Page 202 of Stay Scared

“You are not acting like it.”

His head turns slightly. “I am standing here while he has his hands on both of you. That is all the restraint you are getting.”

Across the room, Cade suddenly drives his forehead into Rook’s wrist. Rook’s grip slips, and Cade tears himself free of the broken window with blood running down one side of his ribs.

Rook raises the metal arm again.

I step through the operator doorway.

Both men react at once. Ash grabs for me while Cade lunges toward the broken window.

Rook looks at me and forgets them.

“Salem.”

Ash’s voice behind me is almost a warning.

I keep walking.

Rook lowers the improvised weapon. “You came back in.”

“I never left.”

The beaked mask tracks me across the red floor while I keep the emergency handle hidden behind my thigh.

Ash remains at the doorway by force of will alone. Cade has both hands around the broken window frame now, wrenching at the metal while glass cuts into his palms.

Rook walks toward me. I move backward.

The bolted chair waits several feet behind him, its red padding almost black beneath the lantern.

“You wanted this room to mean something,” Rook says.

“I wanted you in it.”

He takes another step, the broken restraint hanging beside his leg.

“Without them?”

I look at Ash. His eyes never leave Rook.

Then Cade, who is pulling at the metal frame around the shattered observation panel, trying to make the opening wider.

“I have them.”

Rook’s body tightens.

That reaches him because those men belong beside me, and Rook never has.

He closes the distance and lifts the jagged steel.

I keep backing up until my heel reaches the raised edge of the chair platform. Rook follows.

Ash’s hand locks around the mechanical lever. I look at him and signal for him to wait.

He hates the signal. He obeys it anyway.

Rook reaches for my waist. I move sideways, but his glove catches my jacket and jerks me back until my shoulder strikes his chest.