Take the Key and Lock Her Up (27 page)

Again, everything appeared as it should. He flipped back to the picture of the clearing
where the bunker’s entrance was hidden and keyed in another code. A picture of Emily
inside the cell filled the screen. He grinned when he realized what she was doing—testing
every bar to see if it was loose.

He switched the display back to the view outside the bunker so he could check it again.
Then he went into the master closet. A panel in the back wall slid open to reveal
a collection of Kevlar vests, which was the main reason he’d come. He used the vests
for missions in which he had to escort someone through hostile territory. Right now,
with Ace, Gage, and possibly others after him and Emily, this definitely qualified
as hostile territory. He selected the vest that seemed most likely to fit her and
closed the panel.

After shoving the vest into a go bag that doubled as a backpack, he opened the wall
safe, unlocked the metal box, and grabbed the binder of dossiers. He’d been in too
big a hurry this morning to get it before he’d left. With what was happening now,
he figured the information in that binder might help him figure out who had the most
to gain by getting rid of him.

He was about to close the safe when one of the wallet-sized pictures inside drew his
attention. A tall blonde with a deep tan smiled up at him. And for one second, two,
he could look at her and return that smile, remember the feel of her soft hair sliding
through his fingers, the sexy little moan deep in her throat when they kissed.

But then the moment passed, and the hurt and pain washed over him, just as fresh as
the day she’d been murdered.

Arianna.
His
Arianna. His fiancée.
God, how he’d loved her.
But he hadn’t been able to save her.

Unbidden, images of Emily swirled through his mind, as they had so often from the
moment he’d met her. She wasn’t classically beautiful, and yet she took his breath
away. He loved her perky nose, her freckles, her maddeningly curly, unkempt-looking
hair. But what intrigued him the most was her courage, her strength, even her moral
center that had her condemning him because he didn’t live up to her ideals. He admired
her for her beliefs, even if he didn’t agree with them.

He didn’t know why, after all these years, that Emily was the one who tugged at his
emotions, consumed his thoughts, when there was no possibility of a future between
someone like him and a cop. But he did know one thing: above everything else, he wanted
to protect her. He couldn’t save Arianna, but he would save Emily, whatever it took.

He started to put Arianna’s picture away. But without knowing if he’d ever be able
to return, he suddenly couldn’t bear to leave the picture behind. He slid it into
the binder and packed it with the Kevlar vest in the backpack. He slid the straps
over his shoulders and checked his watch. Only thirty-five minutes had passed since
he’d left the bunker. He was making good time. Which meant he could do one more thing
before he left.

He crossed to the window beside the bed, the one where the pictures of him and Shannon
had been taken the one night they’d made love. The angles of those pictures indicated
the camera would have been mounted on the right side of the window, probably about
halfway up, near the head of the bed pointing across and toward the footboard.

He pulled the blinds back, not really expecting to see anything since so much time
had passed. But if the person who’d placed the camera was sloppy, they might have
left a round circle on the glass from the suction cup that affixed it to the window.
Just knowing the size of the circle might help him calculate the maximum weight of
the device. A clue like that would further narrow down the types of cameras that could
have been used. Alone, that told him nothing. Added to other clues, it might paint
a picture that could help him identify whomever was framing him—and whoever had Kelly
and the two other women Hawley claimed to have seen.

As he’d expected, the glass was clean, with nothing indicating a camera had ever been
there. Of course. Nothing was ever that easy.

He let the blinds slide back into position and something thumped against the glass.
He flattened himself against the wall and waited. Five seconds. Ten. Nothing. No other
sounds drifted in from outside. He carefully lifted the edge of the blinds to look
out and immediately realized what he’d heard. The
camera
had bumped against the glass. It was still there��mounted on the back of the blinds,
its lens positioned to capture a full view of the bed and the room through one of
the pinholes where the strings threaded through the slats.

A red light blinked on top of the tiny camera. It was on and still transmitting. Which
meant whoever was receiving that transmission had seen him tonight. They knew he was
in the house. And since he’d scrolled through the security panel to check on Emily,
they also knew she was in the bunker.

And they had the GPS coordinates.

Cursing viciously, he tore through the house, not bothering with the bolt-hole. He
ran out the front door and sprinted up the opposite slope, pumping his arms and legs
in a full-out run. And as he ran, he did something he hadn’t done since the day he’d
lost Arianna.

He prayed.

Chapter Sixteen

T
HE TRAPDOOR CREAKED
open at the top of the stairs. Emily tightened her fingers around the bars of the
cell, obscenely grateful that Devlin was returning. She’d tried to convince herself
he wouldn’t really abandon her, that he wouldn’t leave her locked in the cell all
alone to die. But she really didn’t know. He was an enigma: kind, caring, or passionate
one moment, binding her and stuffing her in a suitcase the next.

While he was gone, she’d tugged and twisted on every bar in the cell, all thirty of
them, hoping to find a loose one. But they were snug and tight, and she’d come close
to sinking to the floor in despair. Now she stood by the door, wondering why he hadn’t
come down the stairs yet.

A pair of boots came into view, descending toward the main room, moving slowly, almost
. . . hesitantly. Wait . . . those boots, those pants, those weren’t what Devlin had
been wearing when he left. He’d been wearing all black. The person on the stairs was
dressed in green camouflage.

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.”