Chapter 175 CLXXV

Chapter 175 CLXXV
Isabellla’s POV

The fire escape window opened from the inside with a lever that I had noticed on my first day in the apartment the way doctors noticed exits and access points out of professional habit.

I had not expected to need it. I pushed the lever now and the window swung outward and the cold early morning air came in immediately, sharp and damp.

"Can you climb?" I asked Aria.

"Yes," she said, without hesitation.

I went out first, stepping onto the metal platform of the fire escape landing.

The building was six floors and we were on the fourth, which meant two flights of metal stairs going down, each landing connecting to the next with the steep angle of industrial fire escapes that were built for function rather than comfort.

The metal was cold and slightly wet under my hands from the residual damp of recent rain. The early morning was dark, the sky the particular deep grey that existed for an hour before genuine dawn, and below us the street was empty.

I turned and reached back through the window for Aria. She came through with the practical competence she had for physical things, one leg first, finding the platform with her foot before committing her weight, then the other leg, then upright beside me with George tucked firmly under her arm.

"Hold the rail," I said.

She put her free hand on the rail we went down.

The first flight was fine. I went first, checking each step, Aria immediately behind me, her small hand on the rail the whole way. The metal stairs made sound with each step, the low resonant clang that fire escapes made, and I was aware of that sound and aware that above us, in the apartment, Levi's father was ringing a doorbell that was not being answered and would shortly move to other methods of gaining entry.

We reached the third floor landing.

The second flight was steeper than the first, the angle sharper, and the rain damp was heavier on this section where the building's overhang had not protected it. I tested the first step with my full weight before committing and it held.

"Watch this section," I said to Aria. "It's slippery."

"Okay," she said.

We went down the second flight more carefully. I was three steps from the bottom when the fire escape ladder, the final extendable section that dropped to ground level, needed to be pulled down. 

I grabbed the release mechanism and pulled and the ladder descended with a sound that was louder than I would have liked, a controlled mechanical clatter that seemed very loud in the stillness of four-thirty in the morning.

I went down the ladder first, then reached up for Aria. She descended with her hand in mine, her feet finding each rung, George somehow still secured under her other arm through all of it.

Her feet hit the pavement.

"Okay," I said. "We walk fast, don't run yet, walking is less noticeable, stay with me."

She nodded as we moved along the side of the building toward the street. The address Xavier had sent was twenty minutes away and I had no car, which meant I needed to get far enough from the building to call a car service without having to give this address as the pickup point.

Three streets. If I could get three streets away we could get a car and be moving before anyone from the building came down looking.

I kept Aria on my left, closest to the buildings, and moved at the pace that was fast without being conspicuous. The street was empty. A single car passed on the road to our left without slowing. The early morning birds had started somewhere above in the trees, the first sounds of the world waking up.

We made the first corner then the second we were on the third street, the pickup point within reach, when Aria's foot caught something on the uneven pavement, one of the lifted sections where tree roots had pushed the concrete up over years, and she went down before I could prevent it.

She went down fast and the hand that wasn't holding George shot out to catch herself and hit the pavement with the specific sound and force that meant it had taken the full impact.

"Aria." I was crouching beside her immediately. "Stay still."

She was already sitting up; her right hand was held away from her body with the instinctive movement of someone registering pain but assessing it, which was a quality she had presumably developed from a father who approached injury with practical rather than emotional response.

I took her hand carefully and looked at it in the dim streetlight. The palm and the base of the thumb were scraped, both abraded, bleeding in the thin way that surface wounds bled. 

Not deep, not serious but on her small hand it looked significant and I felt her tense against the pain she was managing.

"It's scraped," I said. "Not deep, you are alright."

"It stings," she said.

"I know. I'm going to help you up and we're going to keep moving."

"Okay," she said.

I helped her up, keeping her scraped hand turned upward and away from contact. She stood, and I could see her processing the pain and setting it aside, which she did with the same directed quality her father used when he was setting something aside in favor of what needed to happen next.

"George?" she said.

The rabbit had landed two feet away. I picked him up and put him back under her uninjured arm.

"Ready?" I said.

"Ready," she said.

We started moving again. I was reaching for my phone to open the car service app when I heard a car slow on the road behind us.

I turned.

A dark vehicle had pulled up to the curb, about fifteen feet behind us, and the engine had cut. It had approached without me noticing, which meant it had been moving slowly before it stopped, which meant it had been following our movement or had positioned itself on this street specifically.

I put myself between Aria and the car immediately when the driver's door opened.

Vanessa got out.

She was dressed in dark clothing, her hair back, and she stood beside the open car door and looked at us across the fifteen feet of pavement with an expression that was entirely closed. 

Not angry, not composed in the usual performative way, just closed like someone who had made a decision and was now in the execution phase of it and had moved past the part where expression was relevant.

Everything in me went cold. I kept myself between her and Aria.

"Vanessa," I said. 

"Whatever you are doing, Aria is six years old. Whatever you have decided to do tonight, she is not part of it."

"I know she's not part of it," Vanessa said. She moved from behind the car door and took two steps toward us. "She will be left here and someone will find her. She is not what I need."

"What do you need?" I asked.

"You're gone," she said simply.