The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(4)

“Say something!” I hissed at him. “Fix this!”

“No! I was pretending you shot me, remember?” he whispered back. My eyes narrowed at the back of his head, suddenly wishing I had free use of both hands so I could slap this stupid idea out of his head. I had use of my left, but the slap that this level of delirious stupidity deserved was one I wasn’t currently capable of delivering. “Then how are you supposed to open the door without blowing your cover? Do you want me to really shoot you as a cover?”

“No, I don’t know! I—I—” Finally, he was flustered. “I imagined it going differently than this, okay?”

“You—”

This time, Owen didn’t let me finish the angry remark on my tongue. “I needed this all to be over!” he said. “I’m tired of everybody around me getting hurt! I’m tired of this war, I’m tired of everything falling apart and going wrong, and without Ian, I have nothing to look forward to anymore. It’s all so out of control and wrong, and it’s all Desmond’s fault. We can stop it. We can stop it right now. All we need to do is kill her.”

“Do you really think that is going to solve everything?” I snapped, my voice getting louder. A moment later, I caught myself, my hand fluttering to my mouth, but there was still a loud banging coming from the door.

Owen sighed. “No,” he said in the smallest breath imaginable. “But it felt so right.”

I sucked in a deep breath, trying not to let my imagination drift into dark places... scenarios where Desmond kidnapped me… and… I shut my eyes and tried to filter all the thoughts out. Those thoughts would get me nowhere, and neither would this argument. I tried to clear my head.

The banging stopped for a moment as Desmond’s voice spoke to us again.

“Owen, I very much hope you are truly injured, because that will make the rest of this much easier for you. Cease this charade. My guards and I are growing impatient—bring her up here, or neither of you will like the result.”

Owen turned to me, his blue eyes imploring, and whispered desperately, “Okay, new idea. We pretend to surrender, then…”

My fingers on my right hand twitched in response, trying to form a fist in spite of the cast preventing it. “She shoots us both. First me, then you.”

Owen glared at me, but he didn’t answer. I pushed on. “I’m not going up those stairs, Owen. It’s too dangerous. I’m going out of Ashabee’s tunnel while they’re distracted. If you try to stop me, I’ll… I’ll… Please don’t try to stop me.”

I didn’t want to say what I would do, but I didn’t have to. From the barren look on Owen’s face, I knew he understood. His stupid plan was going to fail. He would have to drag me back to Desmond kicking and screaming. My teeth were clenched and my right hand’s fingers dug into the cast. If he tried to persist—if he really did want to sell me out to Desmond—this would be the hardest moment of my life.

Up above us, the pounding on the door had resumed, and it sounded less like random pounding now and more like deliberate use of force. I winced at the sound of splintering and scraping. The more time we spent here, the less time I had to escape.

“Come with me,” I pleaded, begging him not to fight me over this. “We’ll find some other way to kill Desmond. We’ll fix things.”

Instead of trying to fight me, Owen did the only thing that might have been worse: he turned back toward the basement door and pulled out his gun.

“You were right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this. Get out of here while you still can, Violet.”

I had already taken a few steps back before the gravity of that statement fully registered. “You don’t really think you can take them all down by yourself—”

“I have to try! You said yourself that I’ve got to fix things!” Owen wasn’t even trying to whisper anymore. A moment ago, I had been furious enough to leave him behind and escape, but now, my heart rushed into my throat and the dizzy feeling flooded back in. A thousand emotions surged through my brain at once, paralyzing me for a split second.

It was a split second too long. There was a final crash, accompanied by excited shouts from the guards, and a big slice of pale light flooded down the stairs above us as Desmond’s voice drifted down the stairwell in the flood of debris and settling dust.

“Time’s up, Owen,” she said, her voice arctic cold.

Owen whipped his gun up to face the stairs, and I had time to swing my backpack around, fumbling for the gun as I took frantic steps backward, when, instead of the rush of footsteps I was expecting, I heard something clink. A small object made an arc in the air as it sailed down the stairs, hitting the landing with a metallic noise.

My brain recognized the object but refused to believe what it was. I was frozen, trapped in a nightmare all over again—bombs going off around me while I was dying. Owen shouted something, but it was impossible to hear over the panic causing my heart to skip beats and my ears to ring.

Owen turned to face me, his eyes wide, and my shock barely registered as he grabbed me, like he once had in The Green, throwing my stomach over his shoulder and running toward the back of the garage.

I barely noticed the throb of pain that pulsed through my ribs, focused on the grenade as it bounced, up off the landing, down toward us. We weren’t far enough. We weren’t going to make it through this.