I lean forward to give him a kiss, and he gives me such a sweet one in return. His fingers cup my cheek as he pulls me in, like refusing to let me go will keep me safe. I pull back and smile at him. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Please be careful,” he begs.
He gives me another soft peck before I gather my stuff.
“You too. Stay hidden and out of sight.”
Jackson nods as I slip out the door and start toward the building on the other side of the road. A car is coming, so I wait for it to pass before I calmly walk across the street. The parking lot on the front side is empty since the place is closed for the night. When I reach the door, it’s locked, but I have my doubts the security system has been activated. The man is far too cocky to think he’d need to. He’d never believe I would know exactly who he is.
He thinks I’m worthless.
He thinks he has nothing to fear.
I walk around the building, examining each of the exterior doors. The building really is set up perfectly for this. There are only a few windows but it’s mostly a windowless building, which makes blocking the doors easy. I pull out a hammer I’d taken from my storage container and drive a spike between the door and the frame. It’s not going to keep someone inside forever, but it’s sure not going to make it easy for him to come out.
I’m not losing this asshole.
And when there’s only one door left, I pick the lock with ease and let myself in. There’s a buzzer that goes off so they don’t have to have a receptionist up here all the time. It announces my arrival when just the man I’m looking for comes around the corner.
“We’re closed?—”
“That’s good,” I say as I lift my gun and shoot him.
He’d already been on edge, and he’d drawn back the second he’d come into view, which means that when I pulled the trigger, he had time to shift to the side, but the blood on the wall still tells me that I got him.
“Colby or Ronny or whatever the fuck you go by… you wanted to play, so let’s play,” I say as I start after him. I can hear him running down the hallway.
“I thought you wanted me,” I goad while I rush after him, pissed that my family became unsafe simply because I wanted Waylon to have fun skydiving with his friend. I assume that Colby was working as an instructor to blend in—or maybe for some other reason—and saw us when we came in. He must have instantly recognized me and learned about Sophia from there.
There’s a door open at the end, and I can’t help but question if he’s trying to lead me right to Patel.
Moving quietly, I head toward them, and when I’m outside the room, I listen to what has to be Patel fighting against something.
“I will blow a hole in her fucking head, Sandman,” he growls. “She’s not getting out of here alive if you fuck with me.”
“You wanted me to play, so I’m here to play,” I say while my mind drifts back to the room from the video call I’d received at Colby’s apartment and the way Patel had been behind the desk. He’d have to go to the right side of the desk to gather her. The left was blocked.
Colby could be standing behind her or to the left of her. I have to assume he has a gun to her head, but pulling the trigger solves nothing. He kills her and then what? He has a lifeless body that will be of no use to me? No. He has to keep her alive and use her against me. He never planned to let her go free; she’d have seen his face. He was going to cut her up piece by piece until there was nothing left of her just as a huge “fuck you” to me.
Every part she’s lost is on me.
I tap the wall until I hear the stud, then I shift my gun to the right of it and pull the trigger. The bullet tears through the wall while I slip around the door and fling the first thing I get my hands on at his head.
He’s panicked and knows that shooting her gains him nothing as his gun shifts to my head and he fires, but he’s seconds too late since I’ve ducked back out of sight. There must be another door in the room because I hear it open, and then the sound of him dragging Patel through. I peek around the corner in time to see her foot catch on the frame, which yanks him to a stop. It leaves me a split second where I can shoot at him again. He’s agitated, wasting energy on trying to pull her after him when she’s hooked both bound feet on the doorframe and isn’t planning to let go anytime soon. Another shot from my gun causes him to drop her before he disappears out of sight and Patel hits the ground hard.
I leap the desk and grab her feet, jerking her hard toward me a second before a bullet hits the spot where her head had just been. Her eyes are fixated on the spot; she knows how close to death she just came.
I pull my knife out and slice through the binds on her arms, leaving her mouth for last because I’m not quite sure I want to hear what’s coming out of it. Her hands are bloody from where he’d ripped her fingernails out and she has fresh burns on her neck and face, likely the next video Colby was going to send me.
Patel reaches up with a shaking hand and tears the tape off before she looks up at me with wide eyes. “Fuck,” she hisses.
Her hair is matted to her head with blood. One of her eyes is completely bloodshot and she looks like she’s in shock.
I cut her legs free and pull her to her feet. She staggers and I wonder if her leg is broken, but she remains standing. Quickly, I pull my bulletproof vest off, well aware that Jackson is goingto be pissed. I tug it on her a second before I hear something. I flip the metal desk and ram it against the wall as an assault rifle starts up, tearing holes through the drywall.
This man came prepared.
I push Patel’s head down while I concentrate on where the bullets seem to be coming from as we both lie on the ground. The spray is going in an arc, but the direction he’s moving the gun tells me the general area he’s standing in.
