Page 119 of Floodgates

“No trouble? You’re not gonna fight?”

I shook my head. “I promise.”

He nodded and put his hand around my bicep and shoved his other hand, the one holding the gun, into his coat pocket. “Good.”

It was late, so there was no one at all on the road. Added to that was the temperature, right above freezing, and no one was out who didn’t need to be. So there was no one out to witness us walking side by side out the front of the motel’s parking lot.

Once on the sidewalk, we took a right, walked a half a mile down the road, and then took a left at the first stoplight. I could see the auto-body shop as soon as we made the turn.

“He told me to take you around to the back,” the guy said as we closed in on the auto repair shop.

“Okay.”

“And so you know, he promised he had no plans to hurt either you or the woman.”

But that was lies. Hurt, torture, maybe not. Kill, yes. “He who?”

“Lucien Ritter.”

I WAS an idiot. If I’d listened to clues, I would have figured it out. The man was a chemistry teacher; he could have figured out how to mix up a batch of C4. And Cord had said that the chief was starting to vet people to help them with surveillance, he didn’t say there were people already on the job. Lucien had lied to me… if only I had been listening closer. But Cord had all my attention, as I had his. It was why we were both caught off guard.

As I’d walked away from Cord instead of toward him, the action had felt both stupid and wrong. The only thing that kept me moving was my concern for Celia. I was freezing after just minutes outside, and trying to calculate how long it would take Cord to realize I wasn’t in bed with him was problematic. Hopefully he’d miss me sooner rather than later. But if I was about to be shot in the head, time wasn’t on my side.

When we reached the garage, we went around to the back, and I saw that the door was open. As we got close, Lucien stepped out from the shadows.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked him softly.

“I think you know,” he said calmly before he turned, lifted the gun he was holding, and shot the guy who had brought me there in the head.

“Lucien!” I yelled. I turned to the fallen man but was stopped by both Lucien’s order and the high-pitched scream from inside.

“He’s dead,” he snarled at me. “And the way I shot him––with the blowback––you shouldn’t have gotten anything on you.”

His concern was that I didn’t have any blood on me?

“Who,” I gasped, pointing at the fallen man, “is this?”

“No one,” he told me. “He’s nothing.”

I stared at him, at Lucien, mouth open, not stunned or surprised, but simply unsure who he was. This was not the same man I’d spoken to over lunch; he was completely altered in both thought and deed. The man I’d met would hurt no one.

The scream from inside repeated.

“You better get in there,” Lucien said calmly, the murder weapon trained on me. “I think Celia thinks I killed you.”

“And if I say no?”

“That’s not an option for you,” he replied simply.

Exhaling sharply, I took a good look at him. The man did not look like himself. His pupils were fully dilated, and he was sweating.

“After you,” I said softly.

“Oh no,” he sighed, gesturing toward the door with the gun. I knew what it was; I had seen a Glock up close—both my brother’s and Cord’s. “You first.”

He waited silently for me to make my decision. As soon as I stepped through the door, I saw Celia on the other side of the shop bay standing beside a Volkswagen Bug. Rushing to her side, I cupped her face in my hands.

“Are you all right?”