“We’ll find her too. Don’t worry. Let’s concentrate on getting you out of here first.”
“Who are you? The police?” she asked him.
“Something like that. Now, you ready to get out of here?”
“Yes, please!”
Xander had noticed a few things while he kept Carrie talking. One, there was a small window behind her. One of those that opened outward on a horizontal axis. Xander would never fit through it, but Carrie could. And hopefully Sam could as well. Two, David had tied Xander’s arms behind his back and his feet to each leg of his chair. He also had tied him to the pipes on the back of the wall, so Xander was completely immobile. However, they did not tie Carrie’s legs. Instead, they tied her left hand down behind her to the left back leg of the chair. And did the same to her right hand on the right side. This helped to keep her from working her hands together to get free, but it also left Xander an opening.
“Okay, good. Now, I can’t move, but you can. But listen, before you do, we have to do this quietly. So go slow.”
“Okay.”
“Use your feet to scoot your chair this way. Just try to be as quiet as you can.”
The footsteps were still moving along the floor above them. And now Xander could faintly hear a conversation. Time was almost up. But he didn’t hurry Carrie. He couldn’t afford her making a mistake. If she tipped over, they were sunk. She wouldn’t be able to right herself or get her arms free. Carrie pushed against the floor, and the wooden chair moved. It also made a fairly loud scooting sound.
“Sorry!” Carrie whispered.
“It’s okay, you’re doing fine. Just keep your balance. I know it’s hard, but I need you to pick up the pace a little. But if you feel wobbly, stop.”
Carrie only nodded. She was concentrating on her feet. She moved them again, this time more smoothly. The chair moved a few more inches.
“That’s good,” Xander coached her. “Keep coming.”
She continued to move along the floor, keeping the noise to a minimum. She was almost there.
“You’re doing great. Now, scream at them upstairs, like you were before. Can you make it sound real?”
She nodded. “Please! Someone help me! I just want to go home!”
“Watch out, Jennifer Lawrence,” Xander praised. She was very convincing.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a smile.
She scooted the rest of the way, and now she was right beside him.
“Please!” She sobbed. “I want to go home!”
“Good,” he whispered. “Now, you see that knot in the rope on the left side of my leg? I know it’s dark.”
“I see it. But I can’t untie it.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to. It isn’t very well done. I think if you kick it, just right, you’ll be able to unravel it a bit, and we can go from there.”
“I can do that. I’m a black belt in karate. Well, I was when I was eleven.”
“Perfect. You’ll be able to do it easily then.”
Xander was trying to keep his voice calm, but he knew time was up. And if David or any of his men came down there right then, they were all dead.
The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher, and he was left to rely on a teenager. But so far she was proving to be very resourceful.
“Just try to hit the very end of it.”
“What if I kick you?” Carrie asked.
“I think I can take it, so don’t worry about it. Just keep your eye on the spot, and drive your foot right down on top of it.”
She lifted her right leg, kicked downward, and hit right on the spot.
“Good one!” Xander whispered.
“But it didn’t work!” A bit of panic seeped into her voice.
Then the door upstairs opened.
His attempt was too little too late.
He failed her.
“What do you mean? I’m going to check on them like Tarter said!” a man shouted from the top of the stairs.
There was a pause.
Xander began to sweat as adrenaline poured into his system. He wanted to do what he always did and smash out of his restraints, escaping with brute force and stopping these men from their mission. But he couldn’t find enough wiggle room inside the ropes to manage enough momentum. He could hear Carrie laboring for air. She was terrified. He wanted to console her, but he couldn’t.
“I’ll just be a second!” the man shouted again. He sounded irritated.
This was it. This young woman’s life was going to be ruined. He was right here, right beside her, and he couldn’t help her. There was nothing he could do but wait for death. He knew they would make him watch as they delivered Carrie to her fate. His stomach turned and he almost vomited.
“Oh, for shit’s sake, Jerry. Do I have to do everything?” the man shouted again. Then the door slammed shut.
They had one last chance.
“Okay, Carrie, this is it. I need you to kick like your life depends on it. Because it does.”
Carrie didn’t say a word, and she didn’t hesitate. She began to kick wildly at the knot on the rope holding Xander’s leg. She kicked and kicked until finally a piece of the rope came loose, and a loop fell over it.
“You did it!” Xander said. “I still can’t get free, one more move. You can do it. Now, scoot toward me and take the dangling piece between your shoes and pull. You can do it. Then I’ll get us out of here.”
As she scooted over and attempted to get the end of the rope in between the tips of her shoes, she was skeptical. “How will getting one foot loose get you completely free? We don’t have time to do the other leg, do we?”
“No, but you get this done, I have another idea that will be faster.”
She yanked away at the rope with her feet, and sure enough, the rope fell to the ground and Xander wiggled his left leg free.
“Great job, Carrie. Almost finished. Just scoot up a couple of feet, just out in front of me.”
She didn’t question him. She just shuffled the chair forward as he asked.
“Now, when I break the leg of your chair, you’ll be able to slip your rope free from the broken end of the leg, but it’s going to collapse backward. It might hurt a little, but you’ll be okay.”
“Break my arm if you have to, just get us out of here.”
Xander liked this girl. He could tell she was smart––and tough. Reminded him of Sam.
“No need for that. But listen, this might be loud, so as fast as you can, untie your other arm, then get to work on mine. Don’t worry about anything else but that. You might hear them coming, but no matter what, you can’t stop untying me. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Here we go.”
Xander pulled up his leg, jammed his foot down just below her tied hand, and the leg snapped perfectly. The chair collapsed back like he said it would, and she didn’t make a sound. But the chair did. The footsteps he heard above him as he was kicking stopped.
They had heard the chair break.
“Okay, nice and steady, but fast. They’re coming,” Xander told Carrie.
Carrie didn’t say a word, and she showed zero fear. She freed her other hand, then moved around behind him and began working on his knot. She had been through a lot already in the last two days. Ironically, all of that had prepared her for this. Without it, she may have been too frightened to get it done. But her fear tolerance was at an all-time high. At this point, this was almost par for the disastrous course.
The footsteps that had stopped were now moving again, only faster. Coming from the back left of the house and walking straight for the door to the basement.
“How’s it coming?” Xander said.
“Almost there—”
The door crashed inward at the top of the stairs.
“Got it!” Carrie shouted.
“What the hell is going on down there?” They heard the man’s voice first, then his boots thumping down the stairs.
Xander pulled his hands free, snapped the leg of
the chair that was fixed to his right leg, took the broken leg in his hand, grabbed Carrie by the shirt, and threw her toward the wall in front of them. Unfortunately, it was away from the window he needed to get her through, but he didn’t have a choice, he just had to get her out of harm’s way. He dove forward as he saw the end of the man’s gun raise toward him, and slid on his stomach behind the wall and into the corner where Sam was lying, all while gunshots echoed in the small basement. Bullets ricocheted off the concrete block wall, and Carrie couldn’t contain her frightened screams, matching the decibel level of the gunfire.
Xander scrambled to his feet, jumped forward to put his back to the wall in front of him, and when the man wielded his gun around the corner, Xander smashed down on his arms, swinging the chair leg down like a hammer. As soon as he hit the man’s arms, a spray of bullets bounced off the concrete floor and against the walls. Xander swung the chair leg and pummeled the man in the throat. Then he pulled back his makeshift weapon again and smashed the man in the forehead. As his victim fell to the floor, Sam woke up.
“Xander? Is that you?”
Xander’s spirits rose when her heard Sam’s voice. He quickly bent down, felt for her arms, and untied her from a pipe along the wall.
“It’s me, Sam. Just stay right there. I’m getting Carrie out of here, then you!”
Xander ran to the other side of the basement toward the screaming Carrie. Above them now was a chorus of shouts and banging footfalls as the men scrambled to come down and deal with the noises they heard. His hands found Carrie in the dark. He lifted her off her feet and carried her over to the small window by the ceiling.
“Remember that Ferris wheel?” he asked her.
“Yeah, at the pier.”
“That’s right, run right toward that Ferris wheel. There is a small police station on the pier. Find it, and tell them who you are. They will already know what is going on. Go now, and don’t look back, you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you. But what if they find me before I get there?”
They were at the back wall now, and Xander popped the window outward. He knew the police would have evacuated the area by the beach by now. They would have started that process as soon as the gunshots happened at the hotel just a couple of blocks away. It was possible she would run into one of David’s men on the way, but there was no other choice.
“Sweetheart, if you run, I know you’ll make it to the police station. Don’t stop for anyone, no matter what.”
The footsteps had reached the stairs behind them. Time was up.
“Just run for the Ferris wheel, you’ll run right into the police station!”
Xander lifted Carrie up and pushed her through the window just as gunshots erupted behind him. His body tensed, waiting to feel them enter somewhere in his skin. But no bullets made it to him. He turned and looked down. Sam had managed to work her way over to the man Xander knocked out, grabbed his gun, and was firing at the men trying to enter the basement at the top of the stairs. Once again, she had Xander’s back.
“What about you! I don’t want to leave you!” Carrie shouted back through the window to Xander.
Xander’s heart nearly burst.
“Just run, I’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll see you soon. Run!”
Carrie hesitated for another moment, then finally turned, and Xander watched her tennis shoes disappear from sight.
41
It’s Hard to Keep a Good Man Down
(in the basement)
Xander turned and dove for the unconscious man. He knew that after the man had sprayed bullets, and now with Sam dispensing more from that gun at a rapid pace, the magazine had to be near empty.
His hand found a spare magazine clipped to the man’s belt.
Click.
Sam shot the last bullet, ejected the magazine, and reached her hand back over her head, where Xander placed a fresh magazine. As if they were in an ER and Doctor Sam had shouted, “Scalpel,” to Nurse King. She slammed the magazine in place just as two men were headed down the stairs. One managed to slide back out the door, but the other managed to get filled with holes.
“How bad are you hurt?” Xander said.
“Not sure, but bad enough to have no idea where we are or how we got here.”
“Join the club. Gabriela drugged me when I tried to help her. You were right.” The words tasted like worms on Xander’s tongue.
“What?” Sam turned toward him with an exaggerated look of shock. “You mean you were fooled, by a pretty woman?”
“All right. Anyway. Can you walk?”
Sam shot a couple more warning bullets up the stairs.
“Not sure, really.”
Xander moved over behind her, pulled her to her feet from under her arms, and caught her as she wobbled. Sam made an audible wince. That meant it was bad. She had the pain tolerance of a rhino. She handed Xander the gun and took a few steps. They were wobbly.
“There’s nowhere for you to go, so make it easy on yourself and give up!” a man shouted down the stairs.
Sam took a couple more steps, and she seemed to be getting the hang of it again.
“Okay, you got me. I give up!” Xander shouted back up the stairs.
Xander could hear the mumblings of a brief conversation at the top of the stairs.
“That’s right. Now throw the gun down.”
Xander only had the broken chair leg close to him, so he gave it a shot. He threw it down on the ground as hard as he could. He glanced up and saw Sam shaking her head at him. Xander just shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “It was worth a shot.”
“Good, now put your hands on your head.”
No way. Had they really bought it?
“Okay, hands on head!” Xander answered. His finger wrapped gently around the trigger of the AR-15.
He knew it wasn’t David Tarter, or even Jonathan Haag, at the top of the stairs. Neither of them would have bought the fact that Xander would just give up. Nor would they have remotely believed a chair leg was an AR-15 hitting concrete. David must have had to scramble and get some less than talented soldiers to fill in at the last minute. The men who were once again trying to decide what to do must have been left to hold the fort until Tarter and Haag delivered the other girl. Xander was going to take full advantage.
“I’m all right, Xander,” Sam whispered. “Someone stitched me up.”
One of the men jumped inside the door, and Xander laid him out with a quick burst of bullets that hit somewhere around his chest. He fell forward, but not all the way down the stairs as Xander had hoped. They were lucky to have the one gun; he supposed two would have been asking too much.
Xander nodded toward the back wall, then whispered, “You think you can fit through that window? No way I can. But if you can, and then come around the back of the house behind them, we might be able to get out of this.”
“I can make it. I’ll go in through the back and meet you upstairs.”
“Okay, King. Very funny,” a different man called down the stairs. “That worked on Finnigan, but it won’t work on me.”
“Come on,” Xander said, trying to stall while Sam made it out. “I swear, this time I really will put the gun down.”
The man answered by tossing a canister of tear gas down the stairs. It clanged down, rolled onto the basement floor, and began to hiss. Xander walked over to Sam, helped her up on the chair, pushed her through the window, and handed her the gun.
“I’ll find another on the stairs. See you in a minute.”
Sam nodded and hobbled out of sight. Xander put his mouth to the window and took the deepest breath he could manage. He turned and moved quickly through the gas; it had only made it waist high, so his eyes were unaffected. But he had to get out of there, gun or no gun. He bent down and picked up the broken chair leg, holding it by the bottom, with the jagged broken end out in front. He rushed up the stairs. Before he could get to the man he shot a moment ago and get his gun, the other man stepped inside and raised his
weapon. Xander had no choice but to dive for him. He slapped up at the barrel of the AR-15 as he landed on his stomach atop the dead gunman. Bullets blasted into the ceiling above them, and Xander jammed the splintered end of the chair leg into the man’s inner thigh. He then reached up, grabbed the barrel of the gun, and yanked backward as hard as he could. The man was already off balance from the blow to his leg, so he easily toppled forward and rolled end over end down the stairs.
Xander looked up at the doorway, and he was staring down the barrel of shotgun. The next thing Xander heard was a trail of gunfire from the back of the house, and the man holding the shotgun on him dropped out of site.
Sam.
Xander jumped to his feet, picked up the gun from the man he’d shot a few minutes ago, and after he performed a press check on it, Sam stepped in front of the doorway.
Xander smiled. “You know, I really don’t get what Kyle sees in you.”
Sam answered by putting one more bullet in the man with the shotgun, ending the moans of pain.
“How’s the leg?”
“It’s been better. Let’s clear this house and go get the girl.”
Xander nodded.
When he entered the hallway of the house, not only did he have to step over the dead man with the shotgun—he took the shotgun with him—but he also had to step over Gabriela and Francisco as well. Their lifeless bodies stared off into the ether. Their last act as humans to help enslave young women, thwarted. If there was a hell, Xander believed that their actions had bought them both one-way tickets. As he and Sam moved on, he nevertheless couldn’t help but think their deaths would somehow come back to haunt him.
Xander followed behind his hobbled partner. Though he knew she was in pain, you would never be able to tell it by the way she soldiered on. She was as tough, or tougher, than any man he had ever fought alongside––including battle hardened Navy SEALs. In just a matter of minutes, they had cleared the house. The rest of the men, if there were any, must have escorted David and Jon. Xander and Sam came back down from clearing the upstairs and stood looking out the front window in the foyer. The lights of the Ferris wheel sparkled in the distance.
King's Reign (The Xander King Series Book 4) Page 19
