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She killed Gwen. They killed Gwen. They both, in evil concert with Nick Fentes, killed Gwen and then Robert. Her family. Her family, which she had been just days, just moments, away from fully joining.
The interior alarm blared, a motion sensor tripped, and they, this brigade of men and guns and disaster—were here.
She had only minutes to make a decision. Run? Fight? Or…
Her focus settled in. Deceive.
She eyed the broken cameras, imagining the soldiers circling the building, advancing closer. Guns drawn. Twenty or thirty of them against her. Escape would be all but impossible. Except that, she knew exactly how to do it.
Reaching up, she gripped the top of her head and yanked. The blonde wig peeled away and fell to the floor.
BELL
The red light stopped, the cell falling back into darkness. I held my breath and listened, straining my ears in the direction that the crash had come from. What had it been? It hadn’t come from inside the warehouse. It had sounded further away. Almost too far away. Maybe it was a car accident on the closest road.
I heard the clatter of shoes, pounding down a stairwell, inside the structure. I tensed, my eyes on the front of the cell, and waited for her to reappear.
Nothing happened. The footsteps ceased, her path taking her somewhere else. Silence grew, and I wondered why this place was so quiet. Didn’t the other women say anything? Did they all just sit there in silence, all day long?
My thigh throbbed with pain, drawing my attention back to the knife still sticking out from my thigh. I took a long, shuddering breath and gently touched the area around the wound. My fingers came away damp and warm and I felt lightheaded, unsure if it was due to blood loss or anxiety. I could feel the blood dripping down my thigh, a pool of it forming under my leg. How much blood could I lose? I took quick short breaths and regripped my upper thigh, second-guessing the motion when more blood seemed to pool around the blade.
Something banged once, twice, and then a loud third time. I stilled, my head raised, and listened. A battering ram? The quiet returned and I yanked at my cuffed hand, testing the restraint, my gaze frantically searching over the ground, the other cuff, looking for the handcuff key. She was going to come back. She was going to come back and she’d kill me. Kill me in the final second before they found us. I froze when, through the dark open door of the cell, a flashlight beam cut through the darkness. I straightened and watched as its beam floated over a concrete pillar. My chest constricted. I hesitated, warring between silence and screaming. I took in a deep breath. “Hello?”
In my head, my call of greeting had been a shout. But it came out weak, my voice wobbling on the final note, the end result something barely audible, and not nearly loud enough. The cell walls swallowed the call, and I repeated the word, this time louder, as loud as I could manage. The flashlight clicked off. A door creaked open. I held my breath as a dark body eased in front of my cell, one step carefully placed in front of the other, a gun held out, sweeping across my cell. A cop. I sank against the concrete wall, relief seizing my chest. The man held a finger in front of his mouth and I nodded. He stepped forward, continuing on. The next figure, even in the dark, even with goggles on and features obscured, I knew. I knew it in the broad width of his shoulders. The strength of his frame. The height. The confidence in his movements. He came into the cell with quick steps and crouched beside me, pulling me into his arms.
Dario.
He brought me into his chest and the scent of him, the strong squeeze of him …. I clutched at him with my free hand, a shuddering exhale bubbling out of me. He pulled off his night-vision goggles and kissed me everywhere. Strong presses of his lips on the top of my head, my forehead, cheeks, lips. He whispered my name and I cupped his face, my nails digging into the short stubble of his beard, then his shoulders, then across his chest.
He saw the knife and froze. “Oh my God. Bell.”
I gripped his shirt, pulling his eyes to mine. “It’s okay. It looks worse than it is.”
“It looks like a shitload of blood. We need to get you to a doctor. I’ve got someone here, let me get him—” He started to stand and I yanked at his shirt, keeping him down.
“Don’t leave me. Please. Just wait.”
He kissed me again, his hand tightening on the back of my head. “I’ll stay. I love you. God, I love you so much.”
