Take the Key and Lock Her Up

by LENA DIAZ,

  But her question wasn’t an easy one to answer.

  He made quick work of her left arm and rubbed the first-aid cream on all of her cuts before moving to her other side to perform the same careful ministrations to those cuts.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked.

  He paused, his tweezers poised above a piece of glass. “I heard you. Arianna. She was the reason I joined EXIT.” Saying her name out loud hurt less than he’d expected. He gently pulled the sliver out and tossed it aside.

  “You mentioned her before, when you locked me in the cell. You said if the police had done their job, she wouldn’t have died. Who was she? Your girlfriend?”

  “Fiancée.” He pulled out another sliver and dropped it to the ground.

  Emily’s soft, warm hand settled over his. “What happened? How did she die?”

  Her hand on his felt good, too good. He moved the tweezers to another piece of glass, forcing her to drop her hand. He pulled out the sliver, moved to the next one.

  “EXIT had been after me to join them for months. Cyprian himself recruited me. He’d somehow accessed my scores on aptitude tests, knew my grades, had heard about my success in sports. At first, he talked about me becoming a guide. For a guy like me, being paid obscene amounts of money to train, learn survival skills, and get free trips to exotic locations was incredibly tempting. The deal was that I’d begin my physical training while still in school. I’d receive a regular, generous paycheck while pursuing my degree. And once I graduated, I’d move to Colorado, EXIT’s headquarters, until I was a full-fledged guide.”

  “I’m sensing you said no.”

  He set the tweezers down and took the penlight from her, looking for more glass. “You’d be right. My family means everything to me. I couldn’t see leaving them for months at a time. I didn’t want to disappoint Alex either, getting a college degree and then basically doing nothing with it. And I was already in love with Arianna and thinking about asking her to marry me. Taking a job that involved a lot of travel didn’t fit in with my plans.”

  “How did Cyprian take that?”

  “He seemed fine with it, understood. He didn’t ask me again.” He shoved the penlight in his pocket and put the tweezers in the first-aid kit before rubbing antibiotic cream over her wounds.

  “But you obviously said yes eventually. What happened to change your mind?”

  He hesitated, then finished rubbing the cream on her arm before answering. “A lifetime career criminal released from prison because of overcrowding raped and butchered her.”

  Her face twisted into a mask of sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”

  He gave her a sharp nod. “Two days later, Gage came to me.”

  “Gage. You mentioned him before too. Wait, he drove your truck yesterday, from the police station.”

  “Yes. He’s an enforcer too. And my best friend.”

  Her brow furrowed with confusion. “But in the tunnel you said Gage might have sent those men after us. Your best friend is trying to kill us?”

  He let out a deep sigh. “Cyprian thinks I’ve gone rogue, that I’m out of control, a danger to the company and to others.” At her startled look, he clarified, “A danger to innocent people, as opposed to the people I normally . . . deal with. Gage is just following orders.”

  “Huh. Some friend. You said he approached you in college, after your fiancée was killed.”

  “He told me about EXIT, about my true mission, explaining about the tour guide part being a front. He said I could protect people, save hundreds, thousands of lives by taking out terrorists, foiling plots against the government, against innocent civilians. And then he told me he knew who’d killed Arianna. Cyprian had used the resources of EXIT to look into her murder and knew before the police who’d murdered her.” He watched her closely. “Gage had already located him. He was hiding out in his old neighborhood. If I agreed to join EXIT, Gage would take me to Arianna’s killer.”

  Emily sucked in a breath. “You killed him.”

  “Yes. And I don’t regret it.”

  “I see.” She looked at the trees surrounding them, at the leaves and twigs on the ground, anywhere but at him. “Well,” she finally said with a small laugh, “maybe I’m not the only one who makes lousy decisions under pressure.”

  He thought about arguing with her, trying to convince her that joining EXIT was the right decision. But what would be the point? She was a cop. He . . . wasn’t. They had completely different views of right and wrong.

  Still, the sudden awkwardness between them when they’d been so comfortable with each other moments ago bothered him. He tugged the go bag toward him and snapped the first-aid kit closed, settling it into the bottom of the bag.

  “You feel you make bad decisions under pressure, huh?” he asked as he zipped the bag closed.

  “Always. I don’t know what it is, but if a life is on the line, my logical thought processes tank.”

  “It’s the adrenaline. When you get scared, like in the tunnel—”

  “I wasn’t scared in the tunnel,” she snapped. “I really thought I could take those guys on.”

  The urge to smile was back. Emily had that amazing power over him, to take him from the dark side and into the light in just a matter of minutes without even trying.

  “Okay,” he amended. “When you’re not scared, but you’re in a tense or traumatic situation, adrenaline rushes through your body. It makes your heart race, your respiration increase, your blood pressure go up. If you don’t know how to calm down, think through the rush, and use it to your advantage, you’ll make mistakes.”

  “I’m well aware of what adrenaline does. But I don’t see how I can use that to my advantage.”

  “Adrenaline can increase your strength, numb you to pain, heighten your other senses. But it’s only an asset if you can control it.”

  “And how do you control it?”

  He strapped the go bag on his back and pulled her up with him. “Are you always this curious?”

  “Pretty much. It drives my co-workers crazy. How do you control it? The rush?”

  A crackling noise sounded off to their left. Devlin yanked the night-vision goggles out from beneath his shirt and shoved them on his head. He peered through a break in the shrubs and stiffened.

  “Get down. Be quiet,” he whispered. He grabbed the Sig Sauer off the ground and shoved it into her hand before pulling his own gun out of its holster.

  She took the Sig, popped the clip, and checked the loading. “Okay, so how are we going to do this? We need a plan.” She popped the clip back in and looked up.

  Devlin was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  * * *

  THERE WAS NO sign of Devlin. Emily turned in a full circle looking for him. How could a man his size move so quietly and disappear like that? She curled her hands around the gun in frustration. What was she supposed to do? Stand here, wait, do nothing? Neither of them knew how many gunmen were after them. What if he was outnumbered, or ambushed? If he’d bothered to ask, he’d realize she was a good shot. He needed her, whether he would admit it or not.

  Wait . . . was she doing it again? Making another bad decision under pressure? She bit her lip, hesitating. Devlin obviously didn’t want her help or he’d have taken her with him. He’d pretty much told her to stay put by telling her to get down and be quiet. Emily didn’t want to interfere if he had everything under control, especially given her bad track record.

  She sat on the ground, determined to wait, not to interfere. Without a phone or a watch, she had no way of knowing how much time was passing. The warm breeze that occasionally blew through the bushes clacked the branches against each other, but other than an occasional owl hooting nearby, no other noises disturbed the silence of the night.

  Had it been twenty minutes? Thirty? She no longer thought that Devlin would abandon her, as she’d feared in the cell. But why hadn’t he come back by now? The only answer she could think of was that he was hurt—or worse—and couldn�
��t come back.

  After everything he’d done, all the risks he’d taken to keep her safe, she owed it to him to do the same. Sitting here when he could be lying somewhere bleeding wasn’t something she could do for even one more minute. She’d waited, had given him plenty of time to come back. She’d played it his way. Now it was time to play it her way.

  Decision made, she stepped around the ring of trees as quietly as possible, looking for some kind of sign to tell her which way Devlin had gone. With only the light from the moon filtering through the trees, it took far longer than she would have liked, but she finally found a footprint—a large footprint, like the kind Devlin’s boots would make. With a direction to follow, she headed out.

  Fifty yards in, she stumbled over a log. She fell hard, on her side, clutching her gun in both hands to keep from dropping it. Her shoulder and hip throbbed, but nothing seemed broken. Venting her pain with a good shout or a few choice curse words would have made her feel much better. Too bad she had to be quiet. She shoved the gun into her waistband and braced her hands on the ground to push herself up. The wet, sticky dirt had her recoiling and sitting back on her haunches.

  Blood. Her fingers and palms were covered in it. She jerked around to look at the log. Not a log. A body. Oh, no. She scrambled over and rolled the man onto his back. Relief flashed through her when she saw it wasn’t Devlin, but relief turned to nausea when she took in the gruesome details. The stranger’s throat had been slit from ear to ear. Blood soaked the front of his shirt, releasing a metallic, pungent odor that was already beginning to draw flies.

  Bracing herself for the unpleasant task ahead, she slid a hand beneath him, feeling his back pocket to see if he had a wallet. Nothing. She did the same on the other side, but again, nothing. Wrinkling her nose with distaste, she gently patted his shirt, then the rest of him. No identification.

  He wasn’t wearing a gun. In the dark she couldn’t do more than a cursory search. Not that it really mattered. Even if he were holding a gun when he was killed, the semicircular angle of the laceration on his neck told her it was made from behind, by a man taller than he was drawing a knife across in an upward arc. This wasn’t a justified killing according to any laws she lived by. It certainly wasn’t self-defense to attack someone from behind.

  She swallowed hard and stood. One bad guy down, justified or not. How many more were out there? And where was Devlin?

  The only thing she could be sure of was that she was on the right path, as evidenced by Devlin’s handiwork lying at her feet. He had definitely passed this way. Based on the body’s current position, she made her best guess about which way he’d been going and started out in the same direction, hoping it would lead her to Devlin.

  A few minutes later, she found more evidence of Devlin’s passing through—another body. The dead man lay on his side, next to a pine tree, his neck obviously broken. That seemed to be a favorite way of killing for Devlin. How could he seem so kind while helping her and yet care so little about human life? She couldn’t reconcile the two sides of him, especially after seeing two of his recent kills.

  Feeling sick to her stomach, she searched the body for ID as she had the other man. But again, he wasn’t carrying anything to tell her who he was. This man was unarmed as well.

  A muffled shout sounded from somewhere up ahead. She clutched her pistol and took off at a jog, which was the fastest she could go in the near dark without running into a tree or falling over a root. Another shout sounded, then a guttural curse, followed by a smack, like a fist slamming into human flesh.

  Shadows moved between the oak trees just ten feet away: two men locked in combat, their arms wrapped around each other, struggling for the advantage. Devlin, unmistakable in the dark because of his height, suddenly twisted and dropped down, breaking the other man’s hold. The man stumbled, trying to catch his footing. Moonlight flashed on steel. Devlin plunged his knife into the other man’s stomach and jerked the hilt, tilting the blade up in a sickening move that sliced through the man’s vital organs. The man was dead before his body even hit the ground.

  Emily must have made some kind of noise because Devlin spun around in a crouch, as if to spring at her. Her gun shook so badly in her hands she probably wouldn’t have hit him if she’d wanted to shoot him, which she didn’t. She slowly lowered the pistol and clutched a hand to her throat, sickened by what she’d seen.

  Devlin straightened, stepped over the body of the man he’d just butchered, and picked something up at the base of one of the trees. His gun. He shoved it into the holster at his waist and faced her. Only six feet separated the two of them, but the distance felt as wide as the Grand Canyon.

  “I told you to stay put.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “There’s still at least one more gunman out here somewhere. I saw his tracks.”

  She shoved her gun into her waistband and shook her head. “You just . . . disappeared. I was . . .” She broke off and looked at the dead man again, his stomach distended and obscene with the knife hilt protruding from it. “I was worried about you,” she finished. “But it looks like I should have been worried about this man, and the others I found, instead.” She raised her gaze to meet his. “How do you sleep at night after the things you’ve done?”

  He laughed harshly. “So I should introduce myself and give them a chance to draw their weapons first, to make it a fair fight? No thanks. That’s called suicide. Not my game.” He headed back to the dead man, braced his boot on the man’s hip and yanked his knife out with a sickening sucking sound. After wiping the blade clean on the man’s pants, he returned to Emily.

  “Since you decided not to stay where I left you, you might as well come with me to find our last friend. I am going to find him. And when I do, I’m going to kill him. Not because I’m a monster who enjoys taking lives but because I don’t want to die today, and I don’t want you to die. It’s that simple. We either take these men out or they take us out. Don’t look at me with your shocked expression, judging me, expecting remorse. I do what I have to do to survive. And I sleep just fine, thank you very much.”

  He stepped past her, his long angry strides carrying him back through the trees, quickly fading into the darkness.

  She hurried to keep up. “Devlin, wait. Devlin, please, at least slow down.”

  He stopped and waited until she caught up with him, then started walking again. He paused in a patch of moonlight shining through the branches overhead and studied the ground before continuing forward. He was hunting the last man. And she hated him for it.

  “Can’t we just get out of here?” she asked. “There’s no reason to try to find the other one. He’s probably on the run, trying to save his own neck after what happened to his friends.”

  Devlin abruptly stopped.

  Emily had to stop and turn around to face him.

  “How long were you on foot patrol before you became a detective?” he asked.

  “Almost three years. Why?”

  “Including your time in the academy?” He sounded surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.” He started walking again.

  She had to jog to keep up. “Was there a point in there somewhere?”

  “There would have been, if you had the experience to back it up.”

  She rushed to get in front of him again, forcing him to stop.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked. “Seriously. I just want to understand.”

  He shrugged. “Just that you’re a baby cop. Without enough real-world experience to give you an appreciation for human nature. You’ll just have to take my word for it when I tell you that the kinds of men who are after us—who were after us, except for our last remaining friend—are hard-core. These types of men aren’t going to stop and let us go on our merry way. Which is why we can’t fall back into defensive mode. I have to find this last guy before he finds us.”

  He put his hands around her waist and moved her out of his path, as if she were a table lamp. He was abo
ut twenty feet away by the time she recovered from her shock and hurried after him.

  “Devlin, wait,” she called out. “Your legs are much longer than mine.”

  “Keep your voice down,” he said in a hushed tone as he turned around to wait. “Emily, look out!”

  She whirled around, clawing for her pistol. Before she could get it out, a man jumped at her from the cover of trees and knocked her gun to the ground. She shrank back from him just as something metallic flashed in the moonlight. The man screamed and stumbled back, clutching at the hilt of a knife, now buried in his arm.

  Devlin was suddenly there with them, shoving her none too gently out of the way. She watched in horror as the man who’d screamed yanked the knife out of his arm and tried to stab Devlin with it. Devlin dove out of the way and slammed his boot against the man’s knee, making a sickening crunch. The man’s agonized scream echoed through the trees as the knife dropped from his fingers. He fell to the ground, rolling back and forth, clutching his knee with his one good hand.

  Devlin calmly picked up his knife and started toward the writhing man.

  “No, no, no!” Emily hurried forward and jumped between the two of them, holding her hands up. “Devlin, please, stop. He’s injured. He’s not a threat to us.”

  He gave her an exasperated look and pushed her out of the way again.

  “Don’t kill me,” the man cried. “Please, have mercy.”

  Emily grabbed Devlin’s arm. “He’s surrendering.”

  “Did you get a good look at his face?” Devlin demanded.

  “His . . . what? His face? No. Why? What difference does that make?”

  He started to sheath his knife, but he looked at the blood on the blade and pitched it a few feet away. He pulled out his penlight and shined it on the man’s face. The man blinked and turned his head away from the light, but not before Emily saw what Devlin was talking about.

  “The tear tattoos on his cheek? That’s what you wanted me to see?”