by Sybil Bartel
The doors weren’t hot, but they weren’t cool either.
Briefly debating whether or not to try to pry them open because elevator shafts usually had built in ladders for service, I decided against it. I wasn’t going to risk taking her down that way. Even if we did make it to the bottom without falling or getting crushed, who knew if I could get the doors open at the bottom.
That left the blown-out stairwell.
Picking my way down the hall as the debris became more concentrated, I paused by the blown-out the metal door. Holding my arm over my nose and mouth, I glanced past the doorway.
Jesus fuck.
The whole stairwell between this floor and the one below was blown.
Holstering my Sig, I grabbed my phone and snapped a couple pics before uselessly hitting send to Luna. Pocketing my cell, I inched across the threshold to get a better look. If the stairwell was blown all the way to the ground floor, Sanaa and I were going to be up here for who the fuck knew how long. We’d have to wait for the winds to die down enough for a helo to land on the roof.
Praying we weren’t completely fucked, I first glanced up and scanned the stairs heading to the roof access. They were halfway blown out, but if I had to, I could get us up there.
Then I looked down.
Motherfucking shit.
The entire stairwell between the top two floors was gone.
Scanning the damage as best as I could with only the emergency lights on that lit up an exit sign on each floor, I couldn’t see shit past the floor below. It looked like maybe there was still some of the stairwell intact on the lower floors, possibly even on the floor directly below the one under us. But with a minimum of a fifteen foot drop onto a pile of unstable rubble below us, it was no-go.
“Fuck.” Muttering a curse, I was about to go back to the elevator to see if I could pry the doors open when I heard it.
Not the building settling, not concrete dropping, not the shift of rebar scraping. This was small and slight, but it was telltale.
Pebbles skittering across pavement, telltale.
Unholstering my gun, I flipped the scope and scanned.
On the second pass, I saw it.
Jesus fucking Christ. “Harm!”
Buried under a foot of rubble on a small ledge, with a section of metal railing barely hanging on, I could make out the back of Harm’s head and shoulders.
He shifted again, and more small pieces dislodged from his back.
“Harm, goddamn it, if you can hear me, do not move!” Fuck, fuck. “You’re on a ledge. Two inches to your left and you’ll drop fifteen feet. You hear me?”
He groaned once, and his shoulders moved again.
“Harm! Do not move!”
He pushed his arm out and jostled the metal railing.
FUCK.
“Harm,” I yelled.
Realizing his hearing was fucked from the explosion, I grabbed my Sig, flipped the safety on and reached toward a section of metal railing near me. Then I tapped out STOP in Morse code using the barrel of the gun.
Harm moved again.
I tapped again, then again.
Oh the fourth try he finally turned his head and looked up.
I switched to the military hand signals for stop and hold position.
Blood all over his forehead, he stared at me.
I did it again.
“I see you,” he rasped.
Thank fuck. I gave him the hand signal for wait before spreading my fingers wide to indicate five minutes. Then I verbally told him what I was doing. “I’m going back to the suite to see what I can find to get down there to you. Do not move. You’re on a ledge that’s barely holding. Stay.”
He shook his head, then winced in pain. “No.”
“Wait,” I reiterated.
“No.” Inhaling and coughing, he shook his head and cringed. Then he looked right at me. “Abernathy. Alive.”
I THOUGHT I HEARD RONAN yelling, but the sound was muffled through the mattress, and I couldn’t make out any words. Worried, I lifted a corner to peek, but I couldn’t see through the makeshift tent he’d made for me.
I hadn’t heard any more concrete dropping, and there hadn’t been another explosion, but the wind that was blowing in from the broken windows was picking up and making an eerie howling noise. A noise that sounded exactly like a hurricane.
Trying not to panic, adjusting the cloth over my face, I lifted the mattress another few inches. I was too warm and my heart was racing too fast. I wanted out from under here, but I’d also glimpsed the ceiling and the state of the suite, and I was too terrified to venture out.
“Ronan?”
Footsteps crunched across debris.
“Oh thank God.” I pushed the mattress up higher to crawl out. “Are you okay? Why were you yell—”
The curtain tent ripped back, and my heart caught in my throat.
Kyle Abernathy.
A decade older, his nose much smaller, his hair long like a woman’s, he was in a dress. Covered in soot, he sneered at me with the same beady eyes and thin lips I remembered. “Surprised? You shouldn’t be.”
Oh dear God.
With a device in his hand, and large headphones around his neck—the kind to protect your ears on a construction site—he kicked at the mattress. “Get up, bitch, or I’ll blow what’s left of this floor and you can kiss your pretty little self and your boyfriend goodbye. Or should I say boyfriends? Twins.” He snorted with disgust. “You always were a slut.”
Fear stole my breath and robbed my reason.
But then Kyle did something he shouldn’t have. Something Vance had always done when we were sparring to provoke me.
Kyle Abernathy yelled.
“Get up!”
It was automatic. My limbs loosened, my breathing evened and I cataloged. The distance between me and him, how he held the device, where his arms where, how his legs were positioned. I indexed all of it in seconds as I slowly, carefully got out from under the mattress and stood.
Then he made his second mistake.
Kyle grabbed me around the neck and brought my back to his chest in a maneuver Vance had done to me hundreds of times.
I knew this position.
I knew it well.
“We’re going for a little walk, bitch. Move.”
“Stop, please.” Hoping he would think I was terrified, instead of just very, very angry, I positioned my hands on his arm. “You’re choking me.”
“Shut up and walk or I’ll detonate the next bomb and you can kiss your boyfriend and your injured security detail in the stairwell goodbye.”
True fear eclipsed my anger. “If you blow up any more of this building, we’ll all die.”
“You think I care about dying?” He snorted again. “I spent nine years locked up. Death would be a fucking cake walk.” Holding me tight, he moved us toward the bedroom door.
“There’s nowhere to go, we can’t get off this floor.” Ronan would’ve told me if there was an easy way down.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” He didn’t wait for a response. “You think I’d blow up a building with me in it and not have a way out?” he asked, reeking of contemptuous superiority. “Think again, Songbird.”
Fury eclipsed all common sense, and I sucked in an angry breath as my fingers dug into his arm.
His breath putrid, Kyle laughed. “Oh, you don’t like me calling you that? Should I wait until I’m fucking you before I use that little pet name he gave you?”
Movement caught my eye at the doorway and the barrel of a gun appeared a split second before Ronan came into view.
Aiming at Kyle’s head, Ronan blocked the doorway. “Let her go,” he ordered, in a lethally calm tone.
“Ah, the boyfriend. Or maybe I should ask which one you are since you’re so fucking interchangeable now. The murderer or the one who pays off the cops—not that it matters, because it looks like you’re both still fucking her.”
“This is between you and me, Abernathy,” Ronan
warned.
“Right,” Kyle spit vicious sarcasm. “Because she didn’t fuck me over ten years ago to work directly with Amherst when I was the one sticking my neck out to sign her inexperienced ass. Yeah, sure, she has no part in ruining my entire fucking life.”
“Release her,” Ronan commanded.
“Do I look that fucking stupid?” Kyle challenged.
His glare deadly, Ronan didn’t answer.
Kyle snorted. “Sure, go ahead and think I’m the stupid one when I got past all your security losers by getting a nose job and wearing a dress.” He laughed manically. “Keep underestimating me, Conlon. Go ahead and shoot me, or take another shot at beating me up. See what happens if my thumb releases this pressure trigger.”
“Let. Her. Go.”
“Well, now you have a choice,” Kyle gloated, ignoring Ronan’s lethal tone. “What are you going to do, lover boy? Watch us walk away or kill us all?” With his fingers firmly around the device in his hand, he used the back of his knuckles to stroke my cheek. “If my thumb slips even a millimeter…” He made a soft explosion sound. “It’s lights out, for all of us.”
“With the sole purpose of not spilling your blood on Sanaa when I shoot you, I’m giving you one last chance. The device is disabled. You’re not detonating anything. Let her go and you won’t die.”
Kyle laughed hard. “If you’d disabled the bomb, you would’ve shot me on sight.”
My stomach dropped.
Ronan’s jaw ticked. “Last chance.”
Kyle was right. If Ronan had found the bomb and disabled it in the minutes he was gone, then he would’ve shot Kyle already. Kyle didn’t have a gun. He only had the detonation device in his hand.
“Go ahead,” Kyle taunted. “Shoot.”
“Ronan, don’t.” I didn’t think for one second that Kyle was bluffing about another bomb. “He’ll blow us all up.”
“Walk toward me, Sanaa,” Ronan ordered without taking his eyes off Kyle.
“Yes, by all means, Sanaa, do that.” Kyle’s hold on my neck loosened. “Walk toward lover boy and let’s see what happens.”
“He said he has another bomb planted.” I silently pleaded for Ronan to give me a sign that he’d found the bomb.
“Last chance,” Ronan warned, still not looking at me.
Kyle smirked, and his grip on me tightened again. “Sure.” He started to move right toward Ronan, forcing me to walk with him. “Keep up the bluff, lover boy. But for the record, it sucks compared to your right hook.”
Gun aimed, stance wide, Ronan didn’t budge. “You know what the fundamental problem with C4 and a single detonation device is, Abernathy?”
Kyle paused, but he didn’t say anything.
“Do I have your attention now? Should I continue?” Ronan asked in the same lethally calm tone.
“Sure, keep bluffing.” Kyle laughed, but this time it was strained.
“Anyone can disarm it.” With the briefest of glances, Ronan’s eyes met mine and he gave me a single command. “Knees.”
I dropped my weight.
Without a single second of hesitation, Ronan pulled the trigger.
HARM HAD SAID HE NEEDED ninety seconds.
It’d been double that.
Praying like fuck he’d reached the device like he’d said he could, I glanced at my Songbird and issued a single command. “Knees.”
Submissive and beautiful, she didn’t even blink. She dropped to her knees, and I pulled the trigger.
Abernathy’s head snapped back with the force of the close range shot and his head fucking exploded a fraction of a second before a detonation boomed through the suite and shook the floor.
“Ronan!” Sanaa screamed, her hands going to her ears as she cowered on the floor.
Grabbing her by the front of the sweater, I yanked her to me and holstered my weapon before putting my arms over her head. “Easy, easy. Stay with me.” Glancing up, I pulled us under the doorframe. Then I scanned the bedroom and the suite. “Give it a second to settle.” More debris fell, the floor shifted, but the explosion wasn’t as loud as the previous ones, and it didn’t shake the building as violently.
Her arms wrapped around me. “You said you disabled it,” she accused. “You said it anyone could do it.”
“Anyone could.” If they could’ve reached it, which Harm apparently hadn’t, but he’d seen it before the first explosions had gone off, and that was the only reason we were still standing here. That, and Abernathy had stupidly not hidden the third bomb when he set it just under the landing of the stairwell on this floor.
“Come on, you’re going under the mattress one more time. I need to go check on Harm.” With an urgency I hoped she didn’t pick up on, and with my hand keeping her head to my chest so she didn’t look at the body, I moved her back to the bed and got her under the mattress. Squatting so she could see my eyes, I made her a promise. “I’m not going to let anything else happen to you. Give me a few minutes to check on Harm, and I’ll be back. If I’m not back in a few minutes, give me a few more. It only means Harm needs my help. You’re safe here for now.” I pulled the fabric back up over her nose and mouth. “Leave this in place until we get out of here.”
Her small fingers wrapped around my wrist. “Okay, but make it less than a few minutes.”
A ghost of a smile hit the side of my mouth. “I’ll do my best.”
“Wait. What was that?” She touched my lips with a shaking hand and then the girl I’d met all those years ago, the one who always tried to make light of heavy situations, she came out. “Can it be? The serious Ronan Conlon is giving me a smile with a dead body lying next to us after three bombs went off?”
Taking her hand, I kissed her palm. “Ten minutes. Max.”
“If you leave me under here for ten more minutes, I’m coming to look for you,” she warned.
I didn’t doubt it for one second. “Copy that.” I squeezed her hand and stood to leave.
“Be careful,” she called.
I glanced over my shoulder. “I’m always careful.”
“Except when you pull the trigger while a suicidal bomber is holding a detonation device.”
“No,” I agreed. “Then I’m calculating and precise.”
Leaving the body for later, I strode back through the second suite and rushed down the corridor to the stairwell.
No more visible damage than before, I called out before I could see around the corner. “Harm!” Holding the doorframe, watching my step, I looked into the stairwell.
Grasping a section of broken-off railing, standing on a now even smaller section of landing, Harm looked up at me. “I couldn’t reach it.”
I glanced down at the now gaping hole that was stairwell. Jesus Christ. “What the hell did you do?”
“I can’t hear you,” he said louder than he needed to. “I need to see your lips.”
I looked back at him. “I said, what the hell did you do?”
“I couldn’t reach it,” he repeated. “So I hit it with this.” He held the broken-off piece of railing in his hand up higher. “Knocked it down.” He glanced toward the now twenty-story hole where the stairwell had been. “It exploded somewhere down there.” He looked back up at me and shrugged. “Maybe halfway? Not sure. Is he dead?”
“Yeah, he’s dead.” I could’ve taken Abernathy down without killing him, restrained him until we got out of here, but I didn’t, and I had no regrets about it. “Don’t move. I’m going to get something to get you out of there.”
“What?”
“Don’t move,” I uselessly yelled.
“Copy.” He leaned back against the wall, but he favored his bloodied leg.
“Hey!”
He looked up.
I nodded at his leg. “Does that need pressure on it to stop the bleeding?” The last thing I wanted was for him to pass out from blood loss, then drop twenty stories.
He shook his head and winced. “I’m good, as long as I don’t shake my head.”
; I took him at his word, but he looked like hell. “Be right back.”
Giving me a thumbs-up instead of a nod, he leaned against the wall again.
Rushing back into the first suite, I ripped the curtains down and used my knife to cut the pull cords. It wasn’t ideal, but I could fashion something that would hopefully be strong enough to get Harm up fifteen feet and to safety. Taking the material and the cord, I started to walk back out of the suite when I glanced at a bag I hadn’t seen before on the floor by the kitchenette.
A goddamn tote bag with a straw hat on top.
Praying it wasn’t another device, I dropped the curtains and walked toward it. Using my knife, I pushed the top of the tote bag carefully back to see inside.
Exhaling, I didn’t know if I wanted to shoot the motherfucker Abernathy again or thank him.
Rappelling gear. Ropes, harnesses, carabineers.
Grabbing the bag, picking the curtains and cord up in case I needed it, I went back to the stairwell and dumped everything on the floor just outside the doorway.
I glanced over the edge and Harm looked up at me. “Guess what that asshole left behind?”
“Rappelling gear?”
I glanced around for a section of railing still intact that I could tie off to. “How’d you know?”
“What?”
I looked back at Harm and spoke louder. “How did you know?”
“I figured he’d have a way to get out of here. How else would you get down after you blew it all to hell?”
“I figured he didn’t care about dying.” I spied a section of railing I could reach that looked secure and gave it a solid tug. It held. I glanced back at Harm. “Give me a minute.”
“Copy.”
I tied the lines off and double-checked them, then secured the harness to the line. Glancing down at Harm, I leaned out as far as I could. “You ready?”
“Ready.”
I tossed him the line.
He caught it one handed. Then with military-trained precision, he harnessed himself and hooked on. Glancing at me, he gave a thumb’s up.
Holding the rope, I braced my feet against either side of the doorframe on the outside of the stairwell. “All secure. On your go.”