Chapter 20: Britt Opens the Wall

My sister came through the wreck of the front door at a dead run.

Finnegan was in front of her, with his arms spread across the hall.

"Britt, stop," he said. "Look behind you."

She did not look.

Forty people had followed her up the corridor, shouting her name and Declan's mother's name, hungry and furious and out of food.

Finnegan turned to face them and planted himself in the broken doorway.

"Nobody comes in," he said. "This is a private home."

"The girl is in there!" Declan's mother screamed.

"Then you can wait your turn."

On my phone, propped against the pond, I watched the crowd surge against him.

I watched him hold.

He put his shoulder to the splintered wood and shouted for the men from twenty-eight, and three of them came and stood with him.

It would buy me a minute.

My sister had already crossed the living room.

She stopped in the bedroom doorway, panting.

The closet panel was gone.

The steel door stood shut, with the keypad beside it blinking.

She stared at it, her chest heaving.

"You're in there," she whispered.

I stood on my porch rail a few inches from my own phone, with my hand on the farmhouse wall.

I could have run into the house and shut the blue door.

She would have found me anyway, because she knew exactly what to look for.

I did not move.

"You're in there, and you've been in there for five years," Britt said. "Open it."

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