Page 68 of 56 Days
“Is it Oliver?”
Ciara stops.
She’s sure she’s misheard.
“Sorry?”
“Is it Ollie?” Laura asks. “That you’re staying with?”
Both women have moved from their original positions. Laura is now shrouded in shadow, while Ciara is excruciatingly aware that she is fully illuminated by the streetlight.
She tries to keep her expression totally neutral while also trying to figure out what the hell she should say.
Whoisthis woman?
And how does she know Oliver?
“If you ever need help,” Laura says then, “I’m in number fourteen. Anytime, day or night, just knock. Or buzz. Okay?”
Ciara blinks at the other woman, confused.
“If you ever need anything.” Laura is staring at her intently, as if trying to silently communicate something she can’t say out loud. “Anything at all.”
Their exchange ends then on two odd notes.
Instead of walking back inside with her, Laura stays exactly where she is, on the street, and bids her goodnight.
And as Ciara walks away, she feels the other woman’s eyes on her back and then another feeling, asense, that something isn’t quite right.
There’s a different alarm buzzing now, a silent one, but she doesn’t know what set it off or how to make it stop.
In the moments before the fire alarm went off, Oliver was sitting on the couch in the living room, swiping absently through the pages of ane-bookon his phone. He kept finding himself lost in the text, having to go back and reread the previous paragraph or page, only to find himself lost again a few lines later.
He couldn’t spare it any attention.
His mind was on other things.
And then the phone vibrated in his hand and the text message he’d been waiting for flashedon-screen—but it said the opposite of what he’d been hoping it would.
From: RICH
Don’t see another way for now. Too dangerous. Get out of there.
Oliver was blinking at the words when a deafening wail started up from all directions: the fire alarm.
Which meant—
Panicked, he dropped the phone onto the table and hurried into the hall. Through the open bedroom door, he could see that Ciara was already awake and getting out of bed, pulling on clothes and sticking her bare feet into her sneakers.
He didn’t move, didn’t know what to do, couldn’t think.
It was as if Rich’s words had had some kind of immobilizing effect on him, a verbal stun gun.
Don’t see another way for now. Too dangerous. Get out ofthere.
He was sure Rich was wrong.
But Oliver was equally sure that Rich could never be persuaded of that.
