He headed down the hall, turning on lights as he went. Pushing the door open, they entered his room at the end of the hall. “Now, there’s one here just inside my bedroom. It opens a trap door in my closet. The space is tight, but it leads down into a crawlspace below the house. And more weapons.”
“Okay. There’s one more?” she asked.
He flinched, and rubbed his temple in a rare show of unease. “Yeah, and it’s the one you’re not going to like.”
“What do you mean?”
He led her to a switch on the inside of the utility closet just outside his bedroom door. “This one opens a panel with a security keyboard.”
She ran her finger over the button, amazed at how flush it sat against the plate. “For what?” she asked.
He met her gaze, hands on his hips. “Entering the code sets the house to self-destruct in ninety seconds.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Very funny. What does it really do?” she asked.
Somber eyes met hers, and the laugh died on her lips. Her stomach dropped. “What?” She backed up, shaking her head. “I’m not using that,” she said, pointing at the wall.
The muscle in his jaw flexed, and he gave her a hard look. “If necessary, you absolutely will.”
“But what if someone gets trapped inside?” she asked.
“As long as it’s not you, it doesn’t matter. The risk comes with the job,” he said.
She couldn’t do this. She could be signing his death warrant. She hadn’t signed on for this. “Maddox,” she said. It was all she could manage to say.
“Brynn,” he whispered.
“I don’t know if I can do that.” To possibly take life, the life of one of the good guys, how could she do that?
“And if that’s what you have to do to protect your nieces and nephews?”
“That’s blackmail,” she snapped.
“That’s the reality of this. This guy will not stop. We have one shot at this. If it doesn’t work, life as you know it, as your family knows it, is changed. You’ll all have to go into a protection program. Your jobs… gone. Friends… gone. Your homes… gone.” He punctuated each aspect of her life with an angry slash of his hand through the air. “And likely, your family broken up to an extent, since the more of you linked together means the easier you are to find.”
Altering her life was one thing, but her decisions ripping away everything her family knew? It wasn’t fair, and Maddox was right—not that she planned on saying the words. She sucked in a harsh breath. “Okay, what do I have to do?”
“It’s an easy panel. It’s a sequence of numbers and a green button. 5-9-1-4-7 and the green button. Then you have ninety seconds. You need to be at least thirty feet from the house. Best is the tree line or the edge of the water.”
“Activate and escape. Okay.” The thought made her stomach churn; bile rose up in the back of her throat, but she swallowed it down.
“I’m trusting you,” Maddox said.
The word filled the space between them, and meant a whole lot more than just the panel. She was sure of it. And because of those words, she would follow through.
“I won’t let you down,” she said.
He cupped her face, his gaze roaming over her as if searching for something. “If things go wrong… If I can’t—”
“Don’t go there,” she interrupted.
He dragged his thumb over her bottom lip. “I don’t do relationships, but I would have made an exception for you.”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrists and pulled his hand to her lips, kissing the rough knuckles there. “When we get through this, I’m going to hold you to that.”
He intertwined his fingers with hers. “Let’s get you warmed up with the gun.”
Maddox workedwith her for an hour. In that time, she had gone from hitting the edges of the target to keeping it at least within the outside lines.
