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CHAPTER 24
Jade's POV
I could hardly breathe and my legs were going numb, but I wasn't slowing down. Mr. Valentine was like thirty years older than me, certainly I could keep up longer than he could.
Beck had fallen far back behind me, along with Tori, André and Robbie.
We must've run at least four blocks, and I still had no idea if it was going to end at any point. Mr. Valentine would make random turns, forcing us down dark alleys but with always a way to keep track of him.
Then up ahead I him slowing down significantly, and swerving into the empty parking lot of an abandoned hotel that was scheduled for demolition any day now. The outside of the building was plastered with caution signs to not enter, that the structure was still very unstable, but of course, Mr. Valentine ignored all the crap and leapt over the fences through the half-boarded up entrances.
I stopped, bending over and putting my hands on my knees, breathing deeply.
"Jade…" Beck cried hoarsely when he finally caught up, "what the heck was that for?"
"Mr. Valentine went into that building," I stated calmly.
"How do you know it was him?"
"I've seen him in that getup before. We have to go and find him. He lied. He's not doing a job interview; either that or he got back early. Beck, this is the chance we've been waiting for ever since that day in Lane's office. It's now or never."
Tori, André and Robbie came up, each of them looking like they were about to have a heart attack.
"Mr. Valentine's in the building," I repeated. "We'll need to split up into groups if we want to corner and capture him, okay? Beck, you go with Robbie and Tori go with André."
"And you're going to be by yourself?" Beck was clearly not happy about that idea.
"Yes. I can handle myself."
"He killed Cat, and hurt you once before," Beck said, pulling me into his chest and holding me tightly. "If he kills you…I don't know what I would do without you. Please. Let's just wait for the police to get here, okay?"
"No. This has to be done by us."
"Says who?" André questioned boldly.
"Says me. And if you all want to back out when we've come so far, then so be it. But I'm going in." I pushed Beck away and ran up to what seemed to be the entrance, hopping over the huge cinderblocks and twisting my fingers into the heavily cautioned chain link fence.
Robbie and Beck stood there watching, but after a few seconds they came after me, determined looks on their faces. Good.
"Are you coming or what?" I called to Tori and André for the last time, as I was already on the other side, waiting to get into the building after I was sure they were going to be with me or not.
Tori turned to André. "We have to be the world's stupidest sixteen-year-olds," she muttered as they came over.
"Probably," he replied.
I turned around and ran headfirst into the dusty, dilapidated building.
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Beck's POV
I was still not thrilled in the least that Jade wanted to put herself in such danger. It worried me greatly, but there was no use in arguing. The best I could do now was keep an eye on her.
"We should go this way if Jade went that way," Robbie suggested, pointing towards the left once we had walked through the crumbling entrance. I looked over my shoulder and saw André helping Tori climb down.
"Okay. You lead."
We went deeper into the dark hotel, and I felt like we were in some sort of horror movie. Our steps creaked over the cracked and dusty floorboards, and you could hear the patter of mice and rat scurrying around at our intrusion. I gulped, taking out my phone and using the flashlight app in hopes that we wouldn't find any dead bodies or something.
After some walking around (and learning that the elevators were all out of order, big surprise), Robbie found a set of completely mutilated stairs, with missing steps and broken railings and nails jutting out like spikes. I was extremely hesitant to climbing it up, but he encouraged me and we were on our way.
I don't think I've ever been more afraid in my entire life.
Each room we went through was practically identical: paint peeling off of walls, darker patches on the ground where furniture had once been, shattered mirrors and bathroom appliances ripped right out of their sockets.
"So Beck, what happens if we can find Mr. Valentine?" Robbie asked, breaking the silence as we trudged through piles of random objects.
"I don't know."
"Do you think we should kill him?"
"What?" That was certainly a particularly dark thought coming from the usually timid and shy Robbie, but it was really backing up my former thought of him doing so to Cat.
"Look at what he's done to us. To you and Jade and André and Tori and me. And Cat." Was he being serious? What did jail do to Robbie? For the first time in my life, I was actually listening to him speaking with a rational reason and behavior. Please don't tell me it happened when he was in jail for that one week, which was all my fault.
"You know this necklace Cat gave me?" he continued, pointing to his throat.
"Yeah."
"Well, she said in her letter that if we ever got stuck, this could count as one of the clues." Robbie gestured to the green bolt hanging in the middle.
"But we're not stuck. We've almost figured out the entire thing."
"I know. But I figured out what the clue means, regardless."
"So what does it mean?"
"It points to you and Jade, because you both have a necklace similar to this, except it's gold, right?" He actually smiled at me and I gave him a weird look. "Jade's the leader of our group, and she seems to have been the one to figure out exactly what everything means before anyone else. But I'm not sure of the relation it has with you. Yet. However, I do know for a fact that you're the sent in the evidence to the police that ended up getting me 'arrested.'"
"Hey, about that, I'm so, so, sor—"
"No it's okay. I still don't really understand why you did it. Nor do I want to know. I got out, and that's all that matters, right?"
"Yep."
Robbie smiled again, light glinting off of his teeth as we continued walking through the rooms and searching quietly for the masked killer who could be lurking anywhere.
"Hey, Robbie?" I said finally. I had been thinking about certain things, and now my choice was clear.
"Yeah?"
"If we find Mr. Valentine, you can do the honors."
"Okay."
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Jade's POV
I have to admit, this place was a lot scarier than I originally thought, not that it was a bad thing. I was moving through rusty, jammed doors, peering out the stained windows and stepping across filthy carpets full of dust and mites, hoping that the archaic floors could hold my weight.
Not knowing where Mr. Valentine could be definitely spiked the tension, but I felt good to be 'in the game' again.
Searching up and down the empty halls, locating the unused, now-empty elevator shaft and broken staircases, I was walking down a particular passageway when I heard some noises coming from the very end.
Staying calm, I inched my way towards it. Then I stepped on a board that squeaked very loudly, and I cringed, squeezing my eyes shut. The noise softened to that of a dull whisper, and I ran to the door, ramming my shoulder into the surface, sending it swinging open and I sprawled onto the floor.
But just as I was lying there, something above clattered, and suddenly, I was drenched in what seemed a bucketful of a thick, clear goo.
"Ew!" I complained, feeling it sliding down my hair onto my nice leather jacket. Scooping off portions and trying to throw it onto the floor, I suddenly realized that it looked a lot like the substance that had been on Mr. Valentine's knife, and possibly the poison that had eventually killed Cat.
Don't swallow it, don't let it get in your eyes, or up your nose.
Still, a lot of it had already come into contact with the skin on my face, arms and hands. I tried my best to wipe it off onto the rest of my clothes and fling some of it against the walls of the room. It had no smell, nor did it burn on contact, but then again, it had taken a few weeks for it to settle in before it killed Cat.
Tottering forward with the heavy weight of the liquid, I traveled through more open doors, leaving an obvious trail of white slime behind me.
This is so cool and gross at the same time.
I made sure to keep my sense up, especially on my body where the substance had touched me. Nothing felt weird, or out of order, and that was starting to bother me. Darn, if only Cat had the chance to tell me what it felt like to have poison seeping into your body.
Finally, after walking and limping down many halls, I randomly chose a door and pushed it open, revealing to me a scarcely-furnished room with one window in the corner. The walls were dark gray, and so was the floor, almost as if it had been made out of concrete.
But I stopped in my tracks when I realized there was someone in there.
And it wasn't any of my friends.
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Tori's POV
"I think we should try and find Jade," André said after we had been walking around this abandoned hotel pointlessly for who knows how long.
"Are you sure? Maybe we should just leave her by herself. She seems really determined to face off with Mr. Valentine by herself, if she does manage to find him," I answered.
"But it's not safe for her."
"I don't think it's safety Jade's worried about," I retorted.
"Still. How do we even know that Mr. Valentine is still here? You know this place is scheduled for demolition any day now, and they've probably already wired the place with explosives; we just don't realize it. We should just get out and let the police take care of this." He pulled out his green phone.
"No!" I snatched it out of his hands, hiding it inside my pocket, and he didn't even try to grab it back. "This is our chance to do something right for once, to take revenge for Cat."
"Well, none of us better die doing it. One death is already too much for me to handle."
"Stop being such a downer." I handed him his phone politely and we continued searching around. "Do you think we could find any footprints or anything?"
"This place is already full of them. How do we even know which ones are new or have been sitting here for decades? Speaking of which, do you know what they're going to build in place of this?" André asked as we stepped over a large hole in the middle of the certain room.
"I don't know. What more shopping centers and malls could Hollywood possibly need?"
"Well, if Mr. Valentine's here, maybe he just needs to set the dang place on fire and that'll save them a lot of time and money."
I slapped his shoulder hard. How and why would he be thinking like that at a time like this? If Mr. Valentine did intend on doing that, well, we were all as good as gone and I was not planning on dying anytime soon.
"This has been quite an adventure, hasn't it, though?" he said.
"You bet."
"It all started with a car accident, a house burning down, a second attack, a visit to the hospital, a funeral, some secret visits to an apartment, and now this," André summed it up.
"Pretty much."
"Okay, so what we're doing right now might be pretty stupid, but you have to admit, we're pretty smart if we can figure all of that out in the first place. I mean, look, we even beat the police to it!"
"Yeah. I wonder why my dad was taking so long on it," I said.
"All right, well, let's keep going. Maybe we'll get out of here unharmed. If we're lucky."
"We've gotten lucky this entire time. What could possibly go wrong now?"
Isn't it that whenever someone says 'What could possibly go wrong?' things always do? *HINT HINT*
All right so I kind of left you with three different cliffhangers. Be prepared. IT ALL GOES DOWN TOMORROW.