“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Ella said dubiously.
Adam gave the lock another hearty whack. This time the wood of the door cracked.
“I could be wrong, though,” Ella admitted.
Adam hit the lock once more. The wood splintered and broke and the lock dropped heavily to the floor. “If there’s anyone in there, it’s safe to say they know we’re here,” he said.
“There can’t be anyone in there,” Ella said. “How could they lock a padlock from the outside?” She pushed the door open, and a set of stairs appeared before them, leading to what was presumably the basement. “Unless somebody locked them in, I guess…”
Adam stared. “Do we go down there?” he asked. He felt apprehensive—he didn’t like the idea of heading into a situation that didn’t have a clear second exit.
Ella didn’t answer, however—she was already heading down the steps, down into the unknown.
Not about to let her go down there alone, Adam followed, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the doors hadn’t swung shut behind them.
Ella stopped at the foot of the stairs and let out a gasp. Adam took the remaining stairs at a run.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s—oh, Adam, look.”
Adam stared. Thanks to the light that filtered through the narrow, ground-level windows, he could see that they were surrounded by shelves and shelves of food. It was as if someone had known the nanovirus was coming and had planned for it.
“Is this all for the gas station?” he asked, picking up a jar of peanut butter. Did gas stations stock peanut butter? And surely it wasn’t common for them to have this much stock in reserve.
“There’s another room.” Ella had wandered. “Adam—there’s water.”
He hurried to her side. The second room was full of cases of bottled water. Without stopping to think, he picked up a bottle, twisted off the cap, and took a long, deep drink. He passed it to Ella, and she finished it in a single gulp. “I can’t believe it,” he marveled.
“I can’t believe none of this has been taken!” she said. “Adam, we could live for years down here.”
He let out a laugh and grabbed her in a hug. It was unreal. It was the solution to all their problems. And they wouldn’t even have to abandon the search for Julie. They were so close to Napa Bay. They could treat this place as a home base, returning here to stock up when they needed to, and they could go find Julie and her family and bring them back here. They would all be safe and well fed. Everything was going to be okay.
He went to the shelf and began to unpack the cans of cat food from his bag. He would need to make room for water and human food. They had plenty to choose from now.
Then a familiar sound froze him where he stood.
It was the sound of a gun being cocked.
Chapter 8
“Turn around,” a gruff, raspy voice said. “Slowly. No sudden moves.”
Adam raised his hands over his head and pivoted slowly, his heart pounding. The image of Rhett Birkin shooting the man on the beach was playing on loop in his head. He could be about to die just like that. One wrong move and this newcomer might decide he was too much of a threat to live.
The man looked as though he hadn’t seen the sun in years. His face was ghostly white. His hair was matted and unkempt, and his beard was a tangle. He wore a button-down shirt and a name tag with the gas station’s logo and the word “manager” emblazoned across the top. “John” was spelled out neatly in stick-on letters.
“John,” Adam said, trying to put the man at ease. Surely a personal connection, a name, would make him more likely to let Adam live. “I’m Adam.”
The man gestured with the barrel of the gun. “Go stand over by the wall.”
Adam did so, careful not to turn his back toward John or to move too quickly. “We didn’t know there was anyone here,” he said. “We didn’t mean to take anything that belonged to anybody. We’re sorry.”
“Where is she?”
Did he mean Ella? She was still in the second room, the room with all the water. Adam very much hoped she would have the sense not to come out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hedged, knowing the deception could come back to bite him if Ella was revealed.
“You know damn well what I’m talking about!” John roared.
Adam flinched.
“Where’s Katie?” John asked.
“Who’s Katie?”
Adam’s stomach dropped at the sound of Ella’s voice. He had hoped she would hide until this confrontation was over and she had the opportunity to get herself out. Apparently she’d decided to take a different approach. She was walking into the room now, her pistol trained on John.
There’s no way this isn’t going to escalate now, Adam realized. There’s no chance we can all walk away. It’s going to end in violence.
John’s eyes flicked to Ella. “Put the gun down, baby,” he said.
Ella looked shaken. “What?”
He crossed to her side in two steps and grabbed her wrist, turning it swiftly and sending the gun clattering to the floor. She let out a little cry of pain. John stooped and picked up the pistol, tucking it into his pocket.
That move surprised Adam. He had expected to see John turn the second gun on Ella. Why wasn’t he covering her?
And why had he called her baby?
“It’s been months,” John said, narrowing his eyes at Adam. “Months without a word from her. And now you see fit to bring her back here. Why? Did you hope to steal from me? Or”—his eyes darted to Ella—“did she drag you back? Was that it? I knew it. I knew she’d make her way back to me in the end.”
“What are you talking about?” Adam asked. He turned to Ella. “Do you know this guy?”
Wide-eyed, she shook her head.
John thrust his gun forward at Adam, almost as if it was a spear and he meant to skewer Adam with it. “Don’t you say a word,” he said. “It’s my turn to talk. You have some nerve coming back her after what you did to my family.”
“I’ve never met your family,” Adam protested. “I don’t know who you are. You’re mistaking me for someone else.”
John stepped forward and pressed the barrel of the gun into Adam’s cheek.
Adrenaline flooded Adam’s body. He felt nauseous.
“Don’t move,” Ella murmured. “Don’t say anything. He thinks you’re somebody else.” She stepped forward. “Sir? John? What did he do to your family?”
John turned away from Adam and toward Ella. “I knew you’d come back,” he said. “I always knew it, Katie. Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“I—I’m fine.”
“You thought you could run away with my daughter?” John’s voice was practically a snarl as he turned to face Adam again. “I ought to put a bullet through your head. It’s better than you deserve for taking my little girl away from me.”
Christ, he thinks Ella’s his daughter, Adam realized. He’s out of his mind.
“Don’t shoot him,” Ella begged. “Please. He—he never did anything to me. He never hurt me. I’m all right. I’m fine. Don’t shoot him.”
“No,” John said. “Maybe not. Maybe another punishment would be more appropriate.” He bared his teeth at Adam. His face was positively feral. “At least you had the courtesy to bring Katie back,” he said. “I’m not an unreasonable man. That earns you some forgiveness. I’ll let you live.”
Adam exhaled heavily.
“But you’ll have to pay a price,” John went on. “What kind of man would I be if I let you walk out of here scot-free after what you did to me and mine? There’s going to have to be some kind of toll. You’ll suffer for what you’ve done.”
He grabbed Adam by the collar of his shirt. The movement was so sudden that Adam nearly cried out. He managed to bite back his alarm as John threw him into the center of the room, toward the stairs, away from Ella. Adam thought about turning and
running, but knew that he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave Ella alone with this madman. And besides, there was no way he’d make it out without being shot in the back.
He wondered what had become of the real Katie. Obviously she had been taken away by someone, some man. Had she run off with a boyfriend? Or was the truth darker than that? Had she been taken away against her will?
It felt ominous that John was the only living person he and Ella had come across since returning to the mainland. Was this what they could expect of everyone left alive? Madness and horror?
“Listen,” Adam said. “John.”
“Don’t,” Ella whispered.
But Adam had to try. John had both the guns and he and Ella had nothing except logic and reason. If he could wake this man up to the fact that he wasn’t the person who had taken his daughter away, maybe he could convince him to stand down.
“I don’t know who you are,” Adam said. “I don’t know who Katie is. Is that your daughter?”
“Damn it, you took her away from me!”
“I didn’t,” Adam said. “I’ve never been here before in my life, John. I’ve never met your daughter. And this woman I’m traveling with—this isn’t Katie. This is my friend Ella. We’re just passing through here. We’re heading north, trying to get to Napa Bay—”
“Adam, stop,” Ella said, sounding absolutely agonized.
But he couldn’t stop. This seemed like the only thing that might have a chance at reaching John, at making him see that Adam wasn’t who John thought he was.
“I have some food in my bag,” he said. “It isn’t much, but we’ll share with you. And maybe we can hear each other’s stories. Maybe we can help you figure out what happened to your daughter, if you tell us more about it.”
John grabbed a can off a nearby shelf and flung it at Adam. Adam just barely managed to dive out of the way. Ella shrieked.
“How dare you!” John demanded. “I could kill you right now for what you’ve done. I could drag you outside and use your blood to water the crop! I’ve agreed to let you live, out of the goodness of my heart, and you stand here talking to me like you think I’m some sort of fool? Show some respect, for God’s sake! It’s bad enough that you took my only daughter.”
“She’s not your daughter!” Adam protested. “And I never took her anywhere! She’s with me because she wants to be. We’re friends.”
John threw another can. This one glanced off of Adam’s upper arm, and he knew he would have a painful bruise later.
“Shut up!” John yelled. “Just shut up! I don’t want to hear another word out of you unless it’s an apology.” He leveled the gun at Adam’s forehead. “Anything else comes out of your mouth, I’m pulling the trigger.”
“Don’t—” Ella said.
“Quiet, Katie,” John said. “Go stand over there.”
Ella moved in the direction John was pointing. She clearly thought the best way to survive this situation was to play along.
“Admit to what you’ve done,” John said, crossing the room slowly to stand in front of Adam, gun still held out in front of him. “I want to show you mercy. I do. But forgiveness is earned. Admit you took my daughter away from me. Admit you were wrong. Beg my forgiveness.”
Adam felt frozen. He didn’t want to do what John was asking. What if it was a trick? What if, as soon as Adam admitted to kidnapping Katie—or whatever it was he was being accused of—John decided he didn’t deserve to live after all?
“Do what he says,” Ella urged.
“I didn’t,” Adam said. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, John. I wish I could give you your daughter back. But I never had her. I don’t know where she is.”
In one swift motion, John raised the gun high overhead and swung the butt of it at Adam’s face.
Adam’s nose exploded in pain. He let out a cry and raised a hand to his face. Touching it hurt, and his fingers came away bloody. He broke my nose.
“Repent!” John roared, raising the gun overhead again.
“No!” Ella screamed. “Dad, no!”
Dad. She had called him Dad.
Was she playing along, hoping to calm him down by going along with the story he had created for them? Was she thinking that if she played the role of Katie, she could somehow regain control of the situation?
Or maybe it was much more basic than that. Maybe John’s violence had thrown her back into the trauma of her past. Maybe she was remembering her own father’s sudden snap of violence and everything that had come after.
Adam didn’t have time to think about it, either way. The gun swung down toward him. He threw his hands up to protect his already injured face and seized John by the wrist. I’ve got to get that gun away from him before he shoots one of us.
John brought his free hand up and clawed at Adam’s face. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed. “I should never have agreed to let you live. You’re not worth the oxygen it takes to keep you going. You’re evil! You’re a kidnapper! You destroyed my family!”
Adam shook John’s wrist, trying to disarm him the way he’d seen John disarm Ella, but it didn’t work. Maybe it was because Adam had no idea what he was doing, or maybe it was just the fact that John was so much stronger than Ella was, but for whatever reason, his grip on the gun remained tight. Adam thought about going for the gun in John’s pocket, the one he’d taken from Ella, but he didn’t dare let go of the other man’s hands.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ella scramble behind a stack of fallen boxes. Good. At least she was out of the way and relatively protected from their scuffle. Still, if the gun went off, she wasn’t much safer behind those boxes than she would be out in the open.
He had to get the weapon out of John’s hands before this escalated any further.
He grabbed the gun above where John held it and wrenched it back and forth. This was dangerous, he knew that. If someone’s finger bumped the trigger, which could very well happen with how carelessly they were handling the gun, then things would end badly. But the adrenaline coursing through him kept him moving. There isn’t time to be careful, he thought. I just have to get that gun away from him.
“You’ll pay,” John hissed. “You’ll pay for what you did to my family. You’ll pay with your life.”
With one final wrench, Adam jerked the gun out of John’s hands. He fell backward onto the floor with the momentum of his pull on the weapon and nearly dropped it, but managed to hang on. He scrambled to his feet and backed into the corner, away from John.
Ella, now on the other side of the room from both Adam and the stairs, peeked up over her pile of boxes. She was breathing heavily, Adam saw, and he knew her adrenaline must be coursing through her as intensely as his was.
He expected John to go for the gun in his pocket, but he didn’t. Maybe he’d forgotten it was there. Adam wouldn’t have been surprised. John was clearly at the very edge of sanity and reason. He forced himself not to look down at the second gun, knowing that if his eyes went to it, John might be reminded of its existence. As long as John didn’t have a weapon in his hands, there was a chance to defuse all this.
“You’re a monster,” John breathed. “Nothing but a monster.”
“Please listen to me,” Adam said. “I’m not who you think I am. I don’t know what happened here, but you’ve got to believe me. I don’t know your daughter. I’ve never met her.”
John spat at him.
“I might be able to help you,” Adam said. “If we can just calm down—if we can talk to each other—maybe we can help you figure out where Katie is. Wouldn’t that be better? Maybe we can find her.” He didn’t really believe it would be possible—he didn’t really even think it would be possible for John to regain enough of his sanity to tell them a reliable story. But maybe they could calm him down.
But hearing his daughter’s name seemed to have triggered something. John turned and spotted Ella behind the boxes. Before she had time to run, he had darted over and grabbed her arm. He pulled her out from
behind the boxes and into the middle of the room.
“You won’t take her away from me,” he snarled. “Not again. She’s mine now.” And to Adam’s horror, he reached toward his pocket.
Toward the other gun.
“She’ll stay here with me forever,” John said, lips spreading, baring his teeth.
Adam raised his gun to shoulder height, sighted along the barrel the way Ella had taught him, and fired.
Chapter 9
Everything seemed to move in slow motion.
Adam was aware for several long moments only of the heat and pressure of the gun in his hands. It seemed to have grown heavier, somehow, and he nearly dropped it for the second time.
He thought, at first, that he must have missed. Everyone stood utterly still. With the exception of Ella’s hummingbird breathing, there was no sound.
Then, slowly, John keeled over and fell to the ground.
His hand was still clenched around Ella’s arm, and he dragged her part of the way down with him as he fell. Ella let out a cry and pulled away from him, staggering back across the floor toward Adam.
Adam’s stomach clenched violently. He turned away from Ella, away from John, and heaved. He took several deep breaths, trying not to vomit. They couldn’t afford to lose any food.
“He’s dead,” Ella said, her voice hollow. “He’s dead.”
I killed him, Adam thought. He felt as if he might pass out. He had actually shot and killed another person. It felt like a nightmare. He couldn’t have done such a thing, could he? This couldn’t be real life.
It’s not the first time, his inner self reminded him. You’ve killed before.
And suddenly he was reliving it. That awful night on the yacht. The drugs they’d put in Cody’s drink, hoping only to sedate him so that they could tie him up and stop him from harming himself or anybody else. The moment when Cody had realized he’d been drugged and had attacked Artem. And himself and Sara pulling Cody back, pinning him down…
He would remember the feeling of it as long as he lived. The way he’d held his friend down as Sara had applied pressure to Cody’s throat. The feeling of Cody struggling against him, and the feeling when Cody’s struggles had ceased. When life had left him.
Escape The Dark (Book 3): Into The Ruins Page 7