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The third deadbolt turns downstairs, and Heather’s footsteps cross the porch. I can still feel where she kissed me.

Oliver’s out of his room before her car starts.

I follow him to the stairs. “Where the fuck are you going?”

He keeps moving. By the time I catch up, he’s already at the front door testing the handle as though Heather might have forgotten how locks work since the last time she used them.

“She left you unlocked for thirty seconds and you’re already being an asshole.”

Oliver looks through the narrow window beside the door. Heather’s car backs out of the driveway, and he waits until it disappears before turning toward the living room. “She left both of us unlocked.”

Something about the way he says it makes the back of my neck heat. I straighten my shirt instead of giving him anything else.

Oliver opens the little table beside the door and runs his hand through the drawer. He checks beneath the mail, closes it and heads toward the kitchen.

“She didn’t leave me unlocked because she trusts me,” he says. “She left me unlocked because she trusts you to stop me.”

I catch the next drawer before he can pull it all the way open. “Then maybe stop making that necessary.”

Oliver looks at my hand on the drawer. “You know what she’s done to us. Simon’s been here less than two days, and she’s already beaten him worse than either of us. You told me there are bodies in the backyard.”

My fingers stay wrapped around the handle.

“There could be another set of keys in this house. There could be a phone. There could be something we can use, and she may never leave both of us awake again.”

I remember cold eggs and Heather telling me how carefully she dressed the others before she buried them. Six Jamies made choices they thought would save them.

Oliver steps closer. “It’s not trust.”

I let go of the drawer.

His eyes stay on mine. “You’re not free, Jamie. You’re the lock.”

That’s fucking low.

Oliver turns toward the back of the house. Toward Heather’s office.

I beat him to the office by half a hallway.

The door is closed but not locked. I shove it open and cross the threshold. The little key is still hanging exactly where she left it, less than a foot from the door.

I grab it. For one second, it sits cold in my palm while everything behind the closet door flashes through my head.

Oliver’s footsteps move closer.

I shove the key into my waistband and pull my shirt over it. I’m not stealing anything. I’m keeping him from stealing it.

Oliver comes through the doorway and barely looks at me before he starts searching. He opens the desk drawers, runs his hands beneath papers, and pulls open one filing cabinet hard enough to make the folders jump. He wakes the computer. A password screen glows back at him. He doesn’t waste time guessing.

“You’re going to get us killed.”

He ignores me and moves to the printer stand. “Then help me do it faster.”

I catch the top drawer before he can dump it onto the floor. He jerks it out of my hand and keeps going.

Heather’s office never looked dangerous to me before. It’s calculators, tax files and enough printer paper to survive an apocalypse. Oliver tears through it like one of those drawers might contain a tunnel to the street. Then he reaches the closet. My whole body goes tight.

He pulls the handle. The lock holds. He tries it again, harder this time, then crouches to look at the keyhole.