She rushed toward him but stopped when Kessler stepped out from behind the shelving unit. A second man flanked him, armed, watching Fallon with the same flat indifference as the one at the door. Kessler’s gaze swept her once, top to bottom, and the satisfaction on his face was brief and professional.
“Impressive. I thought you weren’t going to make it in time. But I’m a man of my word, so I guess I won’t get to use my fun knife after all. Pity.” He pointed at a chair six feet from Isaac. “Hands.”
She held them out. He zip tied her wrists in front of her body, the plastic biting into skin. Then he pushed her into the chair and secured the zip tie to the metal arm with a second tie, anchoring her in place.
While he worked, her eyes moved. The pipe against the shelving. The hardware on the workbench. The vise. Thedistance between her chair and the table, the table and Isaac, Isaac and the door. The weight of the pipe. The angle she’d need.
She stored all of it. She wasn’t giving herself over to this psychopath without a fight.
Kessler straightened. Checked her restraints once. Nodded to himself.
“You got what you wanted. Let him go. That was the deal.”
Kessler looked at her. The patience in his expression was worse than cruelty. “Yeah, unfortunately there is no actual deal. I just needed you to get here.”
“You just said you were a man of your word.”
Kessler shrugged casually. “When it suits my purposes.” He glanced at Isaac. “He stays until the handoff is arranged. After that, I’ll deal with him.”
The words landed without inflection. He wasn’t taunting her. He was correcting a misunderstanding, the way someone might correct a mispronounced word.
He pulled out his phone and jerked his chin at the other man. Both of them walked toward the loading dock door at the far end of the room. She could hear his voice, clipped and businesslike, making calls. Confirming delivery. Arranging the handoff. The three former targets who’d pooled their money to buy her, and Kessler was closing the deal.
The loading dock door shut behind him. His voice faded to a murmur on the other side.
She turned to Isaac. “Are you okay?”
“You shouldn’t have come.” Barely above a whisper.
“You would have died.”
“And now we both die.”
“No.” She met his eyes. “We don’t.”
His mouth pressed tight. Even that small movement cost him. She could see the pain register across what was left of his face.
“How bad are you?” she asked.
“Ribs. Shoulder. I can’t tell what’s broken and what’s just beaten to hell.” He tried to shift in the chair and a sound escaped his throat that he couldn’t suppress. “My legs work. That’s about all I can promise you right now.”
She looked down at the zip ties on her wrists. The plastic was industrial grade, cinched tight enough that her fingers were already tingling. The tie that anchored her to the chair arm gave her about four inches of slack.
She could slip them. Both thumbs would have to dislocate. Maybe the left shoulder and wrist too, depending on how the angle worked. It was joints that were already damaged. Joints that might not come back to normal this time.
That didn’t matter. She’d worry about permanent damage later. Right now, she had to get Isaac out of here. She started working her right hand against the tie, testing the give.
Isaac saw it. His one open eye locked on her wrists, and the anguish that had been in his face when she walked in doubled.
“Don’t. Fallon, please don’t.”
“He’s coming back.”
“There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t.”
“Your wrist won’t take it. You know it won’t. After Chattanooga, after everything, you do this and…”
