Take the Key and Lock Her Up (28 page)

“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.

D
EVLIN 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 stitching 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.

But her question wasn’t an easy one to answer.

He made quick work of her left arm and rubbed the first-aid cream on all of her cuts
before moving to her other side to perform the same careful ministrations to those
cuts.

“Did you hear me?” she asked.

He paused, his tweezers poised above a piece of glass. “I heard you. Arianna. She
was the reason I joined EXIT.” Saying her name out loud hurt less than he’d expected.
He gently pulled the sliver out and tossed it aside.

“You mentioned her before, when you locked me in the cell. You said if the police
had done their job, she wouldn’t have died. Who was she? Your girlfriend?”

“Fiancée.” He pulled out another sliver and dropped it to the ground.

Emily’s soft, warm hand settled over his. “What happened? How did she die?”

Her hand on his felt good, too good. He moved the tweezers to another piece of glass,
forcing her to drop her hand. He pulled out the sliver, moved to the next one.

“EXIT had been after me to join them for months. Cyprian himself recruited me. He’d
somehow accessed my scores on aptitude tests, knew my grades, had heard about my success
in sports. At first, he talked about me becoming a guide. For a guy like me, being
paid obscene amounts of money to train, learn survival skills, and get free trips
to exotic locations was incredibly tempting. The deal was that I’d begin my physical
training while still in school. I’d receive a regular, generous paycheck while pursuing
my degree. And once I graduated, I’d move to Colorado, EXIT’s headquarters, until
I was a full-fledged guide.”

“I’m sensing you said no.”

He set the tweezers down and took the penlight from her, looking for more glass. “You’d
be right. My family means everything to me. I couldn’t see leaving them for months
at a time. I didn’t want to disappoint Alex either, getting a college degree and then
basically doing nothing with it. And I was already in love with Arianna and thinking
about asking her to marry me. Taking a job that involved a lot of travel didn’t fit
in with my plans.”

“How did Cyprian take that?”

“He seemed fine with it, understood. He didn’t ask me again.” He shoved the penlight
in his pocket and put the tweezers in the first-aid kit before rubbing antibiotic
cream over her wounds.

“But you obviously said yes eventually. What happened to change your mind?”

He hesitated, then finished rubbing the cream on her arm before answering. “A lifetime
career criminal released from prison because of overcrowding raped and butchered her.”

Her face twisted into a mask of sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”

He gave her a sharp nod. “Two days later, Gage came to me.”

“Gage. You mentioned him before too. Wait, he drove your truck yesterday, from the
police station.”

“Yes. He’s an enforcer too. And my best friend.”

Her brow furrowed with confusion. “But in the tunnel you said Gage might have sent
those men after us. Your best friend is trying to kill us?”

He let out a deep sigh. “Cyprian thinks I’ve gone rogue, that I’m out of control,
a danger to the company and to others.” At her startled look, he clarified, “A danger
to innocent people, as opposed to the people I normally . . . deal with. Gage is just
following orders.”

“Huh. Some friend. You said he approached you in college, after your fiancée was killed.”