by Paula Cox
They had tried so many things and wandered through so many paths, and the truth was that this man had been leading them every step of the way. If he wanted to give Grace back to them, she believed they would get Grace back. But if he didn’t… shit. She couldn’t let herself think about it too hard because she didn’t believe that they would be able to outsmart or outthink Keller in any way. If he decided not to give Grace back, she didn’t think they’d be able to find him. And she didn’t have any clear idea of what would happen next. It didn’t seem logical that he would’ve spent all of this time and energy protecting the child just to — to hurt her. But at the same time, kidnapping a kid to keep someone from hurting her didn’t seem all that sensible either.
She had to trust him because she didn’t have another alternative. She just hoped Gunner felt the same way.
He parked the bike in the dust for what had to be the thousandth time in this horrible stretch of days. She slipped off the bike first, took off her helmet, and waited for him. He followed her, taking her hand and squeezing it tight for just a moment before releasing it and started towards yet another abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city. She followed him, not close enough to trip him enough, but ready to act if necessary. She had to laugh at herself; as if she could do anything to help him get through this, other than be emotional support. This was his play, and she probably should’ve stayed out of it. All she was going to do was get him killed.
Close to the front door, hanging loose on its hinges, Gunner turned toward her, his eyes flaring with heat and want. He took her hand again, but instead of a gentle, familiar squeeze, he tugged her close. She stumbled into his arms, and he wrapped her up tight against him.
“We’re going to get through this,” he said, and she was quite sure that he was reassuring himself. “We can do this.”
She nodded against his chest, trying to be strong and reassuring instead of fearful and nauseated. “Should we split up inside? You go left, and I go right, that kind of thing?”
He shook his head. “We’re stronger together. If we stick together, we can take him down.” She felt the grin that spread across his face, and when it faded. “Besides. I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to focus at all if you’re not right there where I can see you.” His grip tightened for a moment. “Lola. I can’t lose you either. Do you understand me?”
“I love you, too,” she said, pressing her lips against his shirt. She left a small lipstick print there, and it made her smile. She liked seeing her man marked for her. “Let’s get this done.”
His lips pressed against the crown of her head for a moment, and then he was pressing the door open with a bit of a heave. It didn’t squeal of rusty metal or kick up as much dust as she thought it should, but that was all the time she had to notice what was happening before the crackle of gunfire shattered the air.
Things started happening very quickly. Gunner pulled her down, all but dragging her into the shelter of a fabric and pressboard cubicle which was still coated in dust and grime. He pushed her into the corner, his entire face gone stone cold and battle ready. She hated that look on him, wanted to reach out and soothe it away, but the shots were still firing, and her stomach had gone completely cold. She suddenly knew how people ended up peeing themselves in fear; her bladder didn’t release, and she was glad of it, but the way the fear completely overwhelmed her, shut off the higher functions of her brain — it felt like a panic attack. She forced herself into the same strategies. Five things to hear, four things to see, three things to touch, two things to taste, one thing to… whatever the last one was, she never remembered. And half of the things she could sense had to do with gunfire.
Panic attack strategies didn’t work when the panic was genuine. Okay. Fair.
Gunner was saying something to her, but her ears were aching from the sound of the gunfire, which was a lot larger than it was in the movies, more all-encompassing. She pushed herself to focus, to hear him, and saw him telling her to stay here, he was going to find the shooter. He pulled a gun out of—God, somewhere, she didn’t know where he’d kept it—and ducked out of the cubicle.
The fear rolled over her again, and she had to fight hard not to just curl up in a ball and scream. It wouldn’t help, it would keep either her or Gunner safe, and it wouldn’t help Grace. She had to, if nothing else, stay strong and stay quiet. All the fear about the life she’d meant to choose versus the one she was currently in and the man who showed no signs of wanting to leave tried to bubble up again. But if she let that fear have space to breathe, if she gave way to it, then there’d be nothing left but the fear, and she believed with all of her heart that a little girl who trusted her would die here today.
She forced herself to take enough deep breaths to make her head spin and then looked up.
She’d lost track of Gunner, but she could see the man with the gun. He was holding some kind of rifle, she didn’t know enough to identify the model, but it looked like something out of a war film, something that would spray death at a hero in a slow-motion collage of death. He had his back to her now, but he was moving slowly down the row that would lead to him finding her in just a few moments.
Gunner had told her to stay put, but that man was going to find her, and she doubted he would hesitate, monologue, or take her to see his leader once he did. She was quite sure he’d kill her, with no fanfare.
Her legs were weak and afraid. She knew she was moving away from the spot Gunner had left her, the place he’d told her she would be safe. She knew that she didn’t have her phone or any easy way for him to contact her once he realized she wasn’t where she’d been left. If something went wrong, it was possible he’d be trading one hostage for another.
But no matter what he’d said, no matter what he’d meant about not being willing to trade her for Grace, the truth was that she wasn’t his daughter. And Keller had contacted her, multiple times. There was some sort of alliance between them. It was just that simple.
She crept out of the cubicle, as quiet as she could, and started sneaking towards a stairway she could see in the far corner. She had no idea where to find Keller and Grace, but she knew how to be methodical. She knew how to make her way through a building. And she was going to do everything in her power to help. To not be a burden. Even if it terrified her.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gunner made his way through the creepy, dusty old warehouse, trying to see within the industrial litter and shattered mess where his daughter was hidden. He was no expert tracker, but he’d spent a few odd moments of his life trying to find people who didn’t want to be found, and he saw no sign that this building was anything other than what it looked from the outside: an abandoned building that had probably been used by junkies, transients, and frightened kids to get away from the parents who did nothing to live up to the name and responsibility they’d been given. He didn’t believe that anyone could’ve gotten into the building this clean, not with a child in tow. That meant Keller had to have another entrance to the building.
Which meant that Gunner had no idea where to go to find Grace.
He felt sick having left Lola behind. He had to trust that she would stay where he’d put her. Thinking about her roaming around this building on her own, trying to find Grace as well — or worse, in the hands of a maniac like Keller, the woman and the girl he loved both at the mercy of a trained assassin — it made him too frightened to keep putting one foot in front of the other. So, he told himself that Lola was a smart girl who would realize that she was entirely outmatched in this situation, and who would stay exactly where he’d left her. No matter what happened.
Even if it was the most ridiculous lie he’d ever told himself. Sillier than the Tooth Fairy, and more ridiculous than Santa Claus.
When his phone rang, he almost jumped out of his skin. He’d been skulking along for so long that the sharp hip-hop beat of the phone’s ringtone was louder than a gunshot to his ears. He crouched down low, looking for who was coming at him,
before realizing that he was coming at himself, giving away his position, making himself a target. He fumbled the phone out of his pocket, rushing to silence the sound before it could get him killed, but the unfamiliar number gave him pause. And then he recognized it. It was the same number that had flashed on Lola’s screen when Keller had called her.
He put the phone to his ear at the same time that he moved forward quickly, pressing his back against a convenient wall. At least here there were only two approaches, and he could reasonably see both of them.
“Listen, you son of a bitch,” he snarled, trying for the classic action hero upper hand approach.
Keller had probably heard it all before. He laughed, low and genuinely gleeful in Gunner’s ear.
“Don’t start, son,” Keller said. “I’ve got your girl right here, and I don’t think you understand all the ways someone like me has the capacity to hurt a child.”
“I want her back, Keller. What is the point of this elaborate game? She doesn’t know anything.”
“That’s the part that you don’t fucking understand,” Keller snapped. “She knows everything. She has the key that they’re afraid of. She doesn’t even know she has it, but the men who took Lola this afternoon, they would have no problem destroying your daughter. I don’t think you entirely understand that at all.”
“What’s to understand?” Gunner held the phone away from his ear for a moment, trying to hear Keller’s voice from somewhere other than the phone, get a read on where the man was so that he’d know which way to move in the building. No dice. The empty building was a strange mix of echoes and deadened air, but he wasn’t able to tell anything about where to go next. “You kidnapped a child to save her from some threat that wasn’t even a problem until you got involved.”
It was odd, hearing a grown man scoff into a cell phone. “You haven’t been paying any kind of attention,” Keller snapped. “The girl knows what they’re afraid she knows. What her mother knew. She doesn’t know she knows it, and they’ve got the notebook now, so that’s not going to be as much of an issue as it was before. But I wasn’t completely rogue on this one, Grisham. I was hired to kill your kid. I chose not to do it, to do this instead. I’m going to be a dead man when I let her go.”
Something twisted inside Gunner’s guts. The man was terrifying, and he had held everyone that mattered to Gunner in his control in the past seventy-two hours, but it was still disturbing to hear someone speaking calmly about their own death. Keller’s voice was entirely sure, completely convinced that this would come to pass. He was not debating it for a single moment; it was a settled quantity. Gunner had heard some of his siblings in the club speak that way — when they knew their lives were close to an endpoint. It was no less disturbing to hear from a trained assassin.
“Keller,” he said, and he heard the shift in his tone when he started thinking of the man as a fellow soldier instead of an enemy combatant. “It doesn’t have to be like this. You’ve got the power in this moment, man. Let me get my little girl back, and I’ll do everything I can for you. The Breed has power in this town, and the Vipers are with us right now, so between the two groups, there’s not much we won’t be able to get done. All I need to hear is what you want. What you need us to do.”
“There’s nothing to be done. My time is just up. When I was first recruited to this organization, I was told that it was a good life, until you found the job you couldn’t do. That when that happened, you were done, because the organization does not forgive failures. There aren’t any reasons good enough for backing out of a job you’ve agreed to do. I didn’t realize that the name I was given belonged to a kid. That’s on me. Once I’d taken the job, it was her or me. No excuses. No exceptions.” Gunner could almost hear the other man shrug.
“Sure,” Gunner shot back. He had to get moving. He stayed crouched, but he chose a hallway almost at random, pushing forward, trying to both listen to his phone and keep his ears open to seek out sounds of other people creeping through the building. “But that’s not what I was told by the organization itself when they told me who you were.”
That did seem to throw Keller off his game, but only for a moment. “Who did you speak to? That bitch Tracy? She’d say anything to get rid of me. She’s hated me for years. Says I don’t ask enough questions.”
“Too many?”
“I meant what I said.” A bitter laugh echoed through the phone, and — was there an answering echo, up above him? He turned toward the sound and pressed on. “Guess she was right this time.”
“There’s always a way out,” Gunner said. “A bigger fish to turn on, a bigger problem to solve. There’s no need to assume the game is over until all the cards are dealt.”
“It’s easy to say that when—” Keller’s voice cut off, and Gunner’s heart throbbed in his throat. “Your woman is almost here. Lola. She’s a good girl. She’s helped you out more than you know.”
“You leave her out of this,” Gunner snarled, but Keller was laughing again. Yes, he was down this hall, Gunner was sure of it. He moved into a slightly more upright position, sacrificing some stealth for an increase in speed. There was something in Keller that was about to snap, and he had to get to them before anyone else got hurt. And dammit, Lola was supposed to stay in that cubicle, where she was fine (safe was the most ridiculous of all understatements), but it was still where the hell he’d put her, and couldn’t the goddamn woman just stay put for ten minutes?
“It’s not me, son.” Keller laughed. “It’s her you need to have that conversation with. She’s almost here now. You take care of your girl. Your woman. Take care of them both.”
The click of the phone disconnecting came at the same moment as Gunner hitting the end of the hall and finding that the door which led on to the next section, presumably the section that held his daughter, was locked tight.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The gunman didn’t notice Lola as she crept away from the cubicle, slipping down the hallways as quietly as she could. Her first thought had been to follow the same path Gunner had, but that seemed foolish after just a moment. They’d cover more ground split up, and he was going to be pissed that she’d left the spot he thought was safe, even if it had been the right thing to do. He might even be enough of a macho idiot that he’d try to send her back, which she was pretty sure would end in disaster for both of them. All of them.
She could hear a conversation up ahead of her as she worked her way through twisting, dusty hallways. She recognized the tumbled stone of Keller’s voice, echoing through the deserted building. Maybe there was also the voice of a little girl, crying softly? It was hard to be sure. She couldn’t hear anything as much as she wanted to. She’d barely worked out any sort of plan. Dash into the room, grab Grace, make a run for it. What if he was standing with his weapon trained on the door? What if she felt the explosion of pain as soon as she came around the corner? What if all of this was for nothing?
For just a moment, her resolve wavered. And then she closed her eyes and pushed through, making herself focus. Even if it was all for nothing, the only alternative was to walk away. Leave the girl to her fate. And that was worse, unbearable. She couldn’t possibly make herself do it. She knew Gunner would be pissed that she wasn’t where he’d left her, but she also knew that she was her own person, and Grace needed absolutely every bit of help she could get.
She turned another corner, and then, in an empty conference room, she could see Keller standing, his gaze focused on the far wall. Past him, she could see Grace sitting at a worn old table, covered in warped press board, and sitting in a torn office chair. She didn’t look afraid, though; she was smiling, working on something in front of her. Crayons and paper, maybe? Coloring? Lola’s heart gave a little leap. She kept walking towards the room, forcing her heart to stay calm and cool.
Keller had a phone pressed up against his ear; when he saw her walking towards him, his mouth spread into a slim, cold grin. He nodded and took the phone away from his ear, tap
ping a button to shut off the phone and tossing it across the table.
Grace glanced up, and a much sincerer smile spread across her face. “Ms. Sykes,” she called out and waved happily. Lola felt something in her chest loosen; the child was well. If Keller hadn’t hurt her so far, what reason in the world would he have to hurt her now — when they were all so close to the finish line.
“Lola,” Keller said with a nod. “I’m so glad you came. Your boyfriend is still running around looking for you. He didn’t follow my instructions.” He held up a hand to waylay her before she could fall far down into panic. “It’s alright. I haven’t hurt him, and I won’t. I told you, I was in this to protect the girl. I’ve fulfilled my role. Yours will be harder. But I have faith that you can do it.”