I glance at the phone in my hand, but even if there were any signal in the office, speaking would give away my location.
I feel my way around the room, relying on years of familiarity to prevent a fall. The cool touch of the old metal filing cabinet with the drawer at the bottom that hasn’t closed properly for the better half of a decade. The smooth edge of my grandfather’s desk.
I could hide beneath it.
Outside, I hear the scrape of something being pushed over. I hope it isn’t the rack containing the old-school glass bottles of marine oil additives.
Shit, I hope they aren’t planning to set fire to it.
“There’s a password,” I hear one of them say.
They must be trying to get into the laptop I keep behind the counter to take the airboat bookings. If they are focused on that, it means they aren’t looking in the direction of the office.
I don’t know what they’re looking for, but they won’t find it on the old laptop that only has boat bookings and employee shift schedules on it. Which means, they’ll probably start a wider search of the store and look in here. And given the glass window didn’t stop them breaking into the store, an old door without a lock on it won’t keep them out.
Every movement I make feels terrifyingly loud—the creak of the floorboards, the faint rustle of my shorts. I ease the handle of the door down slowly, holding my breath as I do. I manage to ease it open just enough to see down the short hallway.
Sure enough, through the faint light from the locked laptop screen, I see the silhouettes of the two men. And while the dark makes it hard to be one hundred percent certain, their build is like that of the men who were here before.
So, unless I am exceptionally unlucky enough to have two sets of similar men after me, I am relatively certain it’s the same men.
My heart hammers so hard and fast, I fear my ribs might crack around it.
I tug the door open a little farther, and the hinge creaks. Immediately, I pause, holding my breath for so long that my vision spins.
“What was that?” one of the men says.
They pause, and I duck back out of sight, relying on the darkness of the office.
“You’re imagining things,” the other says. “Keep looking.”
But it’s a reminder.
Whatever my plan is, I need to execute it swiftly.
I run through my options. There’s the doorway that leads to the big storeroom, but that has a roller shutter door, and they’d be on me before I raised it an inch.
The bathroom. It has a window I could get out of. I had it renovated last year. Had a proper door and lock put on it.
If I could just make it across the hallway, I could lock myself in. And while they are trying to figure out how to get the door open, I could dip out the window. Thankfully, my apartment keys and my car keys are on the same keychain. So, if I can get out the window and to my truck, I can make it to safety.
“Check through the shit on the desk,” one of them says.
And I know that’s my moment. I know when I wrote Jackal’s address down in the book, I didn’t write his name next to it, and there are lots of addresses in that notebook. So even if they find the random address, they won’t know for sure it relates to Jackal.
Every nerve in my body screams the same thing: I need to move.
I visualize what’s going to happen a thousand times.
Sprint. Slam. Climb. Drive.
I take a breath.
Then, another.
Then, I run.
My lungs burn, even though it’s a short distance. I slam the bathroom door behind me, locking it even as I hear confused shouts and then, the thud of boots.
