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“Please help us.” Eloise wasn’t going to waste her time pleading with a monster, but maybe there was enough fight in Myles for him to do the right thing. “We loved her, too, please don’t let him get away with this.”
“Hey.” Dylan waved the gun and then pointed it back at her chest. “Shut up.”
Eloise stopped talking but she was still begging Myles to help them with her eyes. She knew Dylan had allowed this to go on so long because being in control fanned his ego, but they had to be running out of time.
That suspicion was confirmed when he stood up, practically dumping Sarah on the floor in the process, and started giving orders. “Now, what we’re all gonna do is take a little walk out back and get into that SUV in the parking lot. Then we'll take a drive outside of town and when we get to a place where no one can hear you scream, two of you are gonna end up gator bait.”
Chloe started crying again as he herded them all toward the back door, but Eloise was searching frantically for a weapon or a distraction, anything she could use to keep him from putting them into a vehicle and driving away.
It was getting dark outside and if she could get her hands on anything at all, she might be able to use his momentary lack of attention to make a run for it. He couldn’t chase after her and keep the others in line, so he’d have to choose. Either way, there was a good chance at least one person would make it to safety and from there, they could call for help. She had no idea how much space there was between the back door and whatever car he intended to shove them into, but surely it was enough for her to make a break for it.
The problem with her plan was that he didn’t give her time or room to find any kind of weapon as they crossed the bar. Anytime one of them slowed down or tried to resist, he stuck the barrel of the gun threateningly between their ribs and insisted they keep walking.
By the time they were nearly to the door, she’d resigned herself to the inevitable truth. She’d just have to do it without the weapon and hope that simply knocking him off balance would be enough for her to run without getting shot. It lowered her chances of success but there was no way she was going to meekly climb into that waiting vehicle and wait to be driven to the scene of her own murder.
Myles reached the back door first and held it open as Chloe and Sarah passed through. When it was her turn, he caught her eye and gave a nearly imperceptible nod in Dylan’s direction. His face was pale but determined and his eyes on hers were full of focused intent. Relief washed over her. He was going to help them.
As soon as she stepped out into the dark parking lot, he tried to swing the door closed behind her, to block Dylan from being able to get through. There was a dull thud and a loud, pained grunt and for a moment she thought Myles had managed to get the door closed but her hopes were dashed as it began to swing open again a second before it latched. Myles tried to lean against it, throwing his whole weight onto the steel frame, but Dylan had already gotten a shoulder through. The door swung back and forth as both men cursed and shouted, and Sarah and Chloe watched wide-eyed and frozen with uncertainty.
“Help him or run!” Eloise screamed. It seemed to break the spell that fear and surprise had cast over them and she threw her own weight against the door at the same time that Sarah did. They both pushed as hard as they could as Chloe turned and began to sprint along the back of the building toward the small alleyway that would lead her around to the front and the road beyond.
Eloise hoped she’d have enough of her wits about her to remember to call for help when she got here, but it turned out that she didn’t need to. As soon as Chloe turned the corner and became visible to the front parking lot the air filled with shouted commands.
“This is the police!”
“Stop where you are!”
“Get down! Down on the ground now!”
Chloe slid to stop and threw her hands in the air. “Back here!” she screamed. “He’s trying to kill my friends. Please help us!”
The darkness was driven back by the crisscrossing beams of many flashlights and then there were people everywhere. Myles, Sarah, and Eloise all stepped away from the back door of the building with their hands in the air and Dylan charged through, gun raised, into a crowd of SWAT officers with their own guns pointed at his chest.
There was a momentary standoff as they screamed at him to lower his weapon and Eloise was sure for a second that he wasn’t going to comply, but the gun slipped from his hand and into the dirt a moment later.
“Eloise?”
Her head snapped up at the sound of her name and she saw Ethan pushing and shoving his way through the crowd with Detective Chen right behind him. She was speaking, “Mr. Callaghan, you have to wait until the scene has been cleared,” but he was ignoring her as he searched each face he passed.
“Ethan!” She knew the instant he’d spotted her, his body language changed from desperate to relieved from one breath to the next, and then he was there, and his arms were around her and she was finally, finally safe. “You found me.”
“You scared the hell out of me,” he returned. “We’ve been outside for ten minutes trying to figure out a way to get you out without getting anyone hurt. I thought I was going to lose you. Don’t ever do anything like that to me again, do you hear me?”
“I won’t.” She buried her face in his neck and cried, all the tears she’d been holding onto for the last hour suddenly trying to escape all at once. “I promise I won’t and I’m so sorry and I never should have said those things to you. I love you …” She stopped babbling when the strength of her sobbing made the words incoherent.
“Shhh,” he soothed. He was running his hands over her back and hair, trying to comfort her and check her for injuries at the same time. “It’s all right. I’m here and you’re gonna be fine now. I love you so much. You have no idea how scared I was.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. It’s my fault. If I had been honest with you from the beginning, this would never have happened.”
“Callaghan!” Dylan was yelling and struggling against his cuffs as they tried to drag him away. “You traitorous piece of shit! You think I’m going down by myself? You don’t betray your family!”
“She’s my family.” Ethan turned his back on Dylan and drew Eloise closer into his arms, as though he could shield her with his body.
“Somebody shut him up!” Detective Chen shook her head and waved over a handful of officers, instructing them to collect evidence from the scene. “The rest of you, stay where you are. We’re going to need to collect statements from everyone.”
Ethan pulled Eloise into his arms and dropped his mouth close to her ear so no one else could hear him. “He’s going to take me and Myles down with him. Probably Chloe and Sarah, too, if they were doing what I think they were. There’s nothing I can do to stop him, but I couldn’t let him kill you. When I got your voicemails and realized you were coming here …”
