Get Lucky (27 page)

The black pants and pullover V-neck shirt he wore weren’t much to protect him from the cold, winter wind blowing outside. He wasn’t sure why it surprised him that it was nighttime outside. The sky was dark, overcast, without a single star visible. It was the icy wind that damn near did him in and helped soothe his outrage somewhat. He was too damn cold and his blood too thin from living most of his life in a warm climate to focus on anything other than doing whatever it took to get back inside or at least somewhere a hell of a lot warmer.

Evelyn didn’t run but hurried with a quick pace across the uneven frozen desert-like field. She kept her head ducked, her arms crossed over her chest, and didn’t once look behind her to ensure he followed. The only light they had was the small handheld-flashlight beam that raced over the rough, snow-covered ground just ahead of them. Evelyn held it in her hand, next to her chest, and pointed into the darkness in front of her.

Marc didn’t see the ruins anywhere or the group of rocks just south of them where the underground garage was. To the best he could figure, all of that was at least a mile or two east of them. They’d surfaced on the far west side of the underground facility and were heading farther west as quickly as Evelyn could walk. He could take the pack from her, help them pick up their pace, but although he was half-frozen, he wasn’t sure he should be in a hurry to get wherever they were going.

One thing held steadfast in his mind. They were leaving his parents and Jake behind. If London tried finding him, if she figured out where the underground prison was, he would no longer be there.

Somehow he’d have to figure out a way to let all of them know where he was. And even more importantly, where he was going. He didn’t trust Evelyn as far as he could throw her, although with the rage inside him right now, he could probably hurl her a fair distance. At least until he had a clue where he was, or had means to escape, find a phone, Evelyn was his unwanted partner.

Marc glanced back in the direction they’d come, but it was barren desert all around them. Who had compromised Evelyn and Claude’s underground haven? Was London anywhere nearby? His parents and Jake had better be okay. Returning his attention to Evelyn, he watched her continue to flash the light across the ground.

Lord! She was a madwoman. He’d give her a few more minutes to prove to him she hadn’t lost it, or he was going back to find his family. The capsules in his arm be damned.

*   *   *

London crawled out from under the desk using one hand to brace herself, as she aimed her gun with the other, finger on the trigger, ready to save her life.

“Come on out, bitch,” the man sneered from the other side of the room.

London did as she was told, leaping into sight and pulling the trigger at the same time.

“Son of a bitch!” the man screamed, crashing to the ground and making the floor shake under her feet. “Crap. Damn you! You shot me. You fucking bitch. God, bitch!”

London wanted to shoot him again just to make him shut up. Blood quickly soaked one of his pants legs and he hunched over, falling to the floor, gripping his thigh, as he continued wailing loud profanities.

“I can probably make the bleeding stop if you tell me where Marc and the others are,” she told him, not at all sure she could help him and more than a bit amazed at how calm she sounded. “You better hurry, though. You’re bleeding pretty fast.”

“Through that door. Down the stairs and turn right. Now make it stop. Make it stop now!” he screamed.

She wasn’t a nurse and didn’t know if all the doctor shows she watched on TV were accurate or not. London didn’t watch a lot of TV, though, and although she searched her mind for a similar scene from any show at all that might help her know what to do right now, she drew a blank. All she could think of was that a person stopped bleeding by applying pressure.

Glancing around the room, she didn’t see anything she could use to put pressure on his leg. Natasha wasn’t screaming in pain, which meant her gunshot wound was more serious. The longer London stood there trying to figure out how to shut up the jerk writhing on the floor, the more time she was wasting.

There was a thick tapestry draped over a side table. She grabbed the vase off it and dropped it to the floor, then pulled the tapestry off and started wringing it into a rope.

“Stupid bitch,” the man howled. “That vase is a fucking original!”

“So is your leg!” she yelled at him, and threw the tapestry in his face. “Wrap that around your leg and stop your own bleeding.”

London wouldn’t waste any more time seeing to the needs of a rude bastard who quite possibly was the man behind abducting her parents and Marc. She ran through the door and almost fell down the stairs. There was another door across a large room to her right. London didn’t bother looking around her but raced to the door. She yanked on the doorknob and it opened easier than she’d anticipated, causing her almost to fall backward.

“Drop your weapons or die!” she yelled, holding her gun in front of her and ready to shoot anything that moved.

She slid to a stop when two people, a very tall, large man and a woman clinging to him, stared at her wide-eyed behind bars. They were in a cage.

“London?” someone asked, sounding shocked, or disbelieving. Maybe both.

There were more cages, three of the walls made of cement and the bars facing her looking really solid as they disappeared into the floor. She spotted Jake in the cell across from the couple. He gripped the bars, looking at her with shocked amazement, and that stupid crooked grin.

“There aren’t any guards in here,” he told her. “You aren’t alone, are you?”

London glanced up and down the short hallway between the jail cells. There wasn’t anyone else in there. Nor did she see a large ring of keys hanging on the wall as there would be in an old Western.

“London?” It sounded like London’s mom, her voice hesitant and surprised.

London moved down the hall, past the jail cells holding the couple and Jake. There was another cement cage next to the one where the couple was. London stared at her mother and father.

“London,” her father said, rushing to the bars.

She lowered her gun, taking her father’s hand and grinning at him and her mom. “Fancy finding you two here,” London said.

Ruby Brooke laughed, the sound rough and husky from years of smoking cigarettes and probably other stuff, too. “What in the world are you doing here?” she asked, reaching through the bars and stroking her daughter’s face.

“I’m here to rescue you.” London felt an overwhelming urge to laugh, too.

She stared at her parents, at the two people who were always on top of their act and calm and cool during a crisis while she had been the child freaking out and panicking. It amazed her how suddenly she felt incredibly calm and in control of her senses.

“Honestly, though, I never thought I’d be staring at the two of you behind bars.”

Her father looked grayer than he had the last time she saw him, but his confident bellow of a laugh hadn’t changed. “There’s a big difference between being caught and being captured, my dear,” he said, speaking under his breath so Jake and the other couple wouldn’t hear him. “See if you can get that panel open that’s on the wall over there. The keys to open these jail cells are in there.”

She hurried to the cabinet in the wall at the end of the hallway near the door. There didn’t appear to be anyone racing down here to prevent her from freeing their prisoners and she could still hear the man upstairs wailing and complaining. At least he was still alive. No one was helping him, either. If they were, he’d be screaming even louder at them or be silent by now from their knocking his ass out in frustration. Maybe she and Natasha had eliminated all the guards when they were first ambushed in the garage.

London held on to that belief. It helped keep her calm. She closed the door she’d entered and faced the cabinet that was flush in the wall. It didn’t surprise her that it was locked.

“Aim your gun at the door handle,” the large man in the cage nearest her suggested.

London glanced at him. The man’s short brown hair and blue eyes, not to mention his incredible height and muscular stance, reminded her of Marc.

“London, these are my parents, Greg and Haley King,” Jake said from his jail cell. “Mom, Dad, this is London. She’s Marc’s girl.”

“You’ve got yourself a guy?” Ruby asked from the cell at the end of the hall.

“We’ll talk about it later,” London announced, turning her back on all of them, holding her gun in both hands, and aiming. Odd how she’d pulled the trigger without giving it a thought when men lunged at her. But standing in front of the cabinet and staring at the handle, she suddenly wondered the best way to shoot it.

“Aim and fire, baby girl,” her father instructed.

“I know how to shoot, Dad,” she said. Then, needing her parents to see that she wasn’t the scared child anymore, she added, “I got down here past all the guards, didn’t I?”

“You shot all the guards?” her mother asked, her disbelief almost annoying, if it hadn’t been so comical.

“Every single one of them,” she said, aimed and fired, jumping at the loud sound when the bullet slammed into the metal handle. The door flew open and flew shut, making even more of a racket.

London reached inside the small closet built into the wall and pulled out a ring of keys that did in fact look just like they did in old Westerns. Everyone behind her cheered and sang her praises. Maybe the adrenaline that got her this far was suddenly crashing inside her. London almost swooned when she turned, reaching and grabbing the bars to Marc’s parents’ jail cell. She didn’t fight Greg King when he reached through the bars and took the keys from her, then unlocked his own jail cell.

There wasn’t any doubt at all that she’d faint when all of them were around her, both her mother and father pulling her into their arms, hugging her fiercely, and saying all the words she’d ached to hear all her life. At the moment, though, too many other thoughts started plaguing her and ruined her ability to enjoy her parents’ praise.

“Where is Marc?” she asked, turning in her mother’s arms and facing Jake and his parents.

“They took him the night we arrived,” Jake said.

“Natasha is upstairs in a really nice office. She’s been shot.”

Jake’s mother shrieked and covered her mouth with her hands.

“Oh God! Where is she?” Haley asked, looking frantic but breathing deeply as if she was searching for some inner calm.

London glanced at her parents, who were watching the Kings. They both looked at her when she focused on them and smiled at the same time.

“Pretty impressive, baby girl,” her father said, stroking her arm. “I should have known it was in your blood. Now who is this Natasha?”

“She’s someone I recently met,” London said, moving when Greg, Jake, and Haley headed to the door. “She found this place, but when this tall, dark-haired man shot at us and she got hit.”

“And you didn’t?” London’s mother asked, moving in alongside her and studying her, looking concerned when she tried running her hands down London’s side.

“No. I shot him.”

Greg King stopped at the closet in the wall and pulled out several black poles, handing one to Jake and another to her father.

“They’re better than having nothing,” he said, then focused on her with eyes that were just like Marc’s. “How many men did you shoot? Did you shoot a woman?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I think three in the garage and one in the office and no, no women.” She frowned at the black sticks. “What are those?” They were like small broom handles without the brooms on the ends of them.

“They send out electric charges,” Jake explained, indicating a button that was barely visible at one end of the pole. “They’ve got enough juice in them to knock a man clear out.”

“We’ve got to go to Natasha.” Haley sounded worried as she tried pushing around her husband to the door. “And we need to find Marc. He’s in here somewhere. They wouldn’t have killed him.”

“Why did they separate you?” London felt as if she was pushed out the door and turned to study Jake’s brooding expression when he stared at the large empty room they walked into.

“What is that noise?” Ruby grabbed London’s arm, sounding shocked and causing everyone to pause and stand and listen to the wailing and moaning coming from upstairs. “Is that your man?”

Already Haley was hurrying to the door leading to the stairs. Her husband was right behind her.

“No. That is the man I shot. I got him in the leg and he told me where all of you were when I agreed to give him something to hold against his leg to stop the bleeding,” London admitted, following the Kings up the stairs with Jake and her parents behind her. “He charged into the office upstairs when Natasha and I were on the computer.”

The man on the floor, who was curled in a ball hugging his leg and covered in blood, looked up at all of them, terrified. “Help me. Please, I need help.”

“You’ll get help. Trust me,” Greg told him, stepping over him and hurrying to the desk.

Haley slid to the floor where Natasha lay, not moving, although she wasn’t covered in as much blood as the man was.

“We’ve got to get her to a hospital,” Haley announced, looking up at the rest of them.

“Marc’s car is in the garage,” London announced, pointing to the door where they’d first entered but staring at Natasha, who looked grossly pale and very still. London couldn’t look away from her new friend even when she ordered herself to do so. Natasha had been as scared as London was when they entered the office, unsure of what they would find. Her stomach twisted and the room started spinning when Haley clutched Natasha against her chest. Natasha’s head fell limp off the side of Haley’s arm, looking very lifeless.

Greg lifted his niece into his arms and Jake hurried to the door. London found the flashlight Natasha had used when they left the car and climbed the stairs behind the men and in front of her parents. They weren’t all going to fit into the car, but they hadn’t found Marc yet. As desperately as London wanted this nightmare to end and to be back in safe and comfortable surroundings, she knew someone had to remain behind and find Marc.

She turned on the flashlight, but her father found a light switch on the wall, turning it on and flooding the large, almost warehouse-sized garage with light.

“Does anyone else think Evelyn and your other son, Marc, aren’t here anymore?” London’s father asked, running his hand along the black SUV that was parked in front of Marc’s car.

“We need to confirm that.” Jake took the keys from London when she offered them to him and hurried to help get Natasha into the car. “I’ll remain behind. We need to search this entire facility.”

“You two take her to a hospital,” Jonnie decided, facing Greg. “Come back for us. We’ll find your boy if he’s here.”

Greg nodded, giving Jonnie an appraising once-over and glancing at London before turning to his wife. Haley was climbing into the backseat and reaching for Natasha when they eased her into the car. Jake and Jonnie moved around the garage until they figured out how to open the door in the ground. A rush of fierce, cold air filled the garage as the runway heading up to the outside appeared. Greg climbed into the driver’s seat and the Mustang roared to life. London backed up and stood between her parents, wrapping her arms around herself and trying to ward off the cold as she watched Greg skillfully back the car up the incline until he disappeared into the night outside. They were left there without transportation other than the black SUV. God only knew where the keys were. She glanced around at the cold underground facility where all the terror that so recently entered her life began. If Marc was here, she worried he was in worse shape than Natasha.