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“Sort of,” I said. “We need you to come to Ethan Murdock’s house.”
“Why?” he said, his voice deep.
I glanced at Raven, who was splitting his attention between the car outside and me on the phone. When he caught my eye, his eyebrows went up, asking me quietly what I wanted.
“We’re going to get the bad guys to come here and negotiate for Brandon’s and the other’s lives.”
“What?” Kevin asked loudly into the phone. “What the hell is going on? Where’s Raven?”
“We’re at Ethan’s house,” I said. “Raven’s right here.”
“Give the phone to him.”
I cringed. He wasn’t happy. I held out the phone.
Raven motioned I should take his place at the window. We traded spots and Raven took up the phone. “Kev,” he said. “No. No. No. Come here. Bring some people. Big people. But don’t run in.”
“Found it!” Corey exclaimed. He dug his fingernails into a wood beam, scraping at it. “It is in the floor. I just need to figure out how to open it. There’s probably a switch somewhere.”
“No,” Raven said into the phone. “That’s just Corey.”
There was movement outside and I watched another car pull up. This one was a ritzy long limo. It stopped, the driver jumping out quickly after it parked behind the first car. He raced over to the back seat and opened the door.
Out stepped Alice. She wore a slim-fitting suit, and her hair was tied up in a bun on her head.
“Alice is here,” I said.
“Shit,” Raven said, he tried to walk across the room and then couldn’t drag the phone that far. He talked into it. “Just shut up and get here. Bring a gun. Or two.” He threw the phone down until it cracked on the floor. He jogged over to the window. “You go help Corey. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
I ran over to Corey, who was wedging the wood between the floor and his discovered panel. “It’s stuck. I don’t know if it rolls down and to the side, or if it comes up.”
“If you had a secret computer in the floor,” I said, “behind a security panel, where would you hide the button?”
Corey stopped his scratching and thought about it, glancing around the room. “It’d probably be another security panel. Something you could enter a code into? Or another face scanner?”
“She’s coming in,” Raven said. “I can’t see who she’s got with her, but the people in the first car are staying put. She’s got two guys coming through the front.”
“We’ll have to be quiet,” I said. “We’re on the third floor.”
Corey got up, and went to the security panel near the door. “This might be it,” he said. “It’s in the same panel.”
“We don’t have time to guess,” I said. I thought about it and went back to the phone.
Kevin had hung up. I dialed Avery’s number from memory this time. I sat on the sofa as another wave of dizziness hit me. I bit back the sensation. Just a little longer…
Two rings and the phone clicked. “Tell me this is Kayli,” Avery said on the line.
“How’d you know?”
“You’re the only one who calls,” he said.
Was his giving out business cards not working for him as a taxi driver? “Where are you guys?” I asked. “Is Ethan with you?”
“Yeah. We went to go check on the priest that married them to talk about the wedding license, but he’s not home. He wanted to ask him about Alice’s license. He tried calling her but she’s not answering. Where are you?”
“At Ethan’s house with Raven and Corey,” I said. “We’re upstairs. Alice is downstairs. She’s with two guys. Bodyguards maybe.”
Avery relayed the information to Ethan. Ethan said something back but it was muffled. “Okay, okay,” Avery said. “We’ll go there. Settle down. No need to bark.”
“We need to know how to access the computer to the core,” I said. “We need to make it look like we have something to negotiate with.”
Avery didn’t say anything for a minute, but then relayed, “She says Alice is helping them get to the bottom of it with Eddie.” I almost corrected him, but then realized Avery was telling him exactly what he needed to hear to cooperate. “But they don’t know how to access the computer. The one upstairs?”
There was more muffled conversation. I waited, listening for noises downstairs. I couldn’t hear anything. Corey waited by the door, his ear pressed to it. Raven kept an eye on the car. My heart was in my throat, sending waves of dizziness through my tired brain.
“He says you use the security panel by the door,” Avery said. “It comes up through the floor. Use code: 979627. It’ll check for his face, though. Maybe you should wait.”
“We’ve got that covered,” I said and I relayed the information to Corey.
Corey picked up the paper with Ethan’s face, and then entered in the digits. “Got it,” he said.
The floor that Corey had picked out as the computer started to shift. From it arose a framework, servers that connected to each other, and wires running from each side back into the floor. With it came a small desk, and on it were two monitors.
“We got it,” I said into the phone.
“Shit!” Raven said. “Eddie just pulled up. He’s got three guys with them. They’re surrounding the first car…One of them has Brandon.”
Corey and I looked at each other. How? Brandon was with Alice. I groaned. If Corey needed more time, we had to give that to him. “Raven,” I said, pulling the phone away from my ear. “Let’s let them in. We’ll go deal with them.”
“No,” Raven said. His fists clenched and he held them up like a boxer. He took a few swings toward the glass without striking at it. “Let’s knock them out and take him.”
“They aren’t going to shoot Brandon if he can pretend to work on this core for a short time…” I gulped. We really had run out of time. “Corey needs more time to set it up. We’ll stall them. Brandon won’t work without leverage…And I guess I’m it.”
“That’s not an option,” Avery said into the phone. “Kayli, don’t you dare.”
I dropped the phone further to smother out Avery’s shouting. I focused on Raven, whose wild eyes were firing bullets down at the German team below. I dropped the phone to check out what was going on. Two of the goons had guns pointed in the first car that had stopped. The other people were trying to wrestle Brandon up the steps as he struggled against his bindings. Who was in the car?
Alice was inside, too. Eddie was going to run into her. There might be a firefight. Brandon would be in the middle of it.
“Raven,” I said carefully, feeling his intensity. I reached for his arm, holding it firmly. “Listen, I need you to stay with Corey. Go help him and maybe call Kevin and update him.”
“Why? I can’t hold my gun steady if I’m not using two hands.”
“Don’t shoot them,” I said. “If I give myself up, I think I can get Brandon to at least pretend to be hacking at this core. Or there might be another way. We might still get out of this.” What I was having problems with was how Eddie got Brandon. Did he escape Alice only to run into Eddie?
Raven shook his head. “I’ll be bait.”
“I’m bait,” I told him. “You’re going to hide and shoot them if they try to kill us. You’re the one with the gun.”
Raven grumbled, long and loud, uttering words in Russian. “I don’t like your plan,” Raven said.
“You don’t like planning, anyway.”
He sighed looking down at the commotion going on. Brandon was still resisting. “That’s going to be a lot of bodies to cart off. I should probably get a boat.”
“No bodies!” I cried. I went and picked up the phone. “Avery?”
“I got you,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m handing you over to Raven.”
“Uh oh.”
“Raven will fill you in.” I nodded to Raven and passed the phone over.
Raven gripped it in a fist. Then he grabbed me by
my shirt, pulled me in and kissed my mouth. It was a short, but hard kiss, and he nipped my lip quickly at the end. He pulled back and stared at me. “Don’t… die.”
“Oh-kay,” I said, exaggerating the word to match his tone, but I understood. I didn’t want anyone to die either.
I looked over at Corey, who was by the computer. He touched the monitor which popped up with another password field.
I stopped by him just long enough to give him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “You don’t die, either.”
Corey chuckled. “You’re the one going down to the firing squad,” he said. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a thick plastic Taser. “Take this with you, but don’t let them see it. And be careful. I really don’t like your plan, either.”
Neither did I.
SNEAKY
I had to use the security code and picture to get back out. Eddie and his team were making a racket downstairs. I slunk down the first flight of steps, using their noise to cover my footsteps. I stuck the Taser into my pocket. I couldn’t use it to take out everyone, so I’d have to use it sparingly.
