The lake.
The ATV driver slowed them to a stop. Both vehicle engines shut off, leaving the sound of a regular car engine still running. Someone else was here?
Ted was hauled upright and then deposited on the ground. At the edge of the shore, a fishing boat had been dragged onto the sand.
A suited man stood in front of them, the running car behind him.
“We get paid now, right?”
The man sighed. “That was what we agreed. My men will take it from here.”
Two guys rounded the car, and the suited man moved closer to Ted. He leaned down so Ted could make out his face. The suit was a white shirt under a jacket, but Ted saw the badges and emblem there. The familiar face frowned. “Not as satisfying as your brother’s capture. But still necessary.”
Ted stared until his eyes burned.
This was West.
Twenty-nine
The man, obviously West, spoke again, “Now I must leave, and you both are going to die. After all, we can’t have any more loose ends.”
Jess knew then that the clock had nearly run out. If she didn’t move now, she would lose the chance to find out who West actually was. And not only that but take him down in the process.
The only problem was she didn’t know if she could move.
Hoping and praying nobody was watching her where they’d tossed her on the ground, Jess rolled to her back slow and quiet.
She narrowly swallowed her gasp as she saw the man who was West.
Steven Hilden, the Last Chance County fire chief. One of the founders of this town, and probably the last person she would’ve considered to be in the running as West except for that Vietnam photo. Especially given how long he’d been a pillar in this town. Respected. Admired. He was a hero, and yet underneath all that, he had been running a prostitution ring. Among other things.
Anger fueled her muscles. Jess managed to scramble to her hands and knees, and then she launched herself up into a sprint. She raced between Ted—whose hands were tied much the same as hers—and one of the men who had stormed the warehouse.
Both men jumped back.
As she slammed into Steven Hilden, Jess remembered she’d done this more than once the past few days. And it usually wound up hurting.
She really needed a new fighting move.
When she was in her right mind again, she would figure it out. But right now, that thought was quickly followed by the memory of the special agent’s betrayal. How Jenkins had probably called those men in, and Basuto had been shot. If no one knew about that, then her sergeant was probably dead by now.
Hilden fell back and hit the ground. Jess landed with her knees on either side of his ribs. She swung her bound hands from right to left, landing blows across his face. He cried out. “Get her off me!”
Hilden slammed his fists down on her thighs and tried to get a grip on her while she fought him off. Each hit of his closed fists numbed her legs, but she ignored the sensation and lifted her hands to swing at his face again.
“Now!” His gritted teeth flashed in the moonlight. “I said get her off me!”
As she swung her hands, someone behind her said, “That’ll cost you extra.”
Hilden spat blood, trying to get her in the face with it. “Fine!”
She grasped his neck with both hands, grabbing as good of a grip as she could with them taped together. “Where are the girls?” No, that wasn’t the right question. “Where is my sister? Where is Dean?”
Hilden sneered. “The girls? I sold them all weeks ago. Back when Silas Nigelson blabbed about everything, and I had to shut down the entire operation.” He seemed irritated about that.
Strong hands lifted her off him, and Hilden sat up. “I kept one, though. My favorite.”
Given the look in his eyes, Jess could figure out who that was. “Nicole.”
That wasn’t her name, just the name on the fake ID left with her body. A name designed to affect her so much that it threw her off her game.
He laughed as he stood up. The hands that had lifted her off him still gripped her, entirely too tightly, around her ribs. She tried to wiggle out, but the man shifted his hold. His arms banded around her waist, cutting off her air supply as he restricted movement of her diaphragm.
She gasped. “You didn’t need to kill her.”
Hilden laughed. “She had her uses, and then she was useful because she was dead.”
Jess screamed in his face. The guy holding her chuckled.
Ted shifted closer to her shoulder. “Jess, calm down.”
The guy holding her said, “Feisty thing, isn’t she?”
Hilden shook his head. “You can’t have her.”
The guy grunted. His arm around her rib cage didn’t loosen.
She figured that meant they were going to die. “Did you already kill my sister?” She didn’t want to think that life might not be worth living if Ellie wasn’t around anymore. It felt as though it would be that bad. But it would also mean that he’d won, which was the last thing she wanted to happen.
When he said nothing, she began to struggle once more against her captor.
Ted glanced between her and Hilden. “You don’t have to do this. Whether or not you’re West doesn’t matter. There’s no evidence yet, just our word against yours. Tell us where they are, and then walk away. Because when the feds bring down Pierce Cartwright, you aren’t going to want to be anywhere near him—or whatever he has to say about you.”
Hilden wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. Jess saw blood reflected in the moonlight. Why were they here? She didn’t want to consider the fact Dean and Ellie might be already dead—drowned at the bottom of the lake—or the fact she and Ted might be next.
“Shame.” The guy with his arm banded around her lifted her off her feet.
She kicked at his shins and tried to pry his fingers from her. Ted stepped closer toward her. Probably intending to intervene, but he was intercepted by the other man who brought the butt of his gun down on Ted’s temple.
Ted, the man and friend she had so much feeling for, crumpled to the ground. Jess gasped, renewing her fight to get away from these men.
The man who had knocked out Ted turned to her. “Is that how it’s going to be with you, too?”
Jess deflated, her legs dangling down. But she didn’t stop trying to push the man’s arm away from her waist. She was never giving up that struggle so long as there was even a slim possibility Dean and Ellie were still alive.
“Where are they?”
Hilden shook his head and looked at the men. “Take them away.”
She had never heard him speak that way. As though he was Lord of the Manor, not a local hero who had saved so many when their property caught on fire. This man was someone she had never met before. A total stranger who used others, who made arrangements with Pierce Cartwright, and tossed precious life away as though it was garbage.
The man holding her adjusted his grip. One arm migrated up and his fingers clasped her neck, his other arm still holding her waist. The second man looked on, as did Steven Hilden. Black spots picked at the edges of her vision as she began to pass out.
After a minute or so, darkness swallowed her. The last thing she recalled was the feeling of being lowered to the ground.
Sometime later, Jess blinked. A moan escaped her lips. Her throat felt like the worst strep infection she’d ever experienced. She tried to swallow, but her neck was so swollen it was hard to make her throat move.
Finally, the room came into view as did her realization of why pain sliced through her head. On the ceiling, a bright-white bulb illuminated what appeared to be a small room, probably no bigger than a prison cell.
She managed to push herself to a seated position and realized she was all wet. Around her was a puddle…of lake water. Why was she wet?
Ted lay on the other side of the room, facing away from her with his face to the wall.
“Ted.” Not much noise emerged from her mouth,
but she managed to croak out his name again.
He didn’t move or even stir.
Across the other side of the room, the door was closed. The top half had a window with clear glass, and the door handle seemed simple enough. Jess just had to get up off the floor.
She didn’t think too much about the bruises in various places as she crossed the bare floor, one hand braced against the wall as she clambered over Ted’s foot. Her injured arm had blood soaking through the bandage, and she didn’t even want to think about the staple that had been put in her head.
None of that mattered now.
Wherever they were, this was where West had intended for them to be. The place they would die. Or was some other horrible thing going to happen to them, as Pierce had intended for Kaylee only a few weeks ago before he was arrested?
Things were such a mess.
She was supposed to have brought Pierce in, or at least told the FBI where to find him. She was supposed to have given her intel on West’s identity to Conroy. Instead, she’d only managed to identify West after coming face to face with him on that shore. Not because of great police work.
The lake. Was that where they were now? She couldn’t think of any buildings close by that were set up like this. Kind of like a school. That was what the finish reminded her of. Stark and barren like a place of learning, supposedly designed to inspire creativity in young minds.
Jess halted her progress and took a breath. She was officially losing her mind. Why else would she be having crazy thoughts about schools right now?
Finally, at the door, she shoved down the handle. Part of her expected it to be locked. That there would be no way to get out of this tiny room. Sure enough, the handle didn’t go all the way down, and the door didn’t open. But she was still dressed for work, even if she was all wet, so Jess lifted her foot and kicked beside the door handle. The flimsy lock broke, and the door swung out with a new dent where the sole of her boot had hit the wood.
If they planned for her and Ted to be stuck in this room, then it was a bad plan.
She glanced out into the hallway and didn’t see anyone. The long corridor was a lot like the room they were in, with bare bulbs hanging down every few feet. Now it reminded her of an underground room or basement. Maybe even at the local high school. Could that be where West had taken Dean and Ellie?
She turned back to Ted and wandered to him, crouching to gently shake his shoulder. “Wakey wakey, sleepyhead. Time to get out of here.”
She tugged on his arm, halfway pulling him to a seated position, as he blinked and came awake.
“Whoa.” He glanced around, his body jerking away from hers as he pulled his arm from her grasp. “Where are we?”
“I have no idea.” She straightened out of her crouch, which was preferable to falling over, and leaned against the wall. “Are you okay?”
“No.”
She wasn’t either.
Ted stood.
“Need help?” She waved a hand at the door and started to explain what she’d done, but instead realized something. “They cut me loose.” Her hands were no longer bound together.
“Me too.”
“Why would they do that?” She shook her head, her brain not able to compute any of this. It barely made sense. “We were by the lake. Where are we now?”
Ted frowned. He reached up with his good hand and swiped the hair back from his forehead. “We should look around.”
She nodded. “See if Dean and Ellie are here.”
He returned her nod but didn’t look at her. Ted went first toward the door even though she was the cop. She considered again how different he seemed now. Still aloof, though. He had plenty of secrets. Things he held close to his chest. And maybe that would be true of him always. She didn’t know.
Jess followed him into the hall. “Which way?”
At one end was a closed door, a dark LED display above it. The kind found on the subway in New York that told you what the next stop was. The other end was a similar door, but with no sign. Down the hall were several doors like the one they’d escaped.
Jess looked in each window, separating from Ted so they could check each one quickly. Just in case.
“Over here.”
She raced to him, stumbling as she nearly tripped over her feet. Ted caught her. A second later, he stepped away, letting go of her arms as though she’d burned him.
Jess tried to brush off the hurt. “What is it?”
“In there.”
She peered in the window, the room much like where she’d regained consciousness. “Dean.” She touched the glass. “Ellie!” Jess slammed her palm on the window, over and over. Neither looked up.
Dean had blood on his forehead. Ellie lay collapsed over him.
“Wake up, Ellie!” She turned to Ted, her eyes filling with tears. “What is this place?”
A frown crinkled his brow. “I think I know.”
Thirty
Jess didn’t respond. She slammed her hand against the glass, over and over, while Ted’s thoughts spun on this whole thing.
His part in it.
His father.
The founders.
Ted couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid, when he and everyone else considered him so smart. The truth was far from that.
Ted turned to survey the hallway around him. Renovations had been done at some point in this structure’s history, but the whole thing—the underlying construction—was from several decades ago.
Given the problem they’d been having with the founders the past few months, it jived. There had been a dead man not much younger than he was, discovered by Ellie and buried in a cave in the mountains. Now this? Some kind of holding facility. A place the founders had constructed. Or placed here. Could be a shipping container—or several, welded together.
His brain spun, working out the problem like trying to unravel a tangled wire.
“Did you find anything?”
He turned to find the desperation in Jess’s tone matched on her face. “Like what?”
“A way to get them out of there.” She motioned to the door.
“Can’t you kick it open?” He figured there wasn’t much point finding a way out if there was no way to get in the room to Dean and Ellie in the first place.
“I did the last door. You do this one.”
“Why are we arguing about this? You’re the one who wants to get in there.” He could feel the anger burn in his stomach. Or maybe it was fear. He couldn’t tell.
“Because you don’t?”
Ted started to speak, then stopped himself. He turned away to walk down the hall. Even though the act of moving farther from his brother felt like his heart was being torn from his chest.
Her footsteps padded on the floor as she scurried after him. She grabbed his arm and spun him back around to her. “What is your problem?”
“Right now, you are.”
“We have to get in there.”
He shook his head. “We need a way out.”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “But we also need to see if they’re even okay. For all we know…”
He finished for her. “They could be dead.”
She sucked in a breath.
“You think I don’t know that? They might not be passed out. They could already be dead. The fact we can’t see any blood means nothing. We have no idea what was done to them, or why we’re here.”
“Ted—”
“Don’t.” He shook his head, not interested in the softening of her features or the fear still in her eyes. “Find a way in there. I’ll find a way out. If we split up the tasks, we’ll be able to do both, rather than making all this take longer.”
Between the two of them, they would be able to do this, right? To divide and conquer made so much more sense than Ted going in there to face his brother’s lifeless body. He’d rather work to find a way out before someone came to stop them.
“Why are you convinced he’s dead?”
Ted wasn’t going
to touch that one.
“I’m not giving up hope. I’m sorry you have.” She turned away.
Now that he didn’t have to maintain his composure because she wasn’t looking at him anymore, he let the façade fall. Tears filled his eyes, blurring the image in front of him. Jess trying the handle. Her backing up, a limp obvious in her stride.
She lifted her foot and kicked the door beside the handle. It didn’t open. She sucked in a breath and let out some frustration in a groan.
Ted turned away and went to look in some of the other rooms. They were decorated as sparsely as the one he had woken up in. No phone. Or a computer or even a keypad. Not even some kind of control panel.
He needed a network closet. But he still wouldn’t have access to it if he didn’t have a device to hook in with. He would have no access to the computer system that worked this place—if that was even how it had been set up.
Though, he figured he knew how it worked. Of all people, he knew.
Still, how was he supposed to figure out where this facility was located—and how to get them out—if he couldn’t hook into the control system? The whole place might look like a seventies throwback bunker, but there had been some upgrades to security and the HVAC system. At least as far as he could tell from a quick survey.
Jess grunted loudly. At the same time, he heard wood splinter. Ted spun around just as she headed into the room.
A second later, Jess called out, “They’re alive, just unconscious.”
Ted sagged against the wall, and a wave of relief rolled over him. His brother wasn’t dead. As he gasped through that realization, he gave himself a minute before moving into the room after her.
Jess lifted Ellie from his brother and laid her back on the floor. Ted knelt by Dean’s elbow and felt for the pulse himself. A faint but steady beat thrummed under his fingertips. Ted closed his eyes and took a minute to just feel the sensation.
“They look beat up, but okay.” Jess was breathy with relief. “Maybe it’s better if they don’t wake up right now. I hurt enough, and I didn’t go through half of what it looks like they did.”
Expired Game (Last Chance County Book 5) Page 19
