Her knees turned to jelly, but she kept running, bursting through the door into Reese’s office. She went straight for the fireplace.
There was no fucking door.
“It’s there, sweetheart. On the right. Do you see the crack?”
Apparently, she’d made that observation aloud.
She was almost to the wall, the footsteps getting closer in the hallway.
There.One bookcase was no longer flush to the wall. She thrust her fingers into the gap and pulled.
The bookcase, and the heavy steel door to which it was bolted, swung open.
“Get in!” Reese shouted. “Get in the room!”
She leaped inside, trying to close the door behind her. A hand wrapped around her wrist. Mati let out a helpless and terrified whine.
“Pull his arm in with you,” Reese shouted.
She did, jerking her arm hard to try to wrench it free.
“Close it!” Reese ordered. “Not you, Mati! Keep your hands free of the door.”
“But—”
The door swung closed on its own, fast. She stumbled back, barely getting herself clear of the thick metal door jamb while still trying to pry the fingers from her wrist.
The door pinned her assailant’s arm with a loud crack, his fingers going instantly slack. His bellow of pain and outrage was cut off when he yanked his arm back through the door and it sealed shut with an ominous clang and a series of thuds as the deadbolts engaged.
Mati stood staring at the steel wall, her panting loud in the sudden silence. She wobbled on her feet, staggered by fear and relief.
What the fuck just happened?
She looked down at her hand, still holding her phone. She brought it to her ear.
“What the fuck just happened?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
Reese sounded like he was breathing as hard as she was. “You’re okay. You’re safe. You’ll be safe in that room. It’s going to be okay,” Reese repeated, possibly trying to convince himself as much as her.
“I’m okay,” she agreed. “I’m safe.”
Reese let out a ragged sigh.
Mati spun slowly, searching the room, her eyes catching on the bank of video monitors on one wall. She saw a man standing in the front hall, waving his arms wildly at the door as if to say, “We gotta go!”
A second man, squatter and somehow more menacing, cradled his arm outside the small space in which she was entombed.
She stepped away from the door. She’d been in the house with not one buttwointruders. And Reese had saved her ass.
He’d also called hersweetheart, and, if she hadn’t hallucinated it,my love.
All of which she would have to think about later.
“What now?” she asked.
“Look behind you,” he said.
She turned and found the camera in the upper corner of the room. She waved.
