Contain (29 page)

“
Rory Newsom was there with
Doc Cavanaugh. Did you ask him if he saw anything?”

“
Rory's dead.”

“
What?
How?”

Dad sinks into the chair. “Whoever
murdered Gia also killed Rory and dumped him over the railing
outside. We found a lot of blood, but only one body— his. Since the
sluice gates were shut, all the water went to bypass, and it got
caught up on the rocks. No sign of the stranger's body, so I assume
he fled.”

“
If he's still alive, he
might know something.”

“
I agree, which is why I
proposed sending another search party out to look for him in the
morning. It's too late now. Seth's understandably reluctant to
break containment even further, as am I. And if I were Williams,
I'd be long gone by now, but I can't assume to know what's in his
mind.”

He purses his lips. “We'll go in the
morning. And, Finn, this time I really need you to stay put.
Whoever is doing this, they're still among us. They may try to kill
again while we're gone.”

“
You think I'm in
danger?”

“
I think we all
are.”

He places a weary hand on my shoulder.
“You're the only one I can trust, son.”

Trust? Suddenly, I don't feel very
trustworthy at all. I defied him today by going with Mister
Abramson. I betrayed my promise of confidentiality by telling Bix
about how we all paid to be in here and he didn't. And I haven't
been much of a friend to him or Bren.

“
I'll stay,” I tell
him.

He nods.

“
I still think Jack Resnick
is somehow involved.”

A knock comes at the door, and Dad
quickly takes the wire back from me, rolls it, and tucks it into
his pocket. He places a finger to his lips, then steps over to the
door.

My thoughts are all a jumble. Nothing
seems to fit together. How could the cut pipe and the outages be
related? How are they tied into the missing food? And why was Doc
Cavanaugh killed? Was it because of what she found in Eddie's
blood?

Who among us could do such a heinous
thing as kill her like that? Her and Rory Newsom.

Dad opens the door and, almost as if
I've conjured him from the air just by evoking his name, there
stands Jack Resnick. “Ready?” he asks.

“
I was expecting
Seth.”

“
Said he needed to be with
Bren and Kaleagh.” His eyes flick to me. “He asked me to take his
place.”

Dad frowns, but he nods and says okay.
“Let's go.”

“
Where?” I ask. Alarm bells
are jangling in my head.

“
The security cam footage
is on a twenty-four-hour loop,” Dad says. “We need to review it all
before we lose it. I'm hoping we get lucky and see something. I'd
meant to check it earlier, but with everything else going
on—”

“
No one's blaming you,
Abe,” Jack says impatiently. “Can't think of everything.” He turns
to leave.

Dad steps back in. He leans over and
says, “Do me a favor, Finn.”

“
Don't go
anywhere?”

“
Not alone. But, no, that's
not it. I need you to go talk to Hannah. She's in her quarters. I
think she may know where her father went.”

I wince, remembering that I haven't
even bothered to see how she's doing. Another reason I'm just a
loser.

“
Finn,” he says, and
there's an urgency in his voice. “Ask her about the missing
food.”

* * *

I feel really bad about Hannah. But it's Bren I need to see
first.

As soon as I step out into the
hallway, I'm met by Sato and Asuka Fujimura. They're the oldest
people in our group, easily in their seventies, though it's hard to
tell exactly how old they are because it seems like they never
age.

Sato was an investment
banker in Hong Kong before all this happened, though his English is
nearly perfect. His wife's accent is more pronounced, and it gets
even stronger whenever she gets riled up, which,
nine-times-out-of-ten, is when Sato's winning one of their
Hanafuda
card games. For
all of her four feet two inches and eighty pounds, the woman is a
bit of a dynamo.

Asuka slaps a palm against my chest.
She has to reach above her head to do it. “Where you go, young
Finnian?” she asks.

“
Just to see Bren, Missus
Fujimura.”

“
You sure?” she asks, a
gleam in her eye that tells me she thinks there's more meaning to
my words than there is. “She might not want see you.”

Mister Sato hobbles closer, leaning on
his cane. I've seen him walking without it, so I know it's more for
show. The dude can move when he wants to, especially when Kari
Mueller is on dinner duty. That woman can do magic with only four
ingredients and a handful of bone-dry spices.

“
Asuka-
chan
,” he rumbles. “Leave the boy
be.”

“
Thank you, Mister
Fujimura,” I say, quickly stepping past his wife while she's
distracted. He wishes me good luck.

Almost immediately, Asuka
starts going at him. I recognize a few Japanese curses, but they're
drowned out by his dry chuckles. Both sounds dissipate as the
couple disappears from view, leaving me with only the hollow
tap tap tap
of the tip of
his cane on the floor.

Sometimes I wonder how nice it would
be to simply live as oblivious as they seem to be. Other times I'm
convinced they know a lot more than they let on.

I knock on Bren's door, aware of Danny
Delacroix's eyes on my back. He's standing against the wall by the
elevator doors, his arms crossed. Dominic is inside trying to
figure out a way to block the access panel in the
ceiling.

“
Looking for Bren?” Dom
asks. “I think she's down the other end of the hall keeping an eye
on Eddie's girl.”

Keeping an eye on
her?

But I don't ask what he means. I just
head back the other way, and I'm grateful when I find the hallway
empty. The Fujimuras have returned to their quarters.

It's Bren who answers my knock. She
looks surprised to see me, but before I can say anything, she
throws herself at me and squeezes me tight. I can't do anything but
hold her and feel awkward while her mother and Hannah look
on.

After she releases me, she pulls me
into the room. Hannah eyes me warily. I'm partially to blame for
everyone believing her father is the killer, a raving animal whose
body has turned into something unnatural. I feel like I should say
something to her to make things right. But what?

“
Finn?” Missus Abramson
asks. “What is it?”

I shrug uncertainly and clear my
throat. “My father, uh, he said I should talk to
Hannah.”

But will she be willing to talk in
front of other people?

“
About what?”

“
The missing
food.”

Missus Abramson looks puzzled. “You
mentioned something about it the other day,” Bren says. “But you
never explained what you meant.”

“
I
didn't mention it,” I correct her. “Bix did.” Being reminded
of that scene down on Level Seven drops the temperature between us
to somewhere just north of freezing.

Hannah gives me a guilty look, so it's
obvious she knows what I'm talking about. She takes in a deep
breath and says, “It was me.”

She reaches into her pocket and draws
something out, and when she unfolds her fingers, I see that she's
holding a key. It's long and heavy, with square rather than jagged
teeth. There's only one door in the entire facility that I know for
sure requires a physical key.

“
Level Ten?”

Hannah nods.

“
There are seven people,”
she says. “Six adults and a baby. There used to be eleven, but half
of them died.”

“
People?” Bren asks. “I
don't understand. What are you talking about?”

“
Hiding inside the
mountain,” she says.

“
Behind the locked door at
the back of the sump room on Level Ten,” I explain, immediately
making the connection.

Missus Abramson gasps, and
her hands fly to her face. “
A
baby?
” Shock saps the strength from her
voice.

“
I've been caring for all
of them since the very beginning,” Hannah says. “Well, except for
the baby. He's almost a year old. Dad never knew. He wouldn't
have . . . understood.”

“
He would have known how
dangerous it was,” I say.

“
For a long time, nobody
else knew. But it just got to be too hard for me, and I had to tell
someone.”

“
Who?”

She looks away.

“
How long has my father
known?”

“
Just a few days. He
followed me down to the food room. He saw me taking
some.”

“
Our
food?” Missus Abramson asks.

Hannah nods.

“
That's why you volunteered
to help Jonah out,” I say.

Another nod. “So I could sneak some of
the food out. But he was starting to get suspicious, so that's when
I started to help you, too. It was easy getting the access code
from you. You weren't very . . .
careful.”

I feel my face grow red.

“
I never believed it would
be discovered. I always thought we’d be out of here before we got
down to the bottom.”

“
You said you needed help.
Whose?” I ask.

The shocked look on Bren’s face
already confirms it for me that it wasn’t her.

Hannah swallows and looks like she's
already beginning to regret confessing this. But the cat is already
out of the bag.

“
Jonah,” she
whispers.

“Jonah?” I say, and my head spins in disbelief.
“
Our
Jonah?”

As if there could be any
other.

“
He's not the bad person
you think he is, Finn.” The words tumble from Hannah's mouth in a
rush. “He— He's kind and compassionate.”

I feel like a fish gulping
air. I keep opening my mouth and then closing it, and yet nothing
passes through my lips. Jonah
kind?
Compassionate?
It doesn't
make sense.

I turn to Bren and her mother for
help, but they're apparently as stunned as I am by the
revelation.

I spin back to Hannah with a new
thought. “Can they get inside the bunker? Have you ever brought
them inside the bunker?”

She shakes her head vigorously.
“Mister Gronbach told me never to let them in.

“
Never?” I can't believe
anyone who might be stuck outside wouldn’t try to get in. Surely
six adults could easily overpower a small girl like Hannah. Or try
to convince her to open the door. “Not even once?”

“
No! Of course
not!”

“
Don't say of course not!
Of course not is when you do things the right way, by following the
rules! Not by exposing us to the outside!”

“
I'm not!”

“
Yes, you are!” I
roar.

“
Finn!” Bren says,
alarmed.

“
Of course not is obeying
the rules, Hannah!”

“
Finn, stop it!”

The room is spinning even
worse, and it won't stop. “Are you sure they didn't— that
they
can't
come
in?”

“
Yes! They don't have a
key. Only I have the key. And I never opened the door for them,
only the little panel so I can give them the food. That's how
Mister Gronbach told me to do it. He made me promise. Even when
they get angry or beg, I don't open the door.”

This makes me pause. “Mister Gronbach
gave you the key?”

“
That's how he and your dad
came in after they got stuck outside, the day we
arrived.”

I remember how terrified I'd been that
day when I realized my father hadn’t made it in. But then they
showed up, as if by magic — not all of the missing survivors,
just Dad and Mister Gronbach — and I'd always thought that
they'd somehow slipped in before the doors were locked, and that
I'd just missed seeing them.