Seven of Swords

by Knight, JJ

A small moan from the bed makes me whirl around again. This time Jade actually stirs, bringing her hand to her forehead.

  I'm sure she has a killer headache. I have a remedy for that, but first I want to speak to her.

  Her first words aren't at all what I expect them to be.

  "You're stupid," she says, her voice hoarse.

  I sit down on the corner of the bed, not too close, but close enough.

  "And why is that?"

  "You should have…" Her voice falls to the barest whisper.

  I scoot closer. "I should have what?”

  She whispers something again, and I lean close to her face.

  This time, she shouts. "You should have tied me up!”

  She grabs me by the neck and jerks me down. In an instant she's rolled behind me, jumped on my back, and pressed my face into the pillow.

  This amuses me. I laugh into the pillow, then lift my head.

  "You think a tiny mite like you is going to subdue someone like me? That was the clumsiest takedown I've ever seen."

  "I don't have to be better than you,” she says. "I just have to be smarter.”

  It's at that moment that I feel the barrel of something at the back of my neck. Does the girl have a weapon?

  Would she shoot me?

  Frankly, I don’t know. Nothing about what I've seen from Jade tells me that she is a cold-blooded killer. But I haven’t survived this long by underestimating an enemy with a gun to my head.

  "I did not bring you here to hurt you," I say.

  "I wish I could say the same."

  I lie there with her on top of me for another tense few seconds.

  "So what is your endgame here?" I ask. "What do you want?"

  "I don't like guys who knock out girls with drugs,” she says. “If you want me to come somewhere with you, just fucking ask."

  "Point taken."

  "I'm going to walk out of this hotel room, and you are not going to follow me," she says, shoving my head back down.

  I allow myself a small smile, since my face is pressed into the pillow and she can't see it. My voice is muffled as I say, “All right. I accept your offer."

  "Do not move," she says.

  "Not moving an inch."

  Jade obviously has been trained in knots. She jerks the sheet aside, and I can feel its cool lengths wrapping around my wrists. Within seconds she has me properly hogtied ankle to wrist.

  She rolls me on my side so she can look me in the face. Now that I’m tied, she drops a lipstick tube next to me. “At least it’s called criminally red.” She laughs.

  So it wasn’t a gun after all.

  “This goes with me," she says, picking up my phone from the side table. "Don't expect to see it again."

  "Fair enough," I say. "Thankfully, I can afford to have it replaced."

  She shoves it in her pocket and checks the knots one more time.

  "I'm going to take this up with Antony," she says. "If he was following us, obviously he’s concerned about how you are handling something. He definitely won't like the idea that you drugged me."

  "I understand. Do what you have to do."

  She stares at me a moment, as if wondering why I'm so darn calm. I am careful to keep the smile off my face this time.

  "Very well," she says. "You probably won't see me again. I don't plan to go back to the Den."

  "I wouldn't expect you to. If you have trouble finding a buyer for the swords, everything is already arranged."

  "Antony will know?" she asks.

  I nod. "Antony will know. He’ll want a percentage.”

  “He always does.”

  She glances around the room, as if not quite believing it's this easy.

  Of course it's not.

  She backs away and heads to the door. The knob turns easily and she opens it, probably expecting to see a clear autumn sky and falling leaves and perhaps the parking lot of a small motel.

  What she doesn't expect is a steel wall.

  18

  Jade

  I can't believe it. Jacob Holt has trapped me here.

  I bang my fists against the solid steel wall. There is no ringing sound, no hollow echo that would indicate that I am above ground. No, I am quite sure I am deep in the earth somewhere. I have no idea where. He could've taken us back to the city. He could've taken me anywhere.

  Out of pure spite, I tug his phone out of my pocket and smash it against the wall.

  What I turn around, the shattered pieces of the phone falling to the floor, he has gotten himself free from my tying job and sits on the edge of the bed.

  "I never liked that phone anyway. You're doing me a favor."

  Oh my God, I want to smash his skull in. I am so angry that I actually see sparks behind my eyes.

  "Where the hell are we?"

  He props himself back on his arms on the bed, looking as though he's posing for a magazine spread.

  “Where are my swords?" he asks.

  I have to resist the urge to strike at him. "I'll never tell you that."

  He smoothes a bit of the bedspread down. "A pity, then. We might be stuck here for quite a while. Should I call room service?“

  I take a more careful perusal of my surroundings. It’s set up exactly the way you would expect a cheap hotel to look. Double bed, mass-produced artwork. A chair, table, lamp. A dresser holds an aging flat-screen television. There’s even a little channel guide.

  A small alcove holds loose hangers on a bar.

  Damn, it’s a good replica.

  A bathroom door stands open. But I know this isn't a hotel room. It’s part of a bunker. Maybe even some extra room off the one I was in when I stole the swords.

  I storm past the bed and into the bathroom. It’s the most obvious way into the rest of the bunker.

  I tap along the walls, listening for the sound that indicates there is another room beyond. I inspect every crack and crevice. The inside is seamless, all the tile perfectly grouted together.

  I turn the water on in the sink. It flows perfectly. That doesn't mean anything. The plumbing could swivel or move aside. There's no telling what amount of money Jacob Holt might pay to make his trap perfect.

  The wall is smooth. There is no place to press in, no breaks in the pattern. Nothing.

  "You're barking up the wrong tree, as it were," Jacob says from the bed. He seems awfully sure of himself. Maybe the false wall is somewhere in the main room. Dammit.

  I stand in the doorway and glare at him. "Nice guys don't drug women and trap them in underground bunkers."

  "Who says we’re underground?" he asks. “I know you don’t think I’m a nice guy.”

  I huff out air in disgust. I go through the main room, knocking on walls. I listen for anything that sounds different.

  "You got me in here some way," I say. "That means there's also a way out."

  "This is fun," Jacob says. "I should have some sort of game where I see how long it takes until people give up."

  "How am I doing so far?"

  “Rather splendid, if I may say so." He lies down on his side, his head propped up on his arm. “I could watch you do this all day."

  That’s my first clue. It’s still day. So I was only out a few hours.

  I realize for the first time that there are no windows in this hotel room. That would not have been normal. I should've caught that sooner. Dammit.

  I keep knocking on the walls. The only way to redeem my pride is to find a way out of here.

  I pause and take a deep breath. I need to do this carefully and thoroughly.

  The average person might not know what to do, but I think I understand Jacob a little better than most. I remember his flare for the dramatic, evidenced in his ridiculous sequence that allowed me into his vault.

  I know, or at least I think I know, that he doesn't come from a standard crime ring family. Even if he made up the story about his mother and father, most likely there is some kernel of truth in what he said. Instead of looking for cracks in the wall, I
decide to look for the tech he would need to create an elaborate escape door.

  I know it won't be as easy as a camera in a corner. Jacob is way too subtle for that. It's going to be someplace amusing or ironic. It will be something I've never seen before, because he prides himself on being original.

  I hear the instructions that were drilled into me as if they are being whispered into my ear. Break the room down into parts. Search each part on its own.

  I glance around to decide where to start. I no longer see Jacob on the bed. He is not a part of what I'm doing. My focus is laser sharp as I examine the room for the most likely candidate for a hidden exit.

  I go back to the front door. This is the least likely place, but it gives me an idea about the structure I am inside.

  I knock on the metal. Then I knock on the wood just beside the door. Then I knock a little farther down. I knock my way around the room, listening for changes. The wall with the door is the most dense of the sounds. I sense there is nothing but earth beyond that wall.

  The two walls adjacent to it would be the least likely to have a door. It would be more difficult and vastly more expensive to hollow it out in that direction.

  That brings me to the wall with the bathroom. It has a giant portrait of a bright purple rhododendron in full bloom. I tap the wall to its left, and then the wall where it hangs.

  They're very different. This is the one. It's a fake-out, because part of this wall is shared with the bathroom. I measure off with my hands where I think the bathroom actually ends. There is a good three feet of difference.

  I'm pretty sure I have it. The wall appears unbroken. I wonder how this can possibly be. It's painted a flat white.

  But if this is the wall, and if he has a camera that gets you through it, it would be close by. It would need to have a front angle, so that your motions would be visible to the camera as you did whatever moves Jacob dreamed up for this one.

  I examine the portrait of the flower again. I look at each crevice in the frame. At the bottom is a typical tarnished brass plate that names the artist. I stare at the tiny screws that hold it down.

  Bingo. They're not screws at all. They are very fine lenses, a matched pair.

  I take a few steps back. Even though I found the camera, and I know the mechanism to get in, I still don't know the moves.

  I run through the two sequences that I already know. The tango. The quickstep. Fingerspelling the name Janice.

  Nothing happens.

  I sit on the edge of the bed and face the wall. I'm probably stuck. Of course it would be locked in some way. And the cameras mean that the mechanism is completely on the other side, so no way to defeat them except through this camera.

  But I don't know what to do.

  I'm stuck.

  "Give up yet?" Jacob asks.

  I nearly jump out of my skin. I totally forgot he was there.

  Let him think that I don't know anything at all. Perhaps he saw me staring too hard at the plaque and he knows anyway.

  Instead of considering Jacob's typical way of opening the door, I have to predict what he would do in the event that he was hurt or unable to dance the sequence. Unlike the vault, where you’re trying to get in, here in the bunker, he might need to get out.

  I kneel on the floor before the wall. As I move, I notice a subtle shift in the lens of the so-called screws.

  What would he do down here? What action would override his normal sequence?

  He fingerspelled a name before. I had tried that one.

  Who would he fingerspell if he was injured on the floor?

  His mother.

  What did he say her name was? He told me in the tree. Would he have been honest about that?

  That it comes to me. Imelda. He said his mother's name was Imelda.

  It’s worth a try. First, he would have to get the attention of the camera. I lie down on the floor, as if I'm hurt. The camera moves again. I bet this is what would initiate the sequence. Being down low. It would trigger a change in the code.

  I lift my arm and fingerspell Imelda.

  From somewhere deep in the wall, I hear a faint click.

  19

  Jacob

  Jade's face turns to me with surprise. "Did you hear that?"

  I did. I sit up on the bed. "You're an awfully clever girl."

  "I'm twenty-four. That does not qualify as girl."

  Semantics. The real problem is that she defeated my locks a second time.

  “What is your real name?” I ask.

  “Jade," she says. “Although the people of the Den know me as Marissa."

  "What is your real name?"

  She laughs. "No one in the Den uses a real name. Like you're not really named Jacob Holt.” She feels along the base of the wall. “So if you're injured, you have to be able to open it from down here,” she says.

  So that was how she figured it out. My admiration of her ability increases every time we’re together. But there are gaps in her knowledge, like why she didn't recognize we were not in a real hotel room straightaway. She also could not defeat a sleeping agent attack.

  She feels along the baseboards. “I just have to figure out exactly where to open it now that it’s unlocked.”

  “You might want to be careful about that,” I say. She doesn't know what she's about to open.

  “Being careful hasn’t gotten me this far.” She peers down at the painted board. “There has to be a way.”

  She inspects the nail in the corner. Then she turns to me with a knowing smile. “Finally.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I say.

  “Watch me,” she says, and presses on it.

  I pull up my feet to sit fully on the bed. Her funeral.

  The baseboard flips up, and she leans down, trying to look into the space, when suddenly the floor angles down.

  She lets out a little scream, but it’s too late. There’s nothing to hold on to, and she slides down into blackness.

  “Pity,” I say to the empty room. “She isn’t going to like where she ends up.”

  I wait the required fifteen seconds, then reach down to unplug the lamp on the floor and plug it back in again. With a gentle turn of a motor, the section of the slide closest to the wall separates and shifts, creating a narrow set of stairs.

  I bump down the first few sitting down, duck beneath the baseboard, then stand.

  For all her smarts, Jade forgot one of my most important quirks. Even if you defeat my locks, you have to hesitate before you go in. Booby traps are my hobby, and the ones in this bunker are truly delightful.

  Small bulbs light the stairs as I walk down. Behind me the baseboard flips up and the floor silently lifts back to level.

  Jade descended in the pitch black. As I make my way down into the bunker itself, I give the voice command, “Illumination."

  The overhead lights pop on. Jade sits, sprawled like an angry cat inside the cage. It's a lovely trap, all gleaming silver bars and black padded base. But it is a cage nonetheless. The slide has taken her straight down, and the door slammed shut the moment it sensed someone inside.

  Her eyes blink to adjust to the sudden light. "Let me out."

  I kneel beside the cage. “Start talking.”

  “No.”

  “Then be my cute little blond bird.”

  “I’ll kill you for this,” she hisses.

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  I settle on a chair next to the cage. It's been a long time since I had someone caught here.

  “Where are we?" Jade asks. “Did we return to Manhattan? Or do you have these places all over the country?”

  "We’re outside the city," I say. I'll give her that much.

  "How long was I out?"

  I wasn't born yesterday. She's trying to get an approximate radius from where we were to get a rough idea of where we are now. I shrug.

  “I don't know. Hours. Days. How do you feel? Hungry? Nobody taught you how to tell how long you’ve been in captivity?"

>   She frowns. I thought not.

  "You have holes in your training. I must speak to Antony about it."

  “Antony knows a lot more than you think," she says.

  "You sure do glower a lot when you're trapped," I say. "So what should I do with you? I won’t let you out unless you talk.”

  She runs her hands through her hair, seeming surprised when it ends well before she expected. She’s not comfortable in her new haircut yet.

  She lies down on the floor of the cage. She just fits, toe to crown, on the inside.

  Her blond hair spreads out across the black padding. My groin stirs. I do have her rather trapped. But I prefer my women willing.

  However, should she like to practice her seductive wiles on me a second time, I would not complain. This is my most secure bunker. Every room, from the fake motel above, to this operations room, the bedroom, kitchen, and living areas, are impossible to breach.

  Although I’d put more money on her than most.

  “Will you talk now?” I ask.

  “Will you let me out of this cage if I do?”

  “I have already said I would. There are definitely more comfortable accommodations here.”

  “My name is Jade Ferris. I go by Marissa Smith at the Den. I'm just third rank, two years out on my training, approved to be the third or lower on jobs."

  "That's what the third rank means," I say with derision. "And the swords?"

  She shifts to her side and watches me. "I'm sort of enjoying watching you squirm. I can hang out here a whole lot longer. It's already been a week since I took them. I'm guessing your buyers have moved on."

  My rage intensifies. "Woman. You will tell me where the swords are or you will never leave this cage.”

  She peers up at me. "You're not as handsome when you're angry. I mean, I like it, but just not as handsome. You sort of match your blood-red living room."

  She’s toying with me. This is one place where she excels. I must maintain control.

  “Have you figured out why Antony was following you?” she asks.

  “Why?”

  “He’s following me. Not you.”

  “I seriously doubt that. He has a stake in the swords.”