Chapters (57)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Praise for Linwood Barclay
- Also by Linwood Barclay
- About the Publisher
But how safe was it out there? He’d told Nick he thought most of the Arrivals were in the mall, but was he right about that? At least right now, atop this set of shelves, Archie felt safe.
Had Rory made it? Did he find a way out of the mall after fleeing out the back door of Victoria’s Secret and abandoning him?
“Asshole,” Archie muttered under his breath.
After walking the length of the shelf and back again, he decided to sit and dangle his legs over the edge. In the time he’d taken to scope out his new surroundings, the Arrival that had given the shelf a threatening nudge had vanished.
“Yeah, take a hike, dickhead,” he said.
He kicked his feet back and forth, wishing he had a phone so he could check in with his mom or his sister. Archie, for the first time, felt guilty about the way he had treated his sister, tricking her so he could make his escape. And then he felt a second pang of guilt. His mother had wanted him to be on his best behavior today. Don’t get into trouble, she’d said. This is a big day for me, she’d said. Don’t fuck it up, she’d said.
Okay, maybe she hadn’t said that, but it sure was impl—
Hello.
Archie heard the familiar squeaking of rubber on cement. The same sound that Arrival made before it had bumped his shelf. But this wasn’t just one squeak.
It was a symphony of squeaks.
He stood back up and ran to the end of the shelf, where he could see all the way to the entrance from the mall. A convoy of Arrivals was coming his way.
Heading for his shelf.
And they were picking up speed as they got closer.
The lead car—the same one that had killed Nick, judging by the red streaks on its hood—was doing probably thirty miles an hour when it rammed the end of the shelf at a forty-five-degree angle.
The shelf teetered.
“Shit!” Archie screamed, suddenly broadening his stance so as not to lose his balance. The shelf had tilted about six inches for half a second before settling back to its original position. Archie noticed that while the shelf he stood atop seemed to be a hundred feet long, it was actually built in sections. The one he was standing on was no more than twenty feet in length. The upshot of all that was, the Arrivals didn’t have to knock down a shelf that was the length of the entire aisle. They only had to knock down a part of it.