She looked down. An antique syringe jutted from her ribs, its glass tube still intact, but the metal handle was corroded, stained a molten brown.
Her body reacted instantly, skin and tissue trying to knit around the intrusion. The sensation was like a thousand tiny blades slicing her open, over and over. Nothing had been injected, but the needle had slipped between her ribs, puncturing her lung. A sharp burn raced up her spine. Then came the dizziness—violent, disorienting—tilting the world off its axis.
Gravity seized her, doubling its grip. Her limbs turned leaden. Panic clawed at her chest, each breath a ragged, tearing gasp. Darkness bled into the edges of her vision. Withevery heartbeat, something deeper spread—venom or pain, she couldn’t tell—slowing her thoughts, dragging her down.
She staggered. Then crumpled.
Jonah and Kavya both called out for her, but Mrs. Ulerik only laughed.
“Oh, don’t worry about her.” She clucked her tongue. “I put a pretty heavy dose of lily of the valley in her tea. She’s halfway to the stars.”
Ruby crawled on her hands and knees toward the coffee table, her chest rattling with each shallow breath. She couldn’t focus on the chaos overhead, only on staying awake long enough to heal. Flipping onto her back beneath the table, she squeezed her eyes shut and groped for the needle embedded in her side.
The sharp tang of blood filled her mouth as she bit her tongue, using the pain to stay conscious. She yanked the syringe out with a quick pull and let it drop onto the carpet. A wave of nausea hit. She rolled to her side, vomiting yellow liquid onto the pristine white carpet.
Above her, Jonah argued with Manny while Kavya mocked Mrs. Ulerik.
“You’d be a lot more threatening without the orthopedic shoes.”
Ruby pushed herself back to her stomach, dragging her body across the unsoiled carpet toward the edge of the couch.
Mrs. Ulerik had pinned Kavya against the door, pressing a rusted surgical saw to her throat. Manny still aimed the gun at Jonah, but somehow they had switched positions—Jonah now faced the living room, while Manny stood facing the kitchen and the front door.
“No one knows we’re here,” Jonah bargained. “You can still let us go.”
Manny shook the gun. “You think I’m stupid? You’ll call the cops the second we’re out of here. I ain’t gonna let anything happen to my momma.”
Jonah frowned. “To your mom?”
“Manny,” Mrs. Ulerik warned, not taking her eyes off Kavya.
Manny snorted. “Don’t play dumb. How d’ya think the kids got the drugs?”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like some second-rate thug,” Mrs. Ulerik sighed. “You grew up in Tribeca, for goodness sake.”
Kavya laughed in the older woman’s face. “New York to small-town drug dealing is quite a shift.”
Mrs. Ulerik’s lips tightened. “My ex-husband was a terrible financial adviser. Wouldn’t take my advice, despite my University of Phoenix degree, and he graduated from a community college, for goodness sake. He shorted a stock, got arrested, and left me with his debts. So, I found a market here—and I invested.” She adjusted her grip on the saw. “I would’ve let you leave, but thanks to Manny’s little confession, I can’t.”
Ruby struggled to her knees, her hand blindly grasping something from the coffee table. A siren wailed in the distance. Manny cursed, finger wrapping around the trigger.
“I’m sorry dear.” Mrs. Ulerik crooned to Kavya. “It’s nothing person—”
Kavya didn’t let her finish. She slammed her elbow into Mrs. Ulerik’s ribs and twisted hard, knocking the saw sideways.
Ruby chunked the item in her hand. The frog mug shattered against Mrs. Ulerik’s forehead, cooled tea seeping into the spots where ceramic shards embedded into her flesh. She screamed, a gunshot rang through the room, glass shattered behind Ruby, and Kavya dropped to the floor. Jonah wrestled the gun from Manny’s grip, flinging it across the room. Ruby staggered to her feet.
“Fuck you, dude!” Manny yelled. Jonah flipped him onto his back. His breath left him with a wheeze as he hit the hallway tiles.
The sirens grew close, doors slamming and feet treading across the grassy front lawn.
“How did they know where we were?” Jonah asked, turning Manny onto his stomach and pressing his knee into the younger man’s back.
“Oh shit,” Kavya muttered.
“Police!” Boomed from outside. “Open up.”
“We’re still live.” Kavya gestured toward the camera sitting on the coffee table.
