There’s the slightest glint of something and I jerk Patel hard before I hear two bullets hit the spot where we just stood. I fire my gun twice but don’t bother a third time, having no interest in wasting bullets when I’m sure he’s already out of sight.
Patel’s grip on me tightens but the sharp jerk leaves her falling into me.
“Can you hold on to my back?” I ask, planning on putting my body in front of hers. I try to push her back there, but I’m not sure her grip is tight enough, so I sacrifice my left arm to keep dragging her.
I now know that Colby is between us and the door. He’s familiar with this place. He knows how to move around it with ease. And he knows how to keep me from getting out.
I’m not sure if he plans to drive me deeper in to either kill me or escape, but I’m not planning on either happening. Instead, I hold my gun steady and throw something into the hallway.
He immediately shoots it, telling me he’s on edge and he’s going to easily fuck up. He should know better.
“You really plan to replace me with those skills?” I call.
Colby doesn’t reply, but that’s fine.
“Put the vest back on yourself,” Patel says.
I ignore her and hoist her up a little better before stepping farther into the room we’ve found ourselves backed into, but I’m not sure how far I want to go. Here, I run the risk of running into things, while in the hallway I know exactly where everything is after having walked down it mere minutes ago.
That means my risk goes up the longer I crash around in this room. Although… what’s a little risk?
I pull Patel back out into the hallway, dragging her after me while I quickly move a moment before I hear a noise to my right. I jerk back just as something hard and probably metal slams into my hip. I twist Patel away from it, but she loses her grip on me and goes down, nearly taking me down with her.
Suddenly, Patel is being dragged back, and while I can’t see it, I can hear her strangled cry. It’s too dark for me to shoot and chance hitting her, which is what I realize he wants. He wants to use her as a bullet shield, keeping himself safe.
Without warning, the lights go on, the brightness shocking my eyes, but it’s all I need to shoot him in the exposed shoulder. He loses his grip on her and dashes through an open door. I yank her to her feet as I hear him running from me.
Patel is gasping for breath while she reaches for the belt that had been looped over her throat and loosens it. I grab her by the front of her vest, hoisting her off the ground as I slip my gun into its holster and pull out another fully loaded one.
Now that I can see, I realize we are close to the exit; it’s only another fifteen feet. I rush to the door and jerk it open, but Jackson’s not outside waiting for me like he’d promised.
So is he the one who got the lights back on? And if he is, is that where Colby is heading?
Setting Patel on her feet, I order, “Try to get as far away from here as you can. Our car is across the street. If you can get to it, just go.”
I slam the door, closing her outside.
Trying not to let panic eat at me at the thought of Jackson being in this building, I dash down the hallway as I pull out my phone and click the tracker app that Cassel keeps on all of our phones. It tells me which side of the building Jackson is, so I run for it, but moving through this unfamiliar building, not knowing where Colby is, is very much like a maze of doors and rooms.
Even though I know he’s likely going after Jackson, I can’t allow it to fuck with my focus. Jackson is not injured, he’s not weak, he knows what he’s doing, and I need to trust him just like he trusts me.
He would’ve known that the likelihood of Colby going toward him was high if he were to turn the lights back on, but he chose to do it anyway.
While the locator isn’t exact when I’m this close to Jackson, it gives me a good idea which direction to go in.
The room opens up and I see a smear of blood on the wall. With Colby’s gun in his right hand, he likely touched it with his left. Did he push himself this way? Glancing at my phone again, I see that I’ve now walked past the icon that is Jackson.
Good. He’s being careful, he’s staying hidden.
“Colby, if you want to destroy me, why do you keep running?” I taunt. “You are going to take my place, but you haven’t evenhurtme and there you are bleeding out.”
He takes the bait; of course he does. He’s filled with rage and it makes him highly unfocused. “I will fucking slaughter that husband of yours. I will make you watch him bleed. And then I will find your son and I will shoot him in the fucking head,” Colby yells. I’m not sure whether it’s the pain getting the best of him or his temper.
“You’ve never been happy with what you have, have you? I saved you from your father, but it wasn’t enough. You could have started a new life. You could have sought help. You could have done so much, but instead, you killed your sister in a fit of rage. You strove to be like me… was it out of hope you could kill Lucas for refusing you? You are irrational. You claim to do things for a reason that might make sense, but your actions tell me otherwise. I think you just want to take and hurt for no reason other than it makes you feel good.”
“Shooting you in the head is going to feel really fucking good,” he says with a laugh.
I start toward the room his voice is coming from and realize that if I’ve judged it right, he’s now in a room that leads outside. Jackson must have removed my barricade to enter and turn the lights on, but it’s allowed Colby to leave. I bolt toward it, but by the time I reach the room, the door is swinging shut. There’s nowhere else for him to have hidden in the room, so I know he didn’t fake leaving. Once I’m outside, I’m unsure which way he went. Employee parking seems to be to the left, opposite where we parked across the road. I know I’m wasting too much time trying to decide and go with my instinct, which is to turn right. I think he’d believe that I would assume he’d go left, toward his car, then he’d likely slip back around the corner and shoot me when my back was turned to him.
