Page 24 of Cherish Me

The radio crackled, and Damien frowned, surprised that he was able to get any reception at all in the elevator shaft. Then he heard Nikki—just a quick clearing of her throat, but Christ, he knew it was her—and he stopped wondering about the reception.

He tried to shift his weight, teetering on the small ledge beneath the elevator doors as he prayed she’d come back on the air. Had she gotten away? Had she managed to get her hands on a radio?

“Damien,” she finally said, and her voice—strong and clear—made his soul ache. It felt as though they’d been apart for years, and he wanted nothing more than to have her in his arms. “Damien, they have a message for you.”

“Nikki—”

But she was gone and when the radio came back to life, he heard the voice of the man in charge. “We have your wife, Mr. Stark. We have several people. They’re safe now, but if you keep pulling the shit that you’re pulling, that won’t last for long. Come to the bar. Hold your wife. And soon enough, we’ll be gone and you both will still be breathing. Continue this nonsense, and I assure you that won’t be the case much longer.”

Damien started to respond, but his fingers froze when Nikki’s voice came back through the speakers. “Listen, I know you’re acting like John McClane,” she said, her words slow and clear. “But sweetheart, if you’ll just stop, they promise they won’t hurt me. Please, please, Damien. You know what’s going on here. If you don’t listen to me, we can all forget riding off into the sunset once this is over.”

The line turned to static, and Damien closed his eyes, overcome by both relief and fear. Relief that she was alive and—for now at least—unharmed.

Fear because she was telling him to press on. To not stop. He was absolutely certain. The reference to Die Hard, one of their favorite movies, in which the hero did everything he could to save his wife. And, more than that, the specific message to not listen to her. To not stop. A hidden message, sure, but one designed specifically for him. Because by saying that he should forget the sunset … well, that meant forgetting—or rather, not—stopping. Because sunset was their safe word. An absolute, no questions, demand to stop.

And she’d just told him to ignore it.

He knew why, and that certainty was what terrified him. Because she was telling him that she knew for certain what he already suspected—that if he didn’t succeed, everyone in that bar was dead.

He had to succeed. There was simply no other option.

With intense concentration, he managed to get in a position where he could balance on the ledge while forcing the fourth-floor elevator doors open. Without a tool it wasn’t easy, but he managed, getting his fingers into the gap, then applying opposite pressure.

Soon, he had an opening wide enough to squeeze his shoulders through.

He did, balancing precariously on the ledge so that he wouldn’t fall backward into the void.

There.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but it came too soon. Because just as he was hoisting his body up, the sharp impact of a kicking foot caught him in the chest—and before he knew it, he was tumbling backward into the shaft’s void, falling and falling toward the floor below.

Damien landed with a thunk on the top of the elevator car that, thankfully, had been stopped only one floor below him.

Unfortunately, that left him too close for comfort when the man above—Barclay, he assumed—got off a round of bullets. Ping! Ping! Metal hit metal, and Damien rolled to the side, clinging to the edge of the car to avoid the spray, his legs dangling in the shaft and the two stories below him. Survivable, but he’d likely end up with broken bones—and then he’d be no help to Nikki at all.

The firing stopped, and he heard a laugh and a sharp, “Good riddance.”

Damien waited, then waited a bit more, his arms starting to shake from the effort of holding him up. Only when he knew he had to either move or fall did he risk pushing his head back from where he’d been pressed against the car’s metal exterior. The doors were closed again; Barclay probably presumed he’d been hit and had fallen. Good.

Except now, of course, he had to get out of the shaft, get to the bar, and save his wife.

He hoisted himself back onto the car’s roof, his muscles straining. He paused, considering his options. If he went out through the fourth floor elevator doors, it’s likely that he’d just end up shot. For all he knew, Barclay was waiting. Or there was yet another thug who wasn’t part of Damien’s count assigned to watch and make sure he didn’t make it back up.

Not that he could stay in the shaft forever, but better to go down. All the way to the first floor where he could exit through the utility door, then climb up the stairs and catch them by surprise.

Fortunately, he had a rope.

He secured one end to the elevator cable, then tossed the other over the side. It was a long coil, and though it didn’t reach the floor, from his perspective it looked like it came pretty damn close.

He gripped the rope, thought of Nikki, then started to slide down through the inky dark toward ground level, every muscle in his body aching. He reached the end of the rope, then dropped down, trusting the ground to be reasonably close.

It was, and as soon as his feet hit the ground, he used the light on his phone to search for the door. Finding it, he slowly pulled it open. All clear.

And—bonus—he now had reception.

He called Ryan. “I’m heading to Nikki,” he said as soon as he’d explained the situation. “Get a team in here—be stealthy—and get to the vault. They can’t blow it—I ditched their C4. But if they forced the combination out of Aubert, they’ll be trapped inside. He would have given them Jackson’s failsafe.”

“Or hit the button on his watch,” Ryan agreed. “Sweet. I’m on it. We’re in the air, but we’ve got Dallas and a team he’s worked with on the ground organizing the op.”