Page 54 of The Square

“Um… well, I can’t fucking believe this, but Brenden and Charlie actually started blaming each other for the fuckup, started wrestling—”

“Fucking wrestling?”

“What I said. And then the mercs started laughing at them, and one of them—who looks to be in charge—broke it up, asked for the manifest, shrugged, said, ‘Top grade eats for us, my boets,’ and then, once they looked in the back and saw that it’s really beef and not, like, a truck of assassins or something, started helping unload it. They’re all taking it into the kitchen now.”

Un. Be. Lievable. “And what are you doing?”

“Still fucking pinned down, hiding in old Chinese food wrappers, wondering why I agreed to come along.”

I turn to Russell and say, “We’re good. I guess. Tell Theo to be ready to kill the fence again. We’ll get out through the woods and meet the truck by the main road.” I step to Alec and say, “Can you climb?”

“Climb what?”

“Whatever. Can you get up on the roof so we can get back out through the fence?”

“Nunu, that parkour thing is not mine. It’s all of you. And besides, I’m not hundreds. My ribs still need some tending. Maybe if I had some pain muti, I could work through it, but I don’t. They have the laaitie dole it out to me.”

“Brilliant,” Eliza says. “Well, good to have seen you, I suppose. Cheers.” And she makes her way toward the window again. I don’t think she’s really going to go. I think she’s just being Eliza. But you never know.

“Which laaitie?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

“Him,” he says, and gestures to under the bed. Russell, Eliza, and I bend down to look. There, under the bed, is a young man dressed like the other guards. And completely knocked out. Snoring.

“What did you do to him?” I ask.

“Well, before I knew everyone was coming to retrieve me, I had decided that today was the day I planned on leaving. I even sent Danny a text to see where he was in the world.”

“You did?”

He nods at me. “I did.”

“Today?”

“Today, nunu. Just around the exact same time that you all were coming for me, I reckon.”

He grins and I can’t help the feeling I get in my stomach. I can’t stop it. And I don’t try. “That’s…”

“Yeah. It’s a coincidence, ain’t it?”

He smiles at me. I smile back. We are connected. Always and forever.

“Charming.” Eliza’s voice breaks through. “But none of us are successfully out of here yet. Since Mr. van den Berg here can’t climb, do we have an alternate course of egress?”

We all look to Alec, who says, “I had planned to use the passageways.”

“Passageways?” Russell asks.

“Yeah,” Alec says, “there’s underground passageways. Like catacombs leading out underneath the property. Eliza remembers.”

We now all look at Eliza. “Yes,” she says. “I do remember.” Then she puts her hand on one of the posts of the four-poster bed. “I remember a lot of things about this place.”

Rage.

Whatever feelings I was having in my stomach are now replaced by my friend, rage.

“Super. Let’s fuckin’ go,” I say, making my way to the door.

“Wait,” calls Alec. “How do we know it’s clear?”

“I’ll go up,” Russell says. “You two stay on comms, stay with him, and I’ll do a quick perimeter check from the roof. If I see a bunch of blokes hauling meat, we’ll assume that they’re all preoccupied with that.”

“How can we be sure that there’s no more on the main floor?” Eliza asks. Russell shrugs. “Brilliant,” she says.

“I’m not sure it’s any better an idea, us just mucking about here waiting on someone to walk in though, is it?” Russell says.

“Good point.” Eliza sighs. “To which end… what about him?” she asks, referring to the kid snoring under the bed.

Russell says, “What about him?”

“If they come in and don’t find Alec, but instead a groggy lad on the ground who’s been stripped of his rifle, there’s a tiny chance they might become a wee bit hostile.”

No one says anything for a moment, and then, since it would appear that nobody plans on stating the obvious—a tactic that calls back to the very first conversation I ever had with Eliza—I offer it up.

“Replica,” I say.