Everything froze in that instant, just stopped exactly where it was. My heart didn’t beat, my lungs didn’t expand. The gun tapped on the window again. A voice said, “Get out.” The ominous clank, clank set everything back into motion. In fast-forward. A fifty-foot roller coaster drop, like someone pulled my blood and guts out through my nose and left a gaping chasm of nothingness in my stomach. “What do we do?” I asked. “We get out, I guess.” Henry’s voice shook. I hadn’t expected him to be as scared as I was. He seemed to know what he was doing in every situation, so to hear him as shaky as me made it somehow worse. If he was scared, we were screwed. My hands trembled, and I fumbled with the door handle. Hot, heavy air poured in through the open door, but my blood still ran ice cold. The seat belt, which I had forgotten, trapped me, so I reached down to unlatch it. “Hands!” the guy with the gun barked. My hands flew up. “Seat belt.” A dry mouth and a throat closed in fear made it nearly impossible to get the words out.
