The Girl in the Wall by Jacquelyn Mitchard, Daphne Benedis-Grab Page B

Mike’s head. Some guys would get all bent out of shape about a girl getting the final shot but Mike just laughed and told me we’d make a great Bonnie and Clyde if I’d ever agree to go out with him.
    And now he’s dead at eighteen.
    I can’t do this for a second longer. I am up, running through the tunnels to find Nico, to figure out the best way to turn myself in to The Assassin so that we can be sure no one else gets hurt. Maybe Nico can set up some sort of bargain, buy some kind of favor to help with his plan. I’ll tell him the code so Sera can call for help but I’m not doing this for a single second longer.
    I slip on some dust on the top stair and fall to my knees, which is surprisingly painful. My palms sting too from landing on them. I take a moment to rub them together and check to see if I scraped my knees. They seem fine though, just bruised, but it’s enough to make me stop and think. Abby. If I turn myself in, what will happen to Abby?
    Before I can answer my own question I hear voices in the hall. Several guys are talking and one of the voices is familiar.
    I creep quietly to the nearest grate and see two agents walking down the hall, my uncle between them. My breath catches when I see his wild red hair, stripped of his Yankees hat and looking like he just walked through a hurricane, which I guess in some ways he has.
    “Next step,” an agent is saying. He is probably one of the higher-ups and I desperately wish I could see behind his disguise, to know who plotted this.
    “We’ve set everything up for the transfer of funds,” a second agent says.
    They are walking right past the grate and I catch a whiff of Uncle Marc’s overpowering Hermes cologne, the kind my dad buys him every year and then complains about when Uncle Marc pats on like half the bottle every time he comes over.
    “So I just need to sign the rest of the documents?” Uncle Marc asks.
    My stomach drops.
    “Yes,” the first agent says. “Then you’ll have the funds at your fingertips.”
    “Ready to deposit in the Swiss account,” the second agent adds.
    Uncle Marc nods and replies but they are too far away to hear, that or the ringing in my ears from his words is too loud.
    I slip down to the floor, the wall of the tunnel holding me up as my mind takes baby steps toward understanding this, hoping against hope that I am somehow figuring it wrong. But there doesn’t seem to be any room for misinterpretation, a fact that has me shivering from the cold, ugly truth. The person behind the hostage situation, the shooting of my father and friends, and this night of terror is not some stranger.
    It is my very own uncle.

CHAPTER 17
Sera
    The room is chaos after The Assassin stalks out. Two other agents are cleaning up the soggy pile on the floor that was once Mike’s brain while his body is being carried out by another, and most of my classmates are crying. But my eyes are dry and I’m not shaking or moaning or having flashback images fly through my mind. I didn’t know it until right this second, but something in me froze over when Mr. Barett and Bianca were killed, their empty bodies on this same floor. Seeing Mike does not shred me apart, not like that. It sits in my stomach, corrosive and nauseating, but it doesn’t threaten to engulf me, not like the first deaths did.
    Hudson is looking at me, I think waiting for my delayed meltdown.
    “This is not okay,” I tell him.
    He looks slightly alarmed, like I might be on the verge of losing it, but this time I’m not.
    “None of this is okay,” I continue, sweeping out my arm and banging my wrist on the chair in back of me. It hurts but I don’t really care. “They shot Mike like he was nothing, like he wasn’t someone’s kid and… ” Here come the tears. They slide down my face but slowly, not out of control, and I can still talk. “They just destroyed his parents’ and his brother’s lives without even thinking about it.”
    Hudson nods, still looking at me like I