Take the Key and Lock Her Up

by LENA DIAZ,

  Emily shoved away from the bars, backing toward the bathroom as quickly as she could without her sneakers squeaking as they tended to do. She was just a few feet from the door when the owner of those boots stepped down another stair, in full view now, carrying a machine gun. He looked straight at her.

  She lunged through the bathroom doorway.

  Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. The deafening sound of automatic gunfire echoed through the cell. Bullets blasted through the plaster wall between the cell and the bathroom, raining dust down on her like a burst of snowflakes. She scrambled on her knees toward her only cover, the tub, and dove over the side. The mirror above the sink exploded into hundreds of jagged shards.

  The glass rained down on her like hot coals, pricking her skin. She bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out and scooted as far down as she could. Another barrage of bullets slammed through the wall. She gasped and covered her ears, squeezing her eyes shut.

  Boots echoed in the outer room as the gunman approached the cell. Another pair of boots echoed on the stairs. Emily’s stomach sank. Two gunmen. Two men were after her, trying to kill her.

  Metal clanged against metal. They were trying to bust the lock on the cell door. She was trapped. She’d examined every inch of the place earlier. There wasn’t anything in here she could use as a weapon. And the outer walls were solid concrete. What was she going to do?

  Something hot and wet dripped on her arm. Blood. A quick swipe of her hand across the side of her head came away bright red. Tugging a towel down from the rack beside the tub, she pressed it against her scalp. She peered over the side of the tub. There had to be something she could use to defend herself. The lid on the toilet tank maybe? It was heavy enough to do some damage if she could manage to hit one of the gunmen without him shooting her first.

  A shout sounded from the other room, followed by a burst of gunfire. A dull thud echoed through the cell. Then nothing.

  Emily waited, barely breathing. Five seconds went by. Ten. Still nothing. Suddenly, a loud metal creak sounded from the other room. The cell door! They must have broken the lock.

  She shoved up out of the tub and lunged toward the toilet tank. Footsteps sounded in the outer room. Grabbing the heavy ceramic lid off the back of the toilet, she held it like a bat and waited. As soon as the footsteps sounded outside the door she started her swing.

  “Emily, it’s—oof.” The lid slammed against the man’s chest just as he stepped into the bathroom. He fell backward across the threshold with a muffled oath. The lid crashed to the floor, shattering and spraying ceramic shards across the room.

  Emily blinked in surprise. “Devlin?”

  He pushed himself to his feet and stood in the bathroom doorway, shaking the dust and ceramic pieces from his hair. “Guess I deserved that.”

  She pressed her hand to her throat. “I don’t understand . . . where are the—”

  His brows drew down. “You’re all cut up.” He grabbed her hand and turned her arm toward the light, then gave her other hand the same careful inspection, as if they had all the time in the world. Blood welled from dozens of cuts on both of her arms.

  “It must have been the mirror,” she said, “when the bullets came through the wall. I’m okay, didn’t even know I was cut.” She tried to lean around him to look into the other room, but he wouldn’t budge. “The gunmen, Devlin. Where are—”

  He grabbed her shoulders and turned her, feathering his hands through her hair. “You’ve got a nasty laceration on your scalp too. You need stitches.”

  Exasperated, she pulled away from him. “Enough about my cuts. The gunmen, are they—wait, stitches?” She reached her hand up, but he knocked it away.

  “Don’t touch it. I’ll have to put some disinfectant on it before I sew it closed.”

  She blinked. “You? No way. You aren’t getting anywhere near me with a needle.”

  A loud thump echoed through the other room. He grabbed her wrist. “We can argue later. There are more guys out there, trying to break through the trapdoor. We have to get out of here. Now.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do all along,” she complained.

  He ignored her and tugged her through the doorway.

  Her eyes widened as he pulled her at a run through the open cell door. The two gunmen she’d been so worried about lay on the floor, outside of the cell. One’s neck was twisted in an eerily familiar angle. The other was lying in a pool of blood. Both stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. A cold chill shot up her spine.

  Another loud thump sounded overhead. Devlin stopped at the base of the stairs, looking up at the trapdoor he must have come through just moments earlier.

  “How many are there?” Emily asked.

  “Don’t know. I took out one before I came inside. I didn’t see anyone else, but it sounds like there might be two or more out there. The bar I threw over the door is still holding, but it won’t last much longer. We’ll use the bolt-hole.” He tugged her away from the stairs, toward one of the two doors on the far wall.

  “Did you recognize any of them? The men you . . . killed?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think Ace is after us, or other former friends of yours?”

  “Ace was never my friend.” The way he spat the name “Ace” made her wonder what might have happened between the two of them in the past.

  He yanked the door open and pulled her inside a small room that resembled a closet. A huge crash sounded in the outer room. Had the trapdoor been breached? Devlin slammed the door closed and grabbed a hinged metal bar mounted beside the wall. He shoved the bar down, across the door.

  “This way.” He reached up high on the far wall and slammed his fist on a discolored patch of wood. Panels in the wall slid back. Where the closet door had been wood, the door that was now revealed was steel. He opened it and pulled her inside the pitch-black entrance into a tunnel. When he shut the door behind them, a dim row of lights turned on overhead. He pulled two thick bars down across the door just as the thumping began again from somewhere inside the bunker. Except that it was much louder this time, closer.

  “They’re trying to break through the closet door,” Devlin said. “Run, Emily. Run.”

  They both took off down the tunnel. He stayed behind her, his hand at the small of her back, as if to encourage her to keep going. The tunnel was long, with several twists and turns.

  “It’s just past the next curve,” he announced.

  “What is?”

  “The way out.”

  The tunnel ended at another steel door. They both stopped, her gasping for breath, him not even winded. He yanked a backpack off his shoulders that she hadn’t even noticed until then and squatted down.

  “Put this on.” He pulled a Kevlar vest out of the bag.

  Enormously relieved to have some kind of protection, she took it without question. It fit much better than she’d hoped but still hung low enough to rub against her thighs.

  He tightened the straps and shook his head. “That’s the best I can do. You’re so damn tiny.”

  Since she’d always struggled with a few extra pounds, his words made her want to laugh. She supposed everyone was tiny next to him. He pulled a Sig Sauer 9 millimeter from the bag and held it out to her. Not sure what he intended, she took a quick step back. His answering frown had her blinking in astonishment when he shoved the gun into her hand.

  “You’re giving me a weapon? I thought I was your prisoner.”

  “I thought I was protecting you. But I was wrong.”

  “Wrong about what? Kidnapping me or locking me up?”

  “If I hadn’t taken you from your house, you’d be dead by now. I have no regrets about kidnapping you. But locking you up and leaving you without a way to defend yourself was an error in judgment.” He pressed a section of the wall at eye level. It slid back to reveal an electronic keypad.

  “So holding me against my will is okay as long as I . . . what, have a gun?”

  He didn’t
answer and typed on the keypad. Steel tubes mounted to the door retreated into the wall and it popped open a couple of inches with a hiss, like air escaping a leaky tire.

  Banging noises sounded back toward the tunnel entrance. The gunmen must have breached the closet and were trying to break into the tunnel. Emily’s hand tightened around the gun. She knew what Devlin was offering. He’d given her a way to defend herself. She could stay and fight the men who were trying to kill her or go with him and continue to be his prisoner. She was a good shot, one of the few things she’d excelled at in the academy. Once the men were in the tunnel, she could duck down and wait for them to round the last curve. With the element of surprise on her side, she figured her odds of success were good. And then she’d be free, no longer anyone’s prisoner.

  Devlin shoved the door wide open and looked back at her, frowning. “Emily. You’re standing there like you have a choice to make. Let me clear that up for you. You don’t. You’re coming with me.”

  His authoritarian tone put her on edge and made the decision for her. She turned the Sig Sauer on him. “I’m not taking orders from you anymore. And I’m no longer your prisoner.”

  He didn’t seem concerned about the gun in her hand, probably because he was wearing Kevlar. She tilted the gun up, toward his head. That got his attention.

  “You want to make your own decision?” he bit out. “Fine. You have two options. Option one: I head out this door while you stay here. I figure those guys will break through the wall to get around the steel door in a matter of minutes. And the enforcer in charge of them won’t be far behind, maybe a few hours if you’re lucky. Even if you manage to hold off the first wave, once the next wave arrives, you won’t stand a chance. Option two—”

  “Wait, enforcer? What’s an enforcer?”

  He shook his head impatiently. “Think of it as a badass assassin. There’s a lot more to it than that, but from your perspective, and what you need to know right now, assassin works.”

  She swallowed hard. “Like you? You’re an . . . enforcer?”

  He nodded.

  “And the men after us aren’t enforcers?”

  He laughed without humor. “Not hardly. They’re someone’s lackeys. My guess is that Ace sent them, but Gage might have. They’re an advance team sent to soften us up.”

  Soften them up? Her hands started to shake. She clenched them tighter around the pistol. “What’s the second option?”

  “We make a truce. If you do exactly what I say, go exactly where I tell you to go, we just might make it.”

  A loud crack sounded from the mouth of the tunnel.

  “We don’t have much time,” Devlin said. “Decide.”

  Going with him made sense. It was the safest choice. But she couldn’t stop remembering the terror of being lowered into that tight, dark suitcase, of waking up in a drug-induced fog, of being locked in a cage like an animal, not knowing if she’d ever get out.

  “I think I’d rather die than be locked up again,” she whispered, keeping her gun pointed at him.

  He winced. Regret etched tiny lines around his eyes. “Maybe you’re right that I shouldn’t have forced you to come with me in the first place. And maybe I shouldn’t have locked you up. But I did what I thought I had to do at the time to keep you safe. If you come with me now, we can be a team, find the missing women together. That way I’ll be able to protect you from my enemies and you’ll be able to do what you want to do—solve the case. You won’t be my prisoner. But don’t ask me to leave you here to die, Em. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

  Stunned at his offer, and the conviction in his voice as he called her Em and said he wouldn’t let her die, she searched his eyes for some kind of sign that he was lying. Her instincts told her he was telling the truth. And the fervent way he’d used the shortened version of her name made her want to believe him.

  “You won’t restrain me again? And we’ll work together to solve the case? Why do you even care about the case?” she asked.

  “Because my boss, Cyprian, thinks I’m the one who killed Shannon Fisher. And he thinks I’m holding the missing women, one of whom is Kelly Parker, a co-worker and friend. I want my life back just as much as you want yours. The only way to get it is to rescue Kelly and prove my innocence.”

  “Kelly Parker? You know the identity of one of the missing women?”

  He nodded. “There’s information in my backpack that can help us find her and figure out who is behind all of this.”

  Another loud crack sounded from the tunnel, much louder than the last.

  Devlin stiffened.

  Emily tightened her hand on the gun. His offer was the carrot that had her mouth watering. Solving the case, finding those women alive, would prove her worth once and for all—to her boss, to her family, to herself. It wasn’t a noble reason to want to save those women, but she didn’t shy away from the truth. She wanted this, needed this. But after everything Devlin had done, how could she blindly trust him to keep his word? She didn’t think he was lying, but what if he was?

  She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she’d rather die than be locked up. If he was going to take her prisoner again, she’d rather stay in the tunnel and take her chances.

  “Why should I trust you? How do I know you aren’t toying with me, that you won’t try to kill me as soon as I lower my gun?”

  Before she could even blink, he knocked her arm up and wrenched the pistol out of her grasp.

  “Because if I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

  She slowly lowered her now empty hand.

  “Choose, Emily.”

  “Op . . . option two.” Her voice shook so hard she could barely form the words.

  He shoved the gun back into her hand, grabbed her other hand, and pulled her out into the night.

  DEVLIN STUCK THE needle into Emily’s scalp.

  “Ooouch,” she hissed between clenched teeth. “That hurt.”

  “Don’t be such a baby about a handful of stitches. I’ve dug bullets out of myself with nothing but a bottle of whiskey to numb the pain.” He stuck the needle in again.

  She jerked away. He grabbed her shoulders and yanked her back.

  “At least you had the whiskey,” she grumbled.

  He held back a smile. “Good point.” The moon was almost full tonight, but he still needed her to hold a penlight to help him see well enough to sew her up. “Move the light a little to the left.”

  “Which left, yours or mine?” Without waiting for his answer, she moved the hand that was holding the penlight up. The light pointed off into the bushes. He sighed, adjusted the position, and started stitching again.

  “Do you think we lost them?” she asked.

  “Lost is a relative term. They’ll find our trail eventually. But if I didn’t think we were safe to stop running for a few minutes, I wouldn’t have stopped.”

  She nodded, knocking the needle and thread out of his hands. Again.

  He dropped his hands to his sides.

  Emily glanced back at him. “Oops, I did it again, didn’t I? Hang on a second.” She aimed the penlight on the forest floor. “Here it is. It fell right beside my gun.” She grabbed the needle from beside the Sig Sauer on the ground and handed it to him.

  “Disinfectant.” He held his other hand out.

  “Right.” She grabbed the spray out of the go bag cradled in her lap.

  He sprayed the needle, well aware of how easily infection could set in out here in the woods, especially since the wound had been open the whole time they’d been running after escaping from the bunker. As soon as he was confident that no one was following them, or at least that they weren’t close enough for him to hear them or catch a glimpse of them with the night-vision goggles, he’d found an enclosed spot in the middle of a ring of thick trees and stopped to treat Emily’s wounds.

  Two more passes of the needle, in conjunction with Emily’s hisses, and he was done. He used his knife to cut the thread and handed his st
itching supplies to Emily to stow back in the first-aid kit. “Finished.”

  “It’s about time.” She reached up to feel the stitches.

  He slapped her hand away. “Don’t. We need to keep it clean to avoid infection.”

  She dropped her hand to her lap. “Well, at least you’re done.”

  He reached past her and pulled some gauze, tweezers, and antiseptic cream out of the kit. “I’ve just gotten started. Stretch your left arm out on top of your thigh. You’ll need to hold the penlight for me again.”

  Her frown could have felled a tree.

  “Please,” he added, once again fighting the urge to smile.

  She blew out a breath and rested her hand on top of her leg.

  “Light?” he asked.

  “For someone who isn’t supposed to be my captor anymore you sure are bossy.”

  “For someone who had the courage to pull a gun on me, twice, you sure are whiny.” He added a wink to soften his insult.

  Her eyes widened. Devlin hadn’t even tried to hide his grin this time. Since they’d agreed to work together, the dynamics of their relationship had changed. He felt free to tease her and was enjoying her honest, unguarded reactions far more than he would have expected. Then again, honesty was so rare in his business, it was refreshing to speak openly and trust the person he was with not to lie to him.

  He sat cross-legged beside her and began to meticulously pull tiny shards of glass from her cuts while she held the penlight.

  “Dev, since we’re basically partners now, tell me why you decided to become an assassin. How did you get mixed up with a company like EXIT?”

  Since she hadn’t even seemed to notice that she’d shortened his name, like a friend—or a lover—might do, he steeled himself against showing any outward reaction. But just knowing that she was comfortable enough with him to do that sent a flash of heat straight to his groin. He forced himself to focus on her wounds and her question instead of the blood roaring in his ears.