yeah.” Kel ran his fingers over the lock.

“Because that’s four flights and at least forty feet down, you know. I mean, look how hard the ground seems.”

Kel broke through the paint and the lock in one swift motion, and raised the window. “Out.”

I looked at him, needing to get something said before I fell to my grisly death. “Kel? I think I’m falling for you.”

His eyes went wide with shock for one moment, before he pulled it together again.

He didn’t believe me.

“We have got to go,” he said.

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“Yes.” He gave me a smile, profound in its sadness. “Don’t worry. I understand.”

“You…understand.”

“It’s all the craziness, the fear. The Superman heroics. It’s okay…but thank you.”

“Thank you?” This was not quite the reaction I’d expected. “Thank you?”

“Yes, thank you. Sincerely.”

I stared at him. “Sincerely.”

“Yes, sincerely, damn it. Look, I’m aware that you have no idea how much my heart just stuttered to hear your feelings. But we’re going to get out of here, damn it. So no fucking good-byes.”

“No, you don’t understand-”

“We are getting out of here,” he repeated. “I promised you, remember?”

“I do. But I really could fall for you.”

He looked at me, his eyes full of things that took my breath. “Fall for me.”

“Yeah.” Give him the rest. “Kel, I l-” But damn if that elusive word wouldn’t slip off my tongue. “Like you.” Like? What, was I in middle school? I felt like an idiot.

Kel just sighed. “Can we not do this now?”

“Damn it, I want a reaction.”

“Okay. You like me. Great. I like you, too. Only here’s my problem, Rach. When we get out of here, I’ll go back to being just the reliable, stable guy next door. Your best friend’s brother, who you once hooked up with on some crazy weekend in Alaska.”

“Three times.”

“What?”

“We hooked up three times.”

“My point is,” he said through his teeth, “I’m not ever going to be that adventurous badass guy you always go for, just my own blend of sure-and-steady Kel. The Kel you like.”

“There’s nothing wrong with sure and steady.”

“No, but we both know that’s not what floats your boat.”

“Okay, so I’ve gone for some real winners before. We both know that. But people can change what they want, Kel.”

He just looked at me. “You’re changing?”

“Yes.” Maybe the thought of going back to Los Angeles and my dating scene made my gut tighten. I didn’t want my usual dating scene. I didn’t want any dating scene.

I wanted Kel.

I knew he had no reason to believe that I could feel this way for him. And actually, that hurt more than the bolt of lightning had the other day, but it was my own fault. I couldn’t even say the L-word.

“Out the window.”

I looked down. “It’s far.”

“There’s a drainpipe. We can shimmy down that.”

There were so many things wrong with that statement, beginning with “drainpipe” and ending with “shimmy,” and I gulped.

“It’s not so bad when you consider the alternative.” He guided my leg over the ledge. “How’s your head?”

I clung to the ledge. “If I say bad-really, really, really bad-do we still have to do this?”

“Yes.”

Oh God. There were a few bushes to break our fall.

And our necks.

Because I was staring at them with dread, I could see through them, to the hard, hard ground. To the bugs burrowing in that ground. “Kel-”

But my sensitive, laid-back, easygoing Kellan just shoved me the rest of the way out the window.

I clung to what felt like a very, very small window ledge with my toes, my fingers refusing to let go of Kellan.

He merely pried my fingers from his, reached through the window and guided my grip to the drainpipe. Then he looked into my eyes and softened slightly. “Hold on tight.”

“You have any better advice than that?”

“Yes. Don’t look at the ground.”

Right. Not looking at the ground. I began to inch down, my gaze locked on the sky, which wasn’t a bad view really as Kellan climbed out after me.

“Rach?”

“Yeah?”

“Faster.”

“Oh. Right.” Hand over hand, foot over foot. After a minute, I was level with the third-floor window, one of the staff bedrooms, which I really hoped was empty versus being filled with pirates holding guns. Then I realized my eyes were closed, and I forced them to open, so that I could peek inside-

“Hey,” Axel said, sticking his head out the window, looking unusually tense, his shoulders blocking my view of the room behind him. He wore a big, nasty-looking gun strapped over his chest. “Where’s Marilee?”

I nearly fell. “Jesus.”

“Nope, just me.” He didn’t flash his usual stoner smile. In fact, he looked intense, reminding me what I’d read about him in Gert’s Blackberry.

He wasn’t really a stoner. He’d only been acting like one.

“Have you seen her?” he demanded.

“Uh, no. But there’s-”

“Pirates. I know. I distracted them away from you and Kellan by making noise.”

“Is that what you were doing?”

“What did you think?”

Telling them in code to kill us.

“Look, I’ve got to go,” he said, as if talking to me hanging off the drainpipe was the most natural thing in the world.

“Right. No, I’m good. Thanks for asking.”

“I can see you’re good, and you’ve got Kellan.”

“Thanks,” Kellan said from above. “But I’d feel better if she had someone at her side who actually knew what the fuck was going on.”

“Just stay away from the guys with guns.”

I looked at the gun Axel still had strapped across his chest, which, if I wasn’t mistaken, had come from Gertrude’s stock.

“That doesn’t include me,” he said.

“You going to help us?” Kel asked.

“Yes. Meet me in the woods. Where the swap occurred.” He pulled back inside the window, but then hesitated. “Oh, and probably the best thing would be to hurry.”

“How about you scoot back and let us inside?”

Axel grimaced regretfully, scratching his head. “I’d like to, but if they find you, it’ll go worse for all of us.”

“It can’t get any worse.”

“Sure it can. We could all be-” He mimed being hung by his neck, complete with tongue sticking out and eyes bugging.

It was an image that made me shudder.

“This is serious shit, dudes,” Axel said.

“Yeah, thanks for that valuable info.”

“Dudette, listen to me.” I’d never seen Axel look so serious. “If you believe anything, you’ve got to believe this is bad. The worst. I’m going to go find Marilee and help her. Meet us in the woods. And hurry.”

Hurry. No problem. But then I made the mistake of looking down, which caused black spots to swim sickeningly in my vision. “Damn it.”

“I told you not to look down,” Kel said above me.

Yes. Yes, he had. Gritting my teeth, I began moving again, not quite quickly enough for Kellan, though, who urged me on with his size-thirteen feet, which kept threatening to clock me in the head.

“You should have gone first,” I hissed up at him, concentrating on hand over hand, foot over foot, and on not falling to my certain death.

“If I’d gone first,” he said with maddening calm, “you’d have never gotten out on the ledge.”

True enough.

“Hurry, Rach.”

If one more person told me to hurry, I was going to seriously lose it, and I swear, if I had it to do all over again, I’d have poked him in the ass instead of staring at it.

“Breathe, Rach. Are you breathing?”

“I am now.” To prove it, I inhaled deeply, letting it out slowly. “I need cookies. And a Prozac.”

“Keep moving.”

Hand over hand.

Foot over foot.

Don’t breathe too fast, but don’t forget to breathe.

Oh, and don’t look down.

And don’t fall either.

Falling would be bad. Really, really bad. Finally I arrived at the second-floor window. It opened into one of the guest rooms, a particularly rustic, country-styled room with a queen-size four-poster bed and a golden pine dresser with a mirror, through which I could see the rest of the room reflected.

Axel wasn’t in there, but I received an even bigger shock.

William and Serena were tied to a chair, gags in their mouths, staring at us.

No Axel or stinky pirates in sight. “Kel.”

Kel, just above me, squatted, too, looking in the glass. “Shit.” Then he opened the window.

“What are you doing?”

“Keep going. I’ll be right behind you before you touch the ground.” With lithe ease, he swung into the room.

William went white. Shook his head violently.

I caught the message. Don’t stop for us. Save your own damn necks.

Not that Kel listened. He never listened. He moved quickly to Serena and untied her hands, then turned toward William.

But before I could drop into the room as Kel had, Serena yanked off her gag. “Kellan! No! Take Rach and get out!”

It terrified me, hearing her fear, but before I could climb inside, the bedroom door slammed open.

I jerked back and nearly fell off the damn ledge.

Moe leveled his gun at Kellan. “Tie them back up.”

Kellan didn’t move. Nor did he look at me. But I could feel him, desperate for me to get out of sight.

“Tie them up now,” Moe said to Kel.

The voice was terrifying, the gun even more so, and I pressed back out of view, willing Kel not to do anything stupid, so he wouldn’t die right here.

“You deaf?” Moe yelled at Kellan. “I said tie them up.”

“No,” Kellan said.

I think I stopped breathing as I clung to the drainpipe, trying like hell to vanish into thin air.

If I could somehow shimmy down, then find a way to rescue them all-

With what? My X-ray vision?

Oh God. I was panting for air, and it was so loud, I was shocked Moe hadn’t stepped to the window to investigate. Any minute now I would hyperventilate and pass out.

And fall to my death.

No. Not going to fail Kellan. Omigod, Kellan, who was right this very second staring down the wrong end of a very long, very-powerful looking barrel.

What if they killed him?

I actually had to stop and hold still for a second at this thought: my life without Kellan in it. It was too dark, too overwhelming, too lonely, and I couldn’t even contemplate it.

He wasn’t going to die.

No one was.

Because I was going to get down.

That’s right. I was going to get down, and then I’d find my own weapon and somehow save the day. Me, a muralist, a pacifist, a woman who hated conflict. I was going to do this one thing, and I was going to do it one step at a time and not think about it too hard.

First, down the drainpipe.

Easier said than done in a state of near-panic. Hand over hand…Finally I managed to get within five feet of the ground, and feeling triumphant, I glanced down.

And gasped in new terror.

Because Curly stood there, gun pointed directly at me.

“Hands up,” he said, with a nasty smile revealing his distaste of daily hygiene.

I went from icy fear to furious anger. Gun or no gun, I was getting damn tired of the fear. In fact, I wasn’t going to be afraid again. Unless I saw a spider. “I can’t let go,” I said, gripping the drainpipe.

“No problem.” He took aim. “I can shoot you from right here.”

Ah hell. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I can let go.”

“Atta girl.”

With nothing else up my sleeve, I had little choice. I began to slither down the pipe, heart pounding in my throat. “Shooting me would be a bad idea,” I said, just in case he got trigger-happy.

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’ve hidden the laptop.”

He just looked at me.

“You need it to do the swap of the abilities,” I reminded him.

“No problem.” Curly smiled evilly. “Because you’re going to tell me all about where you hid it.” His fist closed at my nape, and squeezed. “Start talking.”

“Um.”

“Faster, hot stuff.” His breath was rank enough to nearly knock me out. To add insult, he ran the gun up my ribs, over the side of my breast.

I’ll never know where the move came from-probably from watching too many Jackie Chan movies-but I kicked back and nailed him in the knee.

“Fuck!” He bent, and somehow I managed to elbow him in the throat.

He let out a gargling sound and hit the ground.

Okay, so far so good. I whirled to run, but he recovered quickly, damn pirate, and wrapped his arms around my legs.

Then tugged.

Hard.

And down over the top of him I went. He smelled like week-old garbage, but his body was whipcord hard and sinewy, which did not bode well for me. While I was still in shock, he rolled me beneath him and grinned down at me.

I kneed him in the balls, hard enough to make him pale, but not hard enough to incapacitate him.

Bad idea, Rach.

We rolled around for a minute, me trying to get loose, him trying to cop a feel and control me at the same time, but neither of us getting much of what we wanted.

Finally I crawled free-

Only to feel his gun jam into my back.

“Now, I’ve gotcha,” he said.