by LENA DIAZ,
“Put it on the floor and slide it to me,” Sebastian ordered.
She set the gun down, but quickly realized she couldn’t do what he’d asked. “The floor isn’t smooth. It’s covered by metal grating. I can’t slide the gun across it.”
He frowned but didn’t look down. He kept glancing between Jace and the two in the hallway. Sweat beaded on his forehead, telling Melissa he was just as nervous as she was. And that maybe he was beginning to realize he hadn’t thought this scenario through well enough. A nervous man holding two guns couldn’t be a good combination.
“What if I just unload it?” she asked, trying to reassure him the way Jace had reassured her.
Sebastian hesitated, then gave her a curt nod. “Hurry up. He’s waiting.” His jaw tightened, like he’d just realized he’d said too much.
She glanced up at Jace again. He gave her a subtle shrug. He didn’t know who Sebastian was referring to any more than she did.
She released the magazine and pulled it out.
“Empty the rounds, too,” Sebastian ordered.
She ejected all of the ammo and stood with an overflowing hand of rounds, clutched against the front of her towel.
“Toss everything under the bed,” Sebastian ordered.
She hesitated again. She really didn’t want to throw away their only gun and ammunition. It seemed like suicide.
“My instructions are to bring you back with me, Miss Cardenas. If I have to shoot Mr. Atwell to convince you to do what I say, I will.”
She immediately pitched everything under the bed. “There. Now what?”
The sweat was running freely down the sides of Sebastian’s face now. He glanced from her to Jace, then down the hall. He had to realize if he made her and Jace step into the hall, they’d pass within a few feet of him. Which meant he’d have to lower the shotgun. Was he worried that Jace would overpower him and take the handgun?
“Hey, whatever your name is,” Austin called out. “I don’t like a guy with guns to be so nervous. Let me make this easy for you. It’s not like I can go anywhere fast in this chair, especially with Emily attached to it and the wire mesh on the floor. You had to see the steel shutters on all the windows and exterior doors when you came in. So you know the only way out of this place is through the garage. And that’s on the other side of the house. Do you really think Emily and I could make it that far before you could catch us?”
Sebastian swallowed hard but kept most of his focus on Jace and Melissa. “What are you suggesting?”
“Let Emily and me clear out of the hallway. We’ll go into the family room and wait for you there. That way you can back down the hall, directing Jace and Melissa without worrying about our being in the way.”
He shook his head. “No way. I saw those cases of guns in that room. You’re trying to trick me.”
Austin laughed harshly. “Look at me, man. What do you think I’m going to do? Magically grow legs, climb on the computer countertop, oh, and get the keys—you did see the locks on those cases right?—and then open them up, undo the clasps holding one of the guns, find some ammo to go with whichever one I manage to get, and—”
“Enough,” Sebastian yelled. “Enough. I get it. You’re a cripple. But Mrs. Buchanan isn’t.”
“Yeah dude, but she’s handcuffed to this chair. Even if she dumped me on the floor, how’s she going to climb that countertop to get a gun? This heavy-duty chair alone weighs over seventy-five pounds. Do you seriously think she can lift that and do everything else I just said to get to a weapon?”
Sebastian chewed his bottom lip, considering what Austin had said. Melissa could sense Jace close behind her. He’d inched forward every time Sebastian looked down the hall at Austin.
“Okay, okay,” Sebastian said. “Go. Clear the hallway, but stay in my line of sight. Don’t disappear around the corner, or I’ll come after you. And I promise I will shoot if you try anything. Both of you. No tricks.”
“No shooting. No tricks. It’s all cool. Come on, Em. Help me wheel this thing down this bumpy hallway. I hate that metal grating. It’s not like it can stop a bullet or anything. It’s useless. Dev should have ripped it off the floor when he bought this place.”
“You know how he is. He doesn’t think about details like that,” Emily replied, and soon the dull sound of the wheels bumping across the grating echoed down the hall.
Melissa frowned. What was Austin up to? She’d seen him zip across the same type of floor downstairs last night with no problem. And she’d also seen him pop wheelies on that chair. It couldn’t weigh more than thirty pounds, if that.
“Stop,” Sebastian ordered, glancing down the hall. “Stay right where you are.”
“Whatever you say. It’s all good,” Austin called out.
Sebastian backed farther out into the hall, still pointing the shotgun toward her and Jace and the handgun toward Austin and Emily.
“Step out of the room and follow me. Slowly,” he ordered.
Jace immediately moved in front of Melissa and stepped into the hall.
Sebastian’s eyes widened like an owl’s. “No, no. Stop right there. Miss Cardenas goes first. You follow behind.”
“Not going to happen.” Jace held up a hand toward Melissa, stopping her in the doorway but never taking his eyes off Sebastian.
“Then I’ll shoot you,” Sebastian promised.
“Not without risking hitting Melissa. And whoever sent you doesn’t want her hurt, do they? Who sent you? Her father? Why are you following his orders? Didn’t you hear that he’d killed two of the Council members? And your buddy, Tarek?”
Sebastian’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, and his eyes took on a wild look. “That’s bullshit. I haven’t heard any of that.”
Jace shrugged. “You weren’t at the Council meeting last night with Tarek. You missed Marsh announcing the murders of two Council members and pinning it on Cyprian. There was a bloodbath. Cyprian killed Tarek, and everyone scattered for the hills.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yeah. Okay. Suit yourself. Find out the hard way when Cyprian kills you, too.”
Sebastian looked like he was bordering on terrified. He must have known about the Council meeting and that Tarek had been there, which gave validity to what Jace had said. But he didn’t seem to know if any of the rest of it was true.
And from what Sebastian had said and responded to, it seemed obvious that Cyprian was probably the one who’d sent him after her. Why would he do that after the way things had been left between them? And how had Sebastian even known where to find her?
“Just shut up,” Sebastian finally said. “I’m the one giving orders here. Step back into the room and send Miss Cardenas down the hallway. Do it now.”
“Hey, what’s taking y’all so long?” Austin called out. “Anyone hungry? I love cold pizza for breakfast. Come on, Emily. Let’s go to the kitchen and get some leftover pizza for everybody.”
Sebastian jerked around. “No, wait!” He cursed and ran down the hallway.
Jace shoved Melissa back into the room. “Stay here.” He slammed the door in her face.
She blinked in surprise, listening to his footsteps as he chased, unarmed, after a man with two guns. A dull rumble sounded. Was that the elevator? A shout, cursing. Bam! Bam! Bam! Gunshots echoed from the living room.
No! Oh, no. Please, God. Let Jace be okay. She had to help him. But what could she do? She needed a gun. Jace’s gun. She dropped to her knees and scrambled under the bed, searching for it. There, against the wall by the headboard.
She grabbed it and franticly gathered some of the ammo she’d dropped to the floor. She felt around until she found the magazine she needed to load the gun. She’d loaded five rounds into it and was about to load a few more, not sure how many she might need, when footsteps sounded down the hall.
Sebastian? Was he coming for her now?
She dropped the rest of the rounds and slammed the magazine into position. Whirling around on her
knees, she aimed toward the door just as it flew open.
Her mind registered that it was Jace a split second before her finger jerked on the trigger. He dove to the floor, and she let out a cry of dismay. She immediately dropped the gun and scrambled over to him.
“Jace! Oh, no. Jace, are you okay?” She reached for him and he rolled over, holding his shoulder, staring at her like he thought she’d lost her mind.
Her hands shook as she ran them over him. “Did I shoot you? Oh my God.”
He sat up, shaking his head. “My shoulder’s just bruised from hitting the floor.” Impossibly, he laughed. “I guess you paid me back for not having an extra gun for you.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling miserable. “I’m normally much more responsible with firearms. I was just so damned scared.”
He shoved himself to his feet and pulled her up with him. “It’s all right.”
She put her arms around his waist and pressed her head against his chest. “Thank goodness you’re okay. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”
He hugged her tight, then pushed her back to look at her. “Everyone’s okay. You, Emily, Austin, me. That’s what matters.”
She shuddered with relief.
He shoved his gun in his holster. A second gun was already in his waistband. He must have gotten it from one of the cases on the living-room wall.
“Come on. I’ll grab a fresh magazine instead of trying to find my ammo scattered all over the floor. Let’s go ask Sebastian where he was supposed to take you after kidnapping you.”
She pressed a hand against his chest, stopping him. “He’s alive? I heard shots.”
“He’s alive. But if he doesn’t tell me what I want to know,” he said, his expression grim, “he’ll soon wish he weren’t.”
Running footsteps sounded in the hallway again. Jace shoved Melissa away from the doorway and pulled out one of the guns.
“Don’t shoot,” a woman’s voice yelled. “It’s Emily.”
He immediately lowered his gun. A second later, Emily caught herself against the door frame, slightly out of breath from running through the house. She, too, had a gun shoved into her waistband.
“What’s wrong, Emily?”
“I only took my eyes off him for a second. I swear.”
He moved protectively in front of Melissa. “What happened? Did he escape?”
“No, no. He didn’t escape. Sebastian is dead.”
JACE TRIED TO convince Melissa to stay in the master bedroom once she got dressed, courtesy of the go bag Emily had brought. He didn’t want her seeing Sebastian. But Melissa didn’t want him trying to shelter her, so he reluctantly gave in.
Once in the family room, he encouraged Melissa to stay back by the wall while he joined Emily in the center of the room by Sebastian’s body. But the stubborn set of Mel’s jaw told him no amount of arguing was going to make her sit idly by while the rest of them worked the mission and tried to figure out how Sebastian fit into all of this. She stood just a few feet from him and Emily, her hand resting on the back of Austin’s wheelchair.
“Call me cripple now,” Austin taunted as he crossed his arms and aimed a smug look at Sebastian’s body.
Jace sighed heavily and knelt down. Sebastian’s hands were still cuffed in front of him, his face turned toward the kitchen.
“I’m sorry, Jace,” Emily said. “After you and Austin did your thing to save the rest of us, all I had to do was keep an eye on this jerk so we could interrogate him.” She shook her head in disgust. “I’ve gotta tell ya. Police work never was my thing. And I just proved it again.”
Jace lifted one of Sebastian’s eyelids. The pupils were fixed and dilated. His skin was already beginning to cool and had a slightly pink tinge to it. A small amount of foam was gathered at the corners of his mouth.
“You can quit beating yourself up over this, Emily. None of us would have expected him to have a suicide pill. Looks like cyanide. He must have had a capsule in his pocket. Even if you’d been watching him like a hawk, he’d have figured out how to get to it eventually.”
“Yeah, maybe, but still. I should have—”
He squeezed her hand. “We’re all alive. I give credit for that to you and Austin for that stunt you two pulled. And I assure you that Devlin is only going to care about the part where you’re alive and unhurt. So, again, stop blaming yourself.”
She gave him a grateful nod and pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll check on the others, see what they’ve found out and let them know what happened.”
“Cell phones don’t work in here,” Jace and Austin said at the same time.
Austin wheeled around and headed toward the bank of computers. “Come on. I’ll show you the landline.” He pulled out a chair, and Emily sat down beside him.
Melissa crouched next to Jace. Other than being a little pale, she looked remarkably calm—and gorgeous, as always, in those tight blue jeans and a dark navy-blue blouse. Jace frowned at his lack of focus and went back to the task at hand, searching Sebastian’s pockets for anything that might give him a clue about where the man was headed.
“Just so we’re clear,” Melissa said, as she watched him, “if I ever see you unarmed chasing after an armed man again, I promise I’ll figure out some way to make you regret it—if you’re lucky enough not to get yourself killed, that is. Got that?”
He smiled. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
“You’d better. I’ll probably have a head full of white hair by the end of the day because of how reckless you are with your life. Tell me what happened.”
He finished searching Sebastian’s pockets, which were empty. “I knew from Austin’s little speech in the hallway that he had a plan to distract Sebastian and that I didn’t need to worry about him or Emily if he could get into the living room. I also knew that a bullet wouldn’t go through the walls because of what he said about that mesh, which is why I wanted you to stay in the bedroom.”
“So Austin, what, grabbed a gun from one of the cases? I heard shots.”
“No. I think Austin rattled on about the gun cases to throw Sebastian off the real point, which was that he just wanted to make it into the living room. To the elevator.”
She looked past him to the elevator, which sat open as usual. “Why did he want to do that?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” At the elevator, he reached in and pressed the button to send it to the basement. As soon as he pulled his hand back, the doors slid shut, revealing three huge dents.
Melissa touched one of the dents. “Bullets. Austin must have put the speed on and raced in here with Emily after making Sebastian think he couldn’t move quickly on the bumpy floor. He pressed the panic button, didn’t he?”
“He did. Those doors saved his and Emily’s lives when Sebastian fired at them. By the time Sebastian remembered about me, I was already behind him. I’d hoped to interrogate him, but obviously that’s not going to happen now.”
“How did he get in here in the first place? I thought this was supposed to be a fortress.”
He glanced at Emily. Thankfully she was still talking on the landline phone and didn’t seem to hear Melissa’s question. Beside her, Austin was punching up something on the computer screen.
Jace kept his voice low, so he wouldn’t embarrass Emily further. “Emily’s theory is that she was followed here. Since Devlin went rogue last year, they’ve had to maintain a low profile. She was in a hurry and made the mistake of stopping at a busy gas station downtown. She said she believes someone from EXIT must have seen her and called it in. Word must have gotten back to Cyprian. He must have called Sebastian to take over the tail from whoever called in Emily’s location. Short version, he pulled a gun on her at the security gate outside this house and got inside her car. Austin didn’t know anything was up and buzzed her in. You know the rest.”
She nodded. “It sounds like my father really is the one who sent Sebastian here.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
/> “Why not?”
“For one thing, I don’t think your father trusted Sebastian. He certainly didn’t seem to like him, either when we saw them together at EXIT or when we were hiding in the basement office at your father’s house. And even though last night’s conversation with your father was rough, and he sounded pretty brutal, he was obviously incensed that Stefano almost killed you with that tire blowout on the mountain. I’m not convinced your father would risk your life by sending Sebastian, or anyone else, to get you. He’d be too worried you could be hurt.”
“A week ago, I’d have agreed with you. I’m not sure what I believe about my father anymore. But if you’re right, then who sent Sebastian? You think it was Stefano? Or the Watcher if he isn’t Stefano?”
“Hard to know for sure.”
She smoothed her hands on her jeans. “If the Watcher sent Sebastian, and wanted me alive, I can only assume the Watcher wanted to use me as leverage against my father. But why would he do that?”
Jace scratched his jaw and considered the possibilities. “Maybe the Watcher believes your father’s the one responsible for abducting the rest of the Council, if they’re even still alive, and he wants to use you to force your father to let them go. Another possibility is that the Council wasn’t kidnapped. They could have gone into hiding because the Watcher told them about Tarek being killed and your father not retaliating by killing us. Maybe they’re worried your father will go after them now.”
“O . . . kay. Then . . . you’re saying the Council might have sent Sebastian after me?”
He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. At this point, anyone could have sent him—your father, Stefano, one or more Council members, the Watcher—whoever he is. The way everything seems to be imploding makes it look like a power grab to me. Someone, or even a team, may be trying to take over the enforcement arm of EXIT, and they want the rest of the Council, and your father, out of the way. Maybe Sebastian was supposed to kidnap you to make that happen. As soon as you were out of the kill zone, he’d have killed the rest of us. It’s a damn good thing that Austin played that stunt. He’s the one who saved us today.”