Nothing.

When her aunt had been shot, Wren had turned into a statue. She hadn’t been able to move. She probably would have stood there, just waiting to be killed, if Olive hadn’t dragged her into the closet. Her heart had been pounding so hard she thought it would break the cage of her ribs. She had never been so scared in her life, and every time she closed her eyes, she saw that bright banner of blood unfurl on Aunt Bex’s chest. But being able to text her father—knowing her father was right on the other side of that brick wall—well, it had tethered Wren to sanity.

Now that was gone.

What if she never got out of this clinic? She was fifteen years old. She hadn’t had sex. She hadn’t gone to prom. She hadn’t smoked a joint or pulled an all-nighter.

Her dad was always telling her to be careful—that he saw far too many mangled car wrecks or drunk drivers who were teens who thought they were invincible. Maybe it sounded ridiculous, given the fact that she had been jerked out of the closet and had a gun pointed at her face, but for the first time Wren now really understood she could die.

A fresh wave of terror settled over her, and she started to shake.

She grabbed one hand with the other. She closed her eyes tight, and tried to imagine every detail of her father’s face.

If her dad were here, he’d tell her to take a deep breath. He’d say, Make sure you’re safe. Make sure everyone else is, too.

He’d say, …

He’d say, …

Bed water, she thought.

She let a tiny smile slip out from inside that knot of fear.

Way high.

Paper toilet.

For the first time since she had been in the bathroom, she looked at the toilet paper roll. She saw the message thread, and began to read.

“What the hell is taking you so long?” George said, and he yanked open the door. Wren did the first thing she could think of. She dropped her phone in the toilet, along with the paper in her fist. “I’m al-almost done,” she stammered.

His face receded and Wren doubled over. She stood up and fished for her phone in the bowl, but it was ruined. Then again, it hadn’t been working anyway and it was better to have it hidden than on her—she knew from watching the others that they had received pat downs from George when they left the bathroom, too. Holding the device by a dripping corner, she lifted the toilet tank cover and hid the phone inside.

She looked down at the soggy mess of toilet paper in her hand. The phone had dripped on it, and the marker had bled illegibly. Wren tossed it into the toilet and then wrote on the roll, succinctly, what Izzy would need to know. She and the doctor were the only ones who hadn’t gone to the bathroom yet, and the doctor probably couldn’t even get to his feet. We can take him down. Trip him. Go for the gun. Everyone’s in.

She rolled the words back up, flushed the toilet, rinsed her hands, and stepped outside.

George was waiting, tapping the gun against his thigh. She felt lost without her phone. Untethered.

She could remember asking her dad once what happened during a spacewalk if an astronaut became untethered from the spacecraft. He explained that they wore backpacks they could fire up, with jets to propel them back to the vehicle. They were called Simplifed Aid for EVA Rescue. SAFER.

She took a step toward the couch, feeling the shooter’s eyes on her.

“Did you forget something?” he said.

Wren drew in her breath and shook her head. Had he seen her holding the phone?

George grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her toward the others. “Tape her up,” he ordered Izzy.

“I’m sorry,” Izzy said. The tape roll went around twice, three times. Then Izzy tried to tear it. When that didn’t work, she leaned forward, her hair falling over her face and Wren’s wrists as she bit the edge of the tape with her teeth.

Izzy looked up, catching Wren’s eye for a moment. Then she turned to George. “I believe it’s my turn?”

Wren stumbled back to the couch, gingerly sitting down beside Olive again. She gently settled her bound hands in her lap and looked down at them. Clasped between her palms was a scalpel Izzy had managed to pass to her, with a tiny, lethal blade.

—

DISHONORABLY DISCHARGED. THE WORDS CHASED themselves around George’s mind. What if Lil had heard that? She knew that he had been in the army—and she also knew that he didn’t like to talk about his time there. But shit, neither did anyone who had seen combat.

He had been in Bosnia, stationed in a hellhole where he was supposed to be keeping the peace but even he knew, early days as it was, that there was no way they could win this one. It had been the end of a long day at the end of a long week and he was drinking at a bar. He’d gone outside to take a piss and had heard a woman’s scream.

He should have ignored it. But he thought about his wife, back home, and instead rounded the corner to find two men holding down a Muslim woman. No, make that a girl, a Muslim girl. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. He assumed, given the ethnic conflict, that the men were Serbs, but they all looked alike. One held his hand over her mouth and pinned her shoulders, the other was vigorously pumping between her thighs.

George pulled him off, sending him sprawling into the dust. His friend came after George, who landed a solid punch. The man staggered and fell, his head smacking against the curb. George was dimly aware that the girl had scrambled off. The rapist got to his feet and came toward George, who leveled his weapon. By then, the commotion had drawn a crowd. What they saw was an American soldier holding a Croatian civilian at gunpoint, while a second civilian bled to death at his feet.

He was court-martialed. He explained that he had interrupted a rape, but the girl’s family insisted that she had not been sexually assaulted. And why would they admit she had, since it would make her forever unmarriageable in their culture? Instead, there was testimony from the bystanders who had seen George pointing a gun wildly at a man who had fallen to the ground with his hands up.

George was convicted of manslaughter, and dishonorably discharged, goddammit, for doing the right thing.

When he came home he had a wife who didn’t understand his anger and a baby who screamed all the time, and he couldn’t get any sleep. He got fired from his job and maybe drank more than he should. One night, when he fell asleep on the couch, Greta had leaned over him to wake him up but he had been dreaming and saw instead that girl, the Muslim girl, and he grabbed her by the throat with all his frustration. Why didn’t you tell them the truth? I saved you. Why didn’t you save me?

It wasn’t until Greta started to go slack beneath him that he realized where he was, who he was. When he let her go, she ran to the bedroom and locked the door. He begged for forgiveness. He promised he’d go to counseling. She didn’t answer, just stayed away from him, wearing a necklace of bruises. When he called her name the next day, she jumped in fear. She did everything she could to avoid him. George took to sleeping in the baby’s room, because he knew Greta wouldn’t leave without Lil.

Until one night she did.

He glanced up at the television screen. It was dark now, turned off at his command—but he could still hear the words of the reporter ringing in his head. Dishonorable discharge is reserved for the military’s most reprehensible conduct, the man had said. Desertion, sexual assault, murder … egregious violence.

Egregious violence.

George felt sweat trickle down his back. He pulled at his collar. Egregious fucking violence. There was nothing egregious about it. They didn’t know what went down in Bosnia. They didn’t realize it hadn’t been Greta’s face he saw that night, when he tried to strangle her. They didn’t understand what had happened to Lil that had led him here.

He could not hear anything except that reporter’s voice, ringing in his ears. “Egregious violence,” George muttered. “This is egregious violence,” he said, and he slammed his boot into the injured leg of the doctor.

When George’s hearing returned, it was with the man’s scream.

—

THE GUNMAN WAS OUT OF control. He was muttering to himself; he had stomped on Dr. Ward’s leg. Izzy bent down over the poor man, soothing, trying to do something—anything—to stave off the pain. Dr. Ward was shivering, sweating, in shock. The false comfort of the status quo had been shredded, and what would happen next was anyone’s guess.