Chapter 15: The Roof

The thirty-second floor was dark when Finnegan got himself out of the guard's grip.

He did not tell me how.

At eleven that night my phone buzzed, and a second picture opened under the hallway feed.

It showed a gray concrete stairwell, and a steel door marked ROOF.

"I put the roof camera on your app," Finnegan said through the doorbell. "I'm on the landing. I can see the door and so can you."

"Where are they?"

"Coming up. Watch."

I sat on my tiny porch with the egg pan forgotten beside me.

The stairwell door below the landing banged open.

Declan's father came up first with a flashlight.

Declan's mother followed him, holding the roof key she had taken from Finnegan.

Declan walked behind her with his arm around my sister.

Britt wore her coat, and her feet were bare.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Somewhere private," Declan said warmly. "Mom wants to thank you."

"Thank me for what?"

"For everything you've done."

His mother turned the key, and the roof door swung out.

Wind and rain came in through the gap.

My hands went cold.

I had stood on that roof once before, in a life that no longer existed.

I knew the parapet, the puddles, the exact spot where the concrete ended.

Britt must have known it too, because she stopped on the threshold.

"I don't want to go out there," she said.

"It's only the roof," Declan said.

"Please. I don't like it."

"Don't be silly."

His father put a hand between her shoulder blades.

She went out into the rain, and the door closed behind them all.

The roof camera was mounted over the doorway, and its light showed four dark shapes at the far edge.

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