One Last Night (8 page)

I was covered in dust and sweat from the search, but it was worth it. I pulled the crowbar out with my good arm and smiled. A rush of adrenalin went through me, dulling the pain that throbbed from my shoulder.

Not wanting to waste a second, I went back over to the door and put my ear against it, listening. Nothing but silence. I wedged the bar in the gap next to the doorknob, figuring I could use the leverage to force it open. But after two minutes I gave up on that plan. The door itself was old and groaning, but the lock was solid metal and I thought the crowbar and wall might give out first.

I leaned against the door to catch my breath and come up with another plan. I thought back to all the movies and television shows I’d seen of similar situations. Sam had teased me for thinking real life was like fiction, but it’s all I had to go on. An idea flickered. Some distant memory about hinges on old doors.

Squinting in the gloom I saw the door was attached on two sets, one at the top and another near the bottom. They were painted over, but peeling, the rusty-looking metal showing through quite a bit. That seemed promising.

I braced myself, wedged the bar into the crack just below the bottom hinge and pushed with all my strength, bent double to lean into it. Jagged shards of pain shot down my arm, but instead of screaming I pushed harder, putting all my weight into it. For a long time nothing happened. The door didn’t budge and my agony intensified. But still I pushed harder, channeling the pain and frustration and fear and anger. And finally, after an eternity, something cracked.

I pushed even harder, sweat dripping down my back and tears sliding down my face. My jaw ached from how hard my teeth were gritted. Another crack and a splinter. I could barely hear it with the roaring in my ears, but I could see it. The hinge itself separated from the door and dangled from the frame. I was halfway there.

Success provided renewed energy and I reached up to repeat the action on the top hinge. This one was harder to get. Even at my height it was too high for me to have good leverage. But it didn’t matter, and I just focused and went for it. Instead of steady pressure I had to rely on short bursts of increasing strength.

Another age passed, but finally it gave way. Just like the lower one, the hinge disconnected from the door itself. I pushed the crowbar farther into the gap and pulled this time. The door opened a tiny crack. Peering through, I saw the hallway was thankfully empty. With the door open a bit I could hear sounds. Voices coming from down the corridor. I couldn’t tell if they were from the other room or down in the tunnel, but it didn’t matter. No one was coming right that moment, so I had time to do what I needed to.

I propped the crowbar against the wall and stuck my hands in the open back side of the door. Wincing from using my bad arm, my vision grayed a little and then cleared. Knowing my energy reserves were almost depleted, I hurried. With all the strength I could muster, I pulled. Wood groaned and metal squeaked, and as I thanked the gods of late night movies, the door started to open. It wasn’t far, but it was enough. The old wood, already somewhat warped, moved for me. I held it open, grabbed the bar, and started to squeeze through. And, of course, I got stuck. Breasts and butt too big, I shoved and pulled and shimmied and cursed.

Finally, holding my breath and thinking thin thoughts, I managed to slip through. My skin scraped, my shirt ripped and I felt my shoulder wound begin to bleed again, but none of that mattered. I was out of the room and one step closer to finding Sam.

Brandishing the crowbar like a weapon, I crept slowly down the hallway, hugging the wall, looking in every direction as I moved, and listening intently.

When I got to the other door, I looked around again and pressed my ear against it. No voices. Nervous, I moved on, taking a few steps closer to the entrance of the tunnel. I could hear something echoing up from its depths, but nothing close.

“Okay, here we go.” I went back to the closed door and put my hand on the knob. And was shocked to find it turned easily. Wary of what that meant, I opened it slowly, keeping the crowbar at the ready. But what I saw when my eyes adjusted to the darker room made me forget all about the weapon in my hand.

Sam was there, slumped on the floor, seemingly cuffed to something like I was. His head hung low, hair hiding his face, but his bare chest was covered in blood. His legs were splayed open and one ankle was twisted at an impossible angle.

“Oh god,” I gasped and then covered my mouth. But there was no one else in the room. I rushed in and shut the door behind me, terrified. Sam didn’t move even with all the noise I was making and I approached with a wall of dread hanging over me.

I bent over him and was trying to gather the courage to take his pulse when a small sound came out of his mouth. It was something between a whimper and speech, and it broke my heart and made it soar at the same time.

“Sam. Sam, it’s me. I’m here. I’m here.”

He raised his head slowly, blinking at me through the damp tangle of curls hanging in front of his eyes. “Ca…Carly?”

“Hush, don’t talk. I’m here with you.” I fought back tears and concentrated on checking him out. His nose was obviously broken and it seemed most of the blood on him was caused by that injury, as I could find no other wounds except for a huge lump on the back of his head. He hissed when I barely touched it, so I didn’t want to explore it further.

Sam licked his dry, cracked lips and struggled to speak. “Go. Need to go. Not safe for you.”

“I know. But I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“No,” he said more forcefully. “You go.”

“Not a chance.”

“Please.”

“Shut up.” I looked over his should to see what he was attached to and found a very rusty metal bar. His wrists were bruised and sore and I could see he’d spent a lot of time trying to free himself.

“Be very still, Sam. I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Wait-”

“Hush. Trust me this time.” I didn’t wait for his reply. Instead, I wedged the crowbar between the bar and the wall and shoved. The metal screamed and giant flakes of it fell onto the floor. “Luck for us this place is in horrendous shape,” I said.

Sam let out a weak barking laugh.

I took that as a good sign and went back to levering the bar away from the wall. Eventually it came free, and my hands, slick with sweat, dropped the crowbar. I sat down next to Sam to catch my breath as he maneuvered his arms enough to slide the cuffs away.

I looked down at them and sighed. The thick plastic was tight on his wrists. “I guess a crowbar isn’t going to help get those off.

Sam shook his head. “We’ll get them off later. For now I’m just glad to have my hands free.”

I wasn’t sure why Fabian, or whoever had put him in this room had cuffed him with hands around his side instead of behind his back, but I was happy they did. I reached out a hand to touch the painful-looking redness and winced at the pain in my own arm.

As if he hadn’t noticed before, Sam lifted his connected hands to my shoulder. “What happened.”

“Um…I think I got shot.”

“Holy shit. You’re tossing around crowbars with a bullet wound?” There was real admiration in his voice. It was touching and ridiculous at the same time. Like this was some intentional proof of strength. He was such a cop sometimes.

I nodded. “So it seems.”

“My Amazon goddess.”

“You can worship me later, mere mortal. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Easier said than done. Fabian and his goons will be back any second. He said they had a new game to play with me.” There was bitterness and achingly strong sadness in his voice at the mention of the man he’d thought of as a brother. I knew what it was like to be betrayed by someone you love, and wished I could take that pain away for him, but I couldn’t.”

“Did he do that to your nose?”

“No. One of the others. It was a lot harder than they expected to get me down here.”

“I bet. So what’s our plan?”

“Well,” a mocking voice said from the doorway. “How about one of you dies while the other watches?”

Sam made an angry sound in his throat and angled his body as if to protect me. “If you come near her again, Fabian, it’ll be the last thing you do.”

“Now, now, Sammy. Be nice. After all, I had someone fix up her shoulder when I could have let her bleed to death. That was a favor for you, buddy.”

“Fuck off,” I said.

“Such a charming couple. Really.” He stepped a little closer and I could see a gun in his hands. “I don’t know how you got out of your room, Carly, but it doesn’t matter. I was planning on bringing you two back together anyway. This just saves time. So, who wants to talk now?”

“I’ve told you everything.”

Sam patted my hand. “It’s okay, baby. Let me handle this.”

“Yes, honey. Grownups are talking.”

A growl came from Sam again. “Don’t you fucking talk to her like that.”

Fabian raised his hand in a fake expression of apology. “So sorry. Now that we’re all together, why don’t we get to it. Sam, your girl here is very smart. I bet she even thinks she knows why she’s here now.”

“I do,” I said gravely. “I figured it out when I saw your fellow henchmen had been beating on Sam for hours.”

“I’m all ears. Impress us, Carly.”

I glared at Fabian, but addressed my words to Sam. “This was never about me. I was just convenient. Getting Mitchell arrested was a headache, sure. But it didn’t make sense. Once you told me the scope of this operation, what it was connected to, none of what they were doing – trying to get to me – made sense. They could have a whole new business up and running doing what Courier Express did in a few days, right?”

Sam nodded.

“So why all the drama? The kidnapping. The threats. The…what they did to Anna. It was too much. If you hadn’t been there to rescue me time and again, I’d be a goner. But you were always there. You’re always here. For me. My hero. And that’s when I figured it out.”

“What?”

“This was never about me, not really. You said it yourself. That big undercover case you worked, the one focusing on the same enterprise, was a career-maker. The evidence you collected. The things you witnessed. They could bring the whole thing down. And they needed a way to control you.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “Of course. Damn it. I’ve been so blind.” He seared Fabian with a look full of hatred. “And you knew I would be. My best friend. You know me better than anyone.”

Fabian smiled wolfishly. “That’s right. You’re very predictable. That’s been very useful to us.”

“There is one thing I don’t get,” I added. “How’d you orchestrate this? Me and Sam meeting.”

Fabian shrugged. “I didn’t. That was a coincidence. But the more he told me about you, the more I thought this would be the key. It was pure luck that you happened to blunder into part of the operation. The boys were just going to snatch you to get him to do what we need. But this…all of this…was so much more fun. Watching you scramble and run. Grow close and get scared. What a soap opera.”

“Fun? Fun? You fucking bastard.” I rose up to my knees and was about to rush at him when Sam’s hand stroked my back.

“Sit down, Carly. He’s just trying to get to you.”

“Too right, Sammy. Too right. Quite a little spitfire you’ve got here. Shame she didn’t meet me first.”

“Shut your mouth. You don’t even deserve to look at her.”

“Oh, so gallant and protective. Good. Then be that. Keep being her hero and obey me.”

“No.”

“Oh come on, buddy. You don’t even know what I want.”

“Of course I do, Fabian. You’re not that difficult to figure out.”

“I seem to have fooled you for quite some time, Sam.”

“Barely. But now I see you. And I won’t do it.”

I looked at him. “Do what? What do they want from you that’s worth killing people over?”

“You figured it out yourself. My case. It could bring them all down. But my testimony is the linchpin. Without that and the evidence I gathered, there’s nothing but conjecture and hearsay.”

“That’s right. Good job, Sam,” Fabian said with a sneer. “Now that everything’s out in the open we can talk about next steps. We’re all going to spend the night here. Well, I’ll be going upstairs, but you’ll stay where you are. Then in the morning Sam will go to work. He’ll gather all of the evidence he collected and bring it to me. I’ll destroy it. Then when the DA comes to start prepping him for trial, his memory will fail. I know you’ve got two meetings scheduled this week. That should be enough to torpedo the case. Once you do that, I’ll let Carly go and you two can buy a picket fence and make puppies for all I care.”

Sam and I shared a glance. There was exactly zero chance Fabian’s superiors would take the risk of letting us live. The man in front of us probably knew it too.

“Say we agree. You won’t hurt her?”

Fabian shook his head. “Not if we don’t have to. Be a good boy scout and this’ll all be over in a few days.”

Sam sighed. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

“That’s right. You don’t.”

With anther glance Sam flicked his eyes to the left. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me until he stood up and approached Fabian. He shielded me and started hurling insults. Using a much more colorful vocabulary than I’d ever heard, he got louder and louder.

Shocked, Fabian just stood there and took the verbal abuse, his full attention on Sam while I crawled to my left and reached quietly for the crowbar that was lying forgotten in a patch of shadows.

I lifted it and pressed myself back against the wall. Sam’s haranguing increased in volume again and he started to close in on Fabian. The other man had apparently had enough, and before I knew it, they were both screaming at the top of their lungs at each other. In a messed up, bizarre way, I could see that they were close as brothers. Both throwing barbs that stuck and clearly hurt. But Fabian didn’t know Sam as well as he thought. I could hear the lack of real intensity in his voice as he played his part to give me cover.

And by the time I managed to creep around behind Fabian, neither man seemed to notice. That is, until I used all of my strength to slam the crowbar down on the back of his head. I wasn’t at my best, so it was a somewhat weak blow. But it did the job.