The Gamble (The Gamble Series Book 1)

by Kathryn Jacques

  “What? No, I just mean-”

  “Kelsey,” Randolph calls, his voice soothing, the way one would talk to a child. “You have to if we have any hope of getting out of here.”

  “If it’s so easy then why can’t I just try to throw the knife to one of you?” I snap angrily.

  “Because there are about fourteen reasons why that’s a bad idea,” Jax retorts. “One, what if you miss? Two, what if it hits the floor and makes too much noise? Three-“

  “Ok, shut up! Then why couldn’t one of you have stitched a knife into your own clothing before you came waltzing down here.”

  “I do not waltz,” Jax replies with an indignant grunt.

  “We did,” Randolph says, a note of exasperation in his voice. “But apparently that red-haired moron, Elijah, was far more thorough in his search of us than of you. Guess he underestimated a girl, so you are now our fall back plan.”

  “Technically the fireworks were our fall back plan,” mutters Jax. “But since Charlie vetoed that, again, this is now what we call making it up as we go along.”

  I slump back against the wall staring at the tiny yet lethal object in my palm. I go to respond, to tell them we have to come up with a different plan but then I look up and see a thin, pale face held tight to the bars down the hall. Nadia watches me, her dark eyes wide and filled with tears, her lower lip quavering. I hadn’t realized we’d woken her up.

  “Kelsey, please. I don’t want to stay here anymore. I want to see the sun again.”

  I feel my heart wrench for the child and suddenly I am reminded of a girl who, not but a few weeks ago, was fully prepared to kill Wyatt Walker for a chance to see the sky.

  I’ll do it. I’ll kill whoever I must to make sure Nadia can see the sun one more time.

  * * *

  It’s several hours before I hear anyone enter the basement. As the sound of boots falls on the floor, an unknowing victim walking closer and closer, I feel my hands begin to tremble and my heart pound blood faster past my ears. Despite the coolness of the cell, sweat drips down the back of my neck.

  I draw the knife from my back pocket and flip open the largest blade with a quiet click. It’s only three inches long, but Jax has assured me that if I aim for the throat, three inches is all I need. Still, my nerves are on edge because I can’t believe what I’m about to do. I’ve begun to wonder if I ever planned to actually shoot Wyatt back in the O.Z. because even when I held the gun on him, I never felt this awful and guilty. I am going to willingly take a life; murder someone who just happens to be on rotation to bring me a meal. Wrong place, wrong time.

  As their shadow falls over the bars of my cell, I feel like I am going to throw up or pass out or possibly even both. I remind myself this isn’t just for me. It’s for Jax and Randolph and Nadia. Their lives rely on this as much as my own. It doesn’t really make the gnawing guilt go away though.

  A woman stands outside the cell. The same one who told me I stand on the losing side. It should make me feel better since I don’t really like her, but instead it makes me feel worse, as if fate pushes me to commit this crime and be happy about it.

  “Ready for dinner, Sub?” she jeers, balancing the tray of food on her raised knee while unlocking the gate.

  I rise to my feet, concealing the weapon behind my back. I need her to move closer because if I move first, she might figure out I’m up to something.

  Entering the cell, she turns her back to place the food down. My moment has arrived.

  Before I can rethink or second guess my decision, I take two long steps forward and jam the point of the blade into the left side of her neck directly below her ear. It squishes through the skin and she lets out a cry. I twist the blade, draw it farther along her throat and yank it out, the way Jax told me to. A spurt of warm blood splashes across my face and I drop the knife in shock, reeling backward and wiping furiously at the blood as though it’s acid. The hot, sticky liquid covers my hands and my cheeks and my clothing. I rub at it frantically, but only manage to further smear it across myself. Panicked squeals build in my throat and I’m forced to stifle them back down.

  The woman clutches at her neck as blood spurts around her fingers in a steady pulse, cascading down her body and suddenly she falls sideways, crashing to the floor. A bright red puddle floods around her, escaping her body as though it has been held captive all this time. Flattening myself against the wall, I can only stare in horror at what I’ve done.

  She reaches for me, trying to speak but she’s slowly drowning in her own blood so the only sound she can emit is a wet gurgle, bubbles of blood frothing on her lips. The color drains from her skin, turning it grey and dull, the color of a corpse.

  I have to go. I have to take her keys and rescue everyone else before the League finds out. Compelling my unsteady legs to move forward, I crouch beside the dying woman. Her eyes are already glazed over, her final breaths short and choking while she trembles and twitches. I avert my gaze, tears blinding my vision as I reach into her pocket and grab the keys, sticky with her blood drying on them.

  As I pull away, a sharp pain stabs through my right side. I stagger backward clutching at my abdomen as a wet warmth spreads through my fingers.

  The woman takes her final desperate inhale and then her entire body falls limp. Something tumbles from her hand and I realize it’s the knife. Moving my own hand, I look down. A six-inch slit runs the length of my right side just below my ribcage. It’s deep and the blood flows steadily, dripping onto the floor. So much blood everywhere… her blood… my blood… blood, blood, blood until it is all I can see, the world nothing but a nightmarish, crimson ocean.

  I laugh at the irony, at my own stupidity and at the laws of destiny that have punished me for murdering a woman. In her last moments, she found her revenge the only way possible. Biting my tongue, I force my fingers to examine the wound. It’s nearly three inches deep, flaps of jagged skin hanging loose around it. Slumping against the wall, I slide to the floor.

  In a matter of weeks, I’ve been shot, stabbed, beaten, kidnapped, strangled, starved, imprisoned and watched three people die, among God knows what else at this point. I can’t do this. I don’t even care anymore. I should have never left ROC. What good did it do? None of this was supposed to happen, I was supposed to die. It was supposed to be simple. Very, very simple.

  I’m so tired, the kind that lives in my bones, making it impossible to continue because I have nothing left. I am tired of running and tired of fighting and tired of wanting to be free so damn bad I’m willing to die for it… willing to kill for it. I don’t deserve freedom.

  But then I think of Jax. Even now, he calls my name, unable to mask the concern in his voice because they wait for me to rescue them after they came to rescue me. I made a promise that I would watch over him. Like I told my father and the Gendarme Commander, I keep my word.

  “I’m doing this for you Daniel,” I whisper. Gritting my teeth, I climb to my feet. I’ll need stitches, but that isn’t a possibility right now, so I take the knife and cut off the bottom of my shirt, wrapping it around my waist to stifle the flow. Shrugging on the leather jacket, I lock the burning pain into the back of my mind and step into the hall.

  Jax and Randolph wait several cells down, faces smashed against the bars in attempts to see what happened. I rush forward and unlock both their doors, trying to ignore the splashes of bright red staining my hands.

  “What took so long?” demands Jax as Randolph asks, “are you bleeding?”

  “It’s her blood,” I say, only a partial lie. “And it took so long because I’ve never killed someone before.”

  “Let’s just go,” urges Randolph, guiding us down the hall.

  “Wait,” I say. “The others. We can’t leave them.”

  “Oh, yes we can,” says Jax. “We have no idea how many more are down here, where they’ve been put or how long we have until someone starts to wonder why that woman we killed is missing.”

  “But-“ I start to prote
st, but Randolph cuts me off.

  “Jax is right. We can’t risk getting caught again. There’s no backup plan to the backup plan.”

  “Then we’re taking Nadia.” I move as fast as the wound in my side will allow until I’m in front of her cage. She’s sits on the floor, her back propped against the far wall.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I tell her. Her face breaks into a wide smile, eyes sparkling in a way I haven’t seen yet. The joy that overflows inside me overrides the pain of my injury and even the guilt that I am now a murderer.

  Unlocking her cell, I fling open the door and she hurries forward, wrapping her thin arms around my waist. As she accidently hits the gash, a distressed squeak escapes my lips as white dots prance in front of my vision. I clamp my hand over my mouth, but it’s too late. Wide-eyed, Nadia backs away as though she’s done something wrong.

  With three long strides, Jax is beside me, drawing aside the jacket and lifting my shirt just enough to expose the wound.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Just now. I dropped the knife and when I bent to grab her keys, the woman did it.”

  Gently sliding down the blood soak piece of linen I had tied around myself, Jax and Randolph share worried sideways glances.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Jax states, as if I haven’t noticed. “And you were already in pretty pathetic shape.”

  “Wow, thanks, but I’ll be fine,” I say, even though I feel ill and a little lightheaded and all I want to do is just sleep.

  Randolph looks at me with uncertainty. “We have to travel five miles to the meeting point. It’s going to take nearly two hours through the woods. Do you think you can make it?”

  I notch my chin higher. “I don’t really have a wealth of options here.”

  “Then let’s go,” Jax says, leading us to the stairs.

  “Not that way!” cries Nadia in fear. “That’s where they always come from.”

  “She’s right,” I say. “That way will just lead us up to the main halls. We’ll never make it.”

  Randolph rubs at his stick-straight hair and I take note of the black and purple bruise on his forehead from Ashlynn’s attack. “So how do we get out? And keep in mind we are completely unarmed.”

  “You all didn’t think this rescue plan through really well, did you?” I ask.

  “Not like we had a whole lot of time, or any idea what we were walking into,” Jax grumbles. “Honestly, I’m impressed we’ve made it this far.”

  Nadia looks around, at first, I think it’s because she’s scared that someone will come and find us, but then I realize the little gears in her brain are working overtime.

  “I think there’s another exit that way.” She points the opposite direction down the hall. It’s dark and we can’t see the end, or even how long it is. “Sometimes I see people come back from that end. I think there’s a door that goes outside.”

  Sharing a quick glance with Randolph and me, Jax shrugs his shoulders. “Might as well listen to the kid. At this point, there’s a fifty-fifty shot we either escape or we die.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Randolph leads, I follow with Nadia, who grips my hand so tightly she might actually break something, and Jax brings up the rear. The only sounds are our muffled footfalls while the occasional bulb makes our shadows grow across the soiled cinderblock walls.

  Reaching the end of the hall, we can only turn right, and then only left and we find ourselves at a large metal door. Randolph stops, looking questioningly to Jax. Nadia hides behind me, her face pressed against my lower back and her fingers woven into my shirt.

  “Ready?” Randolph asks.

  “We have a child, an injured Sub, no weapons, no back up and no idea what is on the other side of that door,” Jax replies. “Of course, we’re ready.”

  I can’t stop the thin smile that sneaks over my lips at his unwavering confidence. Randolph rolls his eyes, shakes his head and presses on the metal bar running across the back of the door. It clicks and then swings outward to reveal another hall mostly made of concrete with tiny skylights cut into the ceiling.

  Jax points at the overhead windows displaying the night sky. “At least it’ll conceal us better, but it’ll make it really hard finding our way to the house.”

  Flipping my head left and right, I examine both directions. “Which way?”

  Jax and Randolph look at each other and then down the opposite ends of the corridor, Jax chewing on his bottom lip in thought. “Let’s say left.”

  “Is that an educated guess?” asks Randolph. “Or are we still making this up as we go along?”

  “Don’t ever say our life is boring.”

  Despite the concrete, it’s noticeably warmer up here. I can feel drops of sweat slip down my neck, the leather jacket only making me hotter.

  No one makes a sound as we creep forward, sticking tight to the wall. I continually glance over my shoulder, convinced we are being followed though no one ever appears.

  We reach a sharp turn in the hall. Jax lifts a fist to halt everyone, then as silent and graceful as his wolf, he shifts forward to peek around the bend. Straightening, he shakes his head.

  “Two people. Man and a woman. Man is armed.”

  “Guards?” Randolph questions.

  “Don’t think so. They’re just talking like they randomly ran into each other.”

  “Can we go another way?” I ask.

  “We could. But they’re standing right outside the door to what looks like a parking garage.”

  “And you didn’t think that was important to tell us first?” demands Randolph in irritation.

  Jax lifts a dark eyebrow. “If we can’t get past these two people, whether there’s a way out or not is largely irrelevant.”

  My right fist opens and closes. Sometimes I really just want to slug him.

  Thinking for a moment, Jax surveys the area around us. A pile of rotting wooden crates sits ten feet away, long forgotten. Inspecting them, a sly smile spreads over his lips. Reaching into the mass, he produces a rusted crowbar. “Perfect. Count to five and then follow me.”

  “Wait, what are you-“ I start to say, but he’s already gone, marching around the corner of the corridor with steps so quiet, I can’t hear him at all.

  I have no idea what’s about to happen, but whatever does we’ll need to move fast. I scoop Nadia into my arms and settle her on my left hip, clamping my jaw as the skin around my wound rips even further at the strain. Blood has soaked my right pant leg and the room spins in circles. Or maybe I’m the one spinning. I have no idea. I remind myself have to hold it together. We’re almost free. I can make it.

  “Four, five,” mutters Randolph and we step around the bend in time to see Jax raise the crowbar. He brings it down on the back of the man’s head. With a sickening crunch of busted skull, the man flops forward face down on the ground.

  The woman doesn’t even have time to scream before Jax smacks her across the side of the face with the metal rod. She crumples to the ground in a heap, the left side of her face dented in and her eyes vacant and lost.

  I know they are both dead, there’s no question in my mind, but that isn’t what has frozen my feet in place. I stare at Jax in horrified shock. He didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate, not even for a moment, as though he swatted a bug instead of killing two people. And he still stands there at the opening of the doorway, the crowbar in his hand, shiny with fresh blood, a self-assured, collected expression across his beautiful face.

  He’s killed before. That much is undeniable. The question now becomes, how many times? How many times does it take before you no longer think about what you’re doing?

  “Kelsey!” Randolph hisses, already halfway down the hall and motioning for me. I blink as if disturbing a dream. Holding tighter to Nadia, whose round eyes are clouded with tears that she tries to battle away, I press ahead. We skirt around the bodies, me blocking Nadia’s view with my body, and then we enter a huge parking garage.

&nbs
p; Vines crawl and weave their way up the cement support beams. A stairwell stands across from us with a thick tree growing upward through the tunnel, destroying more than half the stairs. Cracked and crumbling pavement coats the surface of the lot. An “Enter” sign hangs sideways, swaying in a slight breeze. Glancing up, I see that the structure rises at least six more stories, but the top level has caved in, taking part of the north side of the garage with it.

  It’s so dark, I can only barely make out the shapes of more old cars scattered throughout the space. I wonder what happened to make so many people just abandon their vehicles. Were they left behind when one of the bombs hit? There’s so much I don’t know about this world, so many things I didn’t want to believe or accept or even acknowledge. I’ve begun to realize I can’t hide my head in the sand anymore. There are truths I need to face if I want to survive up here.