With that, she hurries out of my room and, on cue, not two minutes later, the fire alarm rings, and I hear the confusion in the hallway. I give it another minute before opening the door, and when I see the guard who was standing outside earlier with his back turned, I step out of my room. It takes all I have to walk, not run toward the exit sign marking the stairwell, and slip through the door and out of sight.

36

Ivy

I don’t breathe a sigh of relief until I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of my car, the door locked, my shaking hands over my pounding heart.

I’m out. I made it.

And now I need to move. If they haven’t already noticed that I’m gone, they will soon enough, and Santiago will send an army after me. But before I reach over to open the glove box, I take a moment to look down at my stomach. It’s still flat, and I put my hands over it, not really believing that I’m pregnant just yet. Not quite processing the fact.

Which makes it so much more important that I hurry now.

It takes a little wiggling of the handle to open the glove compartment. It always did get stuck. And when I do, and the contents spill out onto the floor of the passenger side, I’m momentarily stunned. Because there along with a sheet of paper upon which I see Abel’s hurried scrawl, the three hundred-dollar bills, and the phone is a small, black pistol.

I look at it. I’ve never seen one in person before, only on TV. I’ve never touched one.

Reaching down now, I pick it up and feel the weight of it, the cool steel hard and deadly in my hands. Does he think I would use this? Would I?

No.

Even if Santiago found me, I wouldn’t. It makes no sense for Abel to have given it to me.

I quickly shove it back into the glove box and close it, then bend to pick up the rest of the things. I fold the bills and set them in the cup holder with the phone on top. I then read the address Abel wrote out. I’m surprised because I know the town. It’s about twenty minutes from my apartment at school.

Strange.

But I set the piece of paper aside and put the key into the ignition, remembering the hiccup the car always makes before the engine turns over. The familiarity makes me smile. Takes me at least momentarily to a different time, a different place. A different life.

God. Has it only been months since the night Abel came to bring me back? Only a few months since my life changed so irrevocably?