by Amey Zeigler
Just as the doors open, a man in a brown tux exited.
“Bobby, get them!” Tyrone yelled.
Before she could react, Tyler kicked Bobby, grabbed his doubled body and smashed his face into his knee, shoving him out as he sidled in. Another knife whizzed, nearly hitting Andy as she ducked into the doors.
Bobby struggled to his knees, stopping the doors from closing, grabbing Andy’s leg. Tyler, with a weight and strength advantage, lifted Bobby up as a body shield just as a knife sliced through the air. A sickening thud broke the air. Bobby’s eyes bugged out and blood blossomed on his brown tuxedo. Bobby stumbled to the ground, a knife caught in his back just as the doors closed.
Tyrone’s man stabbed by Tyrone himself.
****
“Uh-oh,” Tyler said, once they started descending. He sat back contemplating what just happened.
Tyler caught his breath while holding his side, blood covering his hand. They were safe. For now.
“The fireman’s key will allow us to go uninterrupted,” Andy said weakly, a pallor creeping over her face.
“Where are we going?” He smiled through a wince. “I told you we should go up, not down.”
“Up? Tyrone was there.”
“But the roof. There are dozens of ways to get off a roof.”
Andy crossed her arms, her lips pale, her body listing toward the wall.
“Okay, basement it is.” He slumped to the floor, holding his side, then sensed the gun on him.
She held the gun firmly toward him. “Who are you?”
“Not who you think.”
“You work for them?” She tossed her head upward.
He glanced sideways at her. “Depends on which ‘them’ you’re referring to.”
“The bad guys?”
“No.”
She held firm.
“I’m a good guy,” he said.
“How can I trust you?”
“You can’t.” His voice softened. “Except you know me, Andy.”
“I don’t think I know you. I know lots of lies about you.”
Even with a gun and him wounded, Andy, in her condition, was no match for him. In a flash, he held her immobilized on his lap. She still had her gun, though, pointed at him. He let her keep it. He had counted its shots. “You’re out of ammo.”
Andy let it drop. “Why did you lie to me? Why do you always lie to me?”
“I couldn’t let you go. You had the entry code. And it’s not every day a witness to a murder of a person of interest falls into your lap.” He cocked his head to the side for emphasis, giving her a half-smile. “Literally.”
Ding. The doors parted, and he leaned on them, holding them open. Andy elbowed him, but he held her firm. “You can let me go now.”
Begrudgingly, he let her go. She stalked out the elevator but before she exited, he grabbed her and passed his hands up her skirt.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“You’ve got something I want.”
“What?”
“The Personal Flotation Device.”
Sighing, Andy flipped up her skirt to reveal the PFD. Tugging on the cord, he propped open the elevator doors as the PFD expanded to fill the gap, preventing them from closing. “That should hold them,” he said as he started down the hall.
“Who do you work for?” she asked.
“Classified information.”
“What do you want?”
“Classified.”
Andy let out an exasperated sigh. Her struggles weakened; she was waning.
“So, what’s your real name?” she asked.
“Classified.”
“Okay, where are you from?”
“Classified, too.”
“Can’t I know anything about you?”
He flashed her a wide grin. “You know I’m hot.”
Andy frowned. “Listen this partnership isn’t going anywhere if all you feed me are lies. Lies, lies. Men are good at telling lies.”
“Sounds like you’ve been hurt.” It was a tease, a jab, but he couldn’t help but probe for information.
“That’s classified,” she said.
“Classified, eh?”
“Yup.”
He snorted and stopped in the hall to face her. “So, it’s okay for you to have classified secrets, but not me.”
“But I don’t lie about mine.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Not like how you lie,” she said.
“What’s wrong with lying?” he asked.
“People hurt others when they lie.”
“Hmmm, not unlike Andy Baker.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her eyes flashed as she faced him.
He gave her a sly, knowing glance.
To his amusement, Andy scrambled to justify herself. “But I have to use my aliases. If not, it is certain danger or death.”
His tone changed, serious now. “Then maybe, maybe you understand,” he said, all playfulness gone, “why I can’t tell you anything.”
“Yes, but it’s different—”
He was dangerously close to her. For once he let his veil slip, the real him showing through. “You’re right. It’s different. They trained me for years, robbed me of my life, any hope of family, made me perceive the world differently. They transformed me into a killing machine.”
Andy faltered as she spoke. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t.” The words tore at him, but he needed to say them, shooting out of him like ammo from AK-47. “When I meet someone, I don’t see a person, Andy. I see a target. There’s a chance I might have to kill one of them. If I have to take some guy out, I can’t wonder if he’s got a family at home. He’s a mark, Andy, like a tin can sitting on a log.”
“I just want to know who you are.”
“I can’t just tell you whatever you want to hear, indulge your curiosity because you want an emotional bond with me. It just isn’t going to happen. You get to know what I want you to know. What they want you to know.”
“They? Who are they? Wait, I know. It’s classified.” Andy didn’t bother waiting for an answer from Tyler. “So, do ‘they’ know about me?”
He nodded, taking her hand, heading down toward the storage room.
“What did you tell them?”
He grinned, giving her a glance from the slit of his eye. “I told them you lie all the time.”
“Not funny.” She weakly hit him on his shoulder, stopping for a breath. Andy paled. “You think I enjoy lying with my body, being so emotionally dishonest? For once I want a guy to wrap his arms around me and love me and whisper in my ear, ‘I love you, Andy.’ Not Gertrude or Mary Lou or Tiffany. I hate living a lie. For once, when I’m with someone, I want there to be complete and utter honesty between us, no lies, no masks, and no aliases. Just pure simple truth.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Not love?”
“Truth is a part of love.”
He faced away from her. “Then I will never know love.”
“You will never let anyone in?”
“How can I? Will you? Will you give up your charade, Andy? For love? Would you give up your life-long goal for it?”
“I would. If I could. Wouldn’t you?”
“I guess my goals are too deeply engrained.” He continued down the hall. The basement was a maze of whitewashed limestone walls. Every doorway was too similar to the next, and last time he was in too much of a hurry to remember specifics.
“Aren’t you lonely?” Andy followed.
His shoulders gave a clipped shrug. “There are plenty of women in my business,” he said, adopting the air of nonchalance.
Andy snorted. “I’m sure there are. But anybody you can trust?”
“I don’t trust anybody.”
“Not even me?”
He grinned and winked. “Especially not you.”
“Have you been lying this whole time?”
“It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?”
�
�Arg, you are so aggravating!”
“Just keep thinking that.”
“Do you even know when you’re lying?”
He stopped. “Does it matter?”
Andy glowered.
“So my name isn’t Tyler.”
“Oh?”
“It’s Axil.”
Andy raised her eyebrows.
“Zane,” he said.
Andy frowned.
“Proctor?” he proffered.
Andy rolled her eyes.
“Granite,” he said with eyes bright, laughing at her frustration. But really, he was trying to keep her mind off the pain.
“Fine, if you won’t tell me, I’ll call you, Angus,” she said, leaning against the wall again.
Lifting his arm, he flexed. “Because I’m so beefy?” He was pleased she smiled.
“It was the name of my dog,” she said. “I bet Angus isn’t from Brooklyn or Kansas, either?”
He carefully weighed his answer, tilting his head to respond. “No, but—”
“I knew it. Liars. Men. All of them.” Her energy ebbed. Her body weakened. The light faded from her eyes.
They needed to stop again. He halted, listening for footsteps. “Nothing I told you was a lie, Andy. I did grow up on a farm, just not in New York or Kansas, then ran away and lived in a rough neighborhood. Made friends with a mentor who taught me how to take the fight externally. Someday, I’ll go after the very people who stole my parents away from me.”
“I’m sorry,” Andy whispered between blanched lips.
“I’m sorry I had to tell you.”
“Your parents are dead?” Her eyes grew heavy.
He hesitated. “Yes.”
Andy sighed. “So why can’t you tell me everything?”
“To protect you. You said yourself it was okay.”
Then he found the door to the storage room.
Chapter Ten
“We got out of there too easily,” Angus-Tyler said as he jimmied the lock with the ice pick. “He let us go.”
Andy shrugged, her body losing blood.
“But I was impressed you had a fireman’s control key so you could override the elevator.”
“Respect the pockets.” She patted her skirt like a zombie.
“Do I even want to know how you secured one of those?” Angus asked.
“Lots of kisses.”
“I’m sure.”
They threaded their way back down through the rows and rows of shelves. Andy’s energy withered with each step.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
Andy nodded, her breath labored. “Just let me rest here for a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute. Tyrone’s men are following the elevators. I’m sure they have realized we are down here.”
Her skirt weighed her down.
“It’s time to nix the skirt,” he said, his voice tense.
“That’s not how I was hoping you’d persuade me out of this.”
Angus smiled. With her arm over his shoulder, they continued on.
Andy continued. “Sorry, but there’s too much we need in here. The dress stays.”
They found the coal chute. Angus pried the door.
“I can’t open it, too many layers of paint.”
“See? Here’s a knife,” Andy slid her hand up her skirt, and handed pocket knife from a pocket.
“Thank you,” Angus said, slicing the layers of paint holding the little door closed.
Angus’s tux clung to him in the moisture. Sweat dampened his shirt and dripped from his brow as he scraped as quickly and as noiselessly as he could. Each stoke pained his wounds.
Trapped. With the knife, he slit the sleeves and up his chest, he ripped his shirt off, leaving a white undershirt, drenched in sweat and blood.
“The lock’s been picked,” a voice called to the other guards. Angus paused. They were closing in. Angus had almost finished the first side.
“I’ll help.” Andy crawled up beside him and commenced on a second side with a flathead screwdriver. Fear and pain flashed in her eyes as she clinched her jaw against it, scraping paint as fast as she could.
The second side finished. One last side.
Andy’s screwdriver slipped in her weakness and caught Angus in the fleshy part behind his pinky, he barely noticed the sting.
“Sorry,” Andy said, slumping to the ground.
“I’ve got this,” he said.
Thankfully, they worked safely in the shadows, but Tyrone’s men would get here eventually.
“Almost there,” he said.
Angus slid his knife in the opening, prying. With a pop, the door swung open.
Angus faced to Andy to celebrate, but she had passed out.
“If I have to carry you up, I’m taking off your skirt. Any objections?” He searched for the buttons.
“This is not how I imagined undressing you for the first time,” he muttered. “And I prefer my women conscious.” He breathed out. “I wish you’d slap me for my impertinence.”
Andy woke while his hands were inopportunely around her thighs, sliding them from her dress, leaving her in a pair of little white shorts and her bodice top. Her lips white, her face wan. “Are you stripping me?”
“You can’t make it up the shaft with your dress on.”
Her pale lips parted. “That sounds really dirty.”
He slid her from the battle array of barbarous cotton candy. He placed her through opened shaft door.
“Can you climb?” he asked.
Barefooted, she hoisted herself up the chute.
“There they are!” Men approached. Shots ricocheted around them.
Angus used the steel door as a shield as the sounds of gunshots rang in his ears. He thrust Andy upward and climbed up himself.
Up the shaft they climbed, Andy’s head throbbed. She was grateful to still have her LED light hanging around her neck, illuminating the way as she held to the edges of the chute.
“I keep slipping on dust,” she said.
“Don’t worry I’m behind you,” Angus said.
The door at the top had to be forced open. Andy enjoyed the rush of cold fresh air even if her dizziness increased.
The little doorway allowed them passage to a small landing, the river churning below. “Now what?” Andy asked.
Darkness surrounded them. Tyrone’s men scouting the perimeter of the building limited their options. Men shook the metal as they scaled the chute below.
“Trapped,” he said.
Suddenly, a flashlight beamed on them and a voice yelled, “There!”
Andy didn’t have time to shield her eyes to confront their accuser.
“Jump?” Andy panted, fighting to stay conscious. “I wish I had my PFD.”
Angus and Andy dove off the edge into the water below.
****
Disoriented in the dark, Andy swam, the water rushing fast around her. Her head throbbed as the icy, dark, and dirty water stung the wound.
Weightless. All she had to do was open her mouth and breathe in. Then suddenly, someone grabbed and hauled upward. Her head broke the water first, and she gasped for air.
“Can you swim?” Angus spit water, trying to keep her head afloat, treading water, while being swept around. His usually blondish hair plastered dark against his head.
The current rushed faster than her locked muscles could swim. They ached, and her head throbbed. Angus tugged her diagonally across the current toward the shore. Andy swam the best she could, but Angus was doing most of the maneuvering.
Finally, they attained the shoals.
“We made it,” Angus said, dragging Andy to where she could reach the bottom and crawl through the water to the bank. He attempted to stand, but slipped, splashing into the water. Grasping some earth, he hauled himself up and out of the water onto the marshy bank. His frequent breaths made puffs of steam in the icy air. “You’re lucky you’re wearing an LED light. It was the only way I found you under there.”
&nb
sp; “You lost your pants,” she said.
He wore only a pair of muddied brown-white boxers and t-shirt. His shirt clung to him, making his shoulders and chest even more defined.
“Kicked them off in the river.”
Her brain wandered. Cold. Very cold.
Once safely on land, she glanced at the far away city lights, civilization, and laughed between chattering teeth.
Angus, still catching his breath, leaned close. “What?” he asked.
“What would people think if they met us, two people half-dressed.” Her jaw clenched against the chattering. Her body ached, her head hurt. Her mind, drifting. “Out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“They would think, they must’ve had a great time escaping from a very snooty party.”
Andy’s jaw shook uncontrollably. “Thankfully nobody’s around. Where are we?” Andy scanned the banks. Dark barges piled with train car-sized containers of coal ran parallel to the river. A few trees, skimpy, waterlogged, cloistered nearby. Flat grasslands stretched behind them.
“Illinois.”
Her muscles ached, her toes numb. Clenching her jaw against the cold made her head ache all the more. Everything sounded far away, distant. The wind snapped around her.
“I had matches in my dress,” she managed to get out.
He laughed again, this time a full, hearty laugh filled with irony. It was cold. Cold enough to die. They were miles from St. Louis and not a road in sight. The cold river staunched the flow of blood, but it started to bleed again, making its own black river down her forehead.
With so much lost blood, the cold, fatigue, she passed out.
Angus didn’t panic. Years of survival training kicked in. He wrapped her head in his undershirt, scooped her up under her neck and knees. He laughed at her name for him. Angus was no worse than any other alias he’d had. He indulged her in it.
He had her in his arms now, blood spilling down his chest where her head lay against his pec. He never wanted to let her go. But he couldn’t love her. People in his line of work couldn’t afford to have love interests, family, or anybody they cared about. They became a liability. A distraction, deterrent, a bargaining chip. He’d been able to avoid it for so long.
If only he could tell her what he really needed. But that would be stupid. He must never tell Andy the whole truth. Doing so would endanger them both. But he’d been stringing her along too far. She deserved some truth.
