I whispered.
Henry's fingers were busy. "I'm telling Alex to call the police," he whispered back, hands visibly fumbling.
"Who's there?" Warwick called out. Henry and I froze, peering back through the gap.
He stood up, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows. A gritty sponge dripped dirty water from his hand.
"I know someone is there, I heard you." His voice wavered.
"What do we do?" I whispered frantically. For once, Henry looked scared. The color washed out of his face, leaving his skin gray. His fear worried me most of all.
Warwick started advancing to where we were, hiding behind the flimsy shelving.
"Just let me think for a second," Henry whispered, squeezing his eyes shut.
"We don't have a second!" I said through gritted teeth. I looked around the area we were in. Diagonal to us was a stack of large, rolled up tarps in a wire bin.
It was only a matter of moments before Warwick reached us. Chlorine stung my nose as I breathed rapidly. It was either there or nothing, as I couldn't see anywhere else the two of us could even try to hide.
"Over there," I mouthed, and ran and dove underneath the stacks. Henry followed, and we shimmied into the space, sitting against the wall.
"I'm going to find you," Warwick called out. "I know you saw me. And the girls. Sorry to say that means I'm going to have to shut you up. For the greater good."
We watched as he reached into his pants pocket and retrieved a small gun, which glimmered in the faint, grimy light. My stomach dropped and I swallowed hard.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my chin down towards my hammering heart. I never would have imagined Warwick being anything but kind. He was the person who performed magic tricks with decks of cards and pulling quarters out of my ear.
He passed the stack of tarps that protected us. He kept talking conversationally, as if he were lecturing us on Abraham Lincoln instead of being caught trying to hide a couple of rotting corpses.
"The girls won't tell anyone. They're dead. Funny thing about being dead. It makes it so you can't tattle." He continued to stalk the area, peeking into shelves and around items, and out the door.
"I think he's in the other room," I whispered after a few minutes, my voice shaking so much I could barely articulate the words.
"How do we get out of here?" Henry asked.
"I don't know," I said, my mind racing with possibilities, all tumbling over one another so I couldn't separate them into a coherent plan.
"We should just wait," Henry said.
"No, I'll go look and see if there's a way out," I said firmly. I started to get up.
"Are you nuts?" he asked, pulling the sleeve of my shirt, hard. His eyes were wild. "He'll kill you, Ariel!"
"Me doing something is a better option than us staying here and waiting to be killed," I said, and yanked my sleeve out of his grasp. "And besides, he's my dad's best friend. He won't kill me. The police are on their way, but who knows how long it will take for them to get to us?"
Bravely or stupidly, maybe a mix of both, I crept out, and around the shelving, leaving Henry protesting behind me.
I crept down the row of crowded pool supplies, looking back and forth. I tried everything I could to squash the rising fear within my chest. Panic would only make things worse. I'd seen him go through the door ahead of me, but I didn't know where he was looking, and how much time I had. I couldn't see any other doorways. If only there was a window or a vent shaft...
"Gotcha!" Warwick said, catching me by my hair as I shrieked. He had been hiding in a shallow space in the wall between two stacks of bromine buckets. My eyes bugged out of my head as my vision shook, every cell inside me screaming at me that I was trapped and disaster awaited me.
"I should have known," he said, shaking his head and laughing grotesquely. "Daddy's little girl."
"You're Hugh's friend," I said, my breath hitching in my chest. My scalp stung as he continued to yank at the roots of my hair. It felt like he was pulling clumps of it out. "Doesn't that matter? I thought you cared about me."
The most horrible, twisted look appeared on his face.
"Friend? He's on the other side in this. There are no friends, when the Master comes to earth. Hell