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He looked at his brothers, both strapped with Kevlar and carrying more weapons than a SWAT team. “Thank you,” he said. “Really.”
“It’s nothing,” Ronan said.
Nick shook his head. Ronan had everything to lose, and he was still risking his life for Nick, for the woman Nick loved. Julia would worry sick until Ronan was home in one piece. She was sacrificing too. Nick owed her.
“It’s a lot,” Nick said. “Thanks for having my back.” He looked at Declan. “You too.”
“Who said anything about having your back?” Declan pumped the rifle in his hand. “This will be the most excitement we’ve had in a year.”
25
Alexa waited as long as she dared. She passed the time thinking about Nick, sending him silent messages, telling him she was okay, and that if she ended up not being okay, she was glad she’d fought — for herself and for them.
It was hard to know how much time had passed. The bathroom was a cocoon, so cut off from the rest of the world she didn’t even know what time of day it was, but hours had passed since her last food drop. To execute her plan, she had to be on the floor when they came again, had to be bleeding enough that whoever came would have no choice but to come all the way into the room to check on her.
She positioned herself on the bathroom floor, as close to the wall under the window as she could get.She made sure that she was on the side of the bathroom that would give her easiest access to the door when it was open, leaving room for someone to crouch next to her body on the other side.
She held the screw to her forearm and took a deep breath. She’d considered drawing blood from someplace else, but she couldn’t think of a place that would draw a lot of it quickly enough. She would be careful, cut across her veins instead of with them, not dig too deep.
She needed to stay conscious, needed to be ready to run.
She didn’t want to hurt herself, but she didn’t have a choice. This was her best chance at survival.
She huffed in and out a few times, trying to muster her courage. Then she pressed the screw to her skin.
26
They parked around the corner from the building and approached quietly. Nick was grateful for the darkness of night and the deserted neighborhood. They hurried forward without a word, fanning out to their assigned posts as soon as they hit the corner property.
Ronan disappeared toward the front while Nick and Declan scrambled over the rusted chain-link fence in the back, trying not to rattle the metal.
The backyard was overgrown, the limbs of bare trees seeming to reach for them as they crossed the snow-covered ground toward the back of the house. It mimicked the front, with a back door on the ground floor and a rickety-looking staircase leading to a door on the second floor.
Nick pointed to the second-floor door and held up two hands to Declan, indicating that Declan should give him ten seconds before starting for the door on the first floor. He didn’t want to use their communication system until they had to in case they were overheard.
Declan nodded and Nick hurried toward the wooden staircase. He sprinted up it as quietly as he could without making noise, counting the seconds in his mind. Time was distorted when you were in danger. He didn’t want to take anything for granted.
He was at eight seconds when he reached the second-floor door. He flattened himself against the exterior of the building and listened for sound from inside the house. He thought he heard a television, but he couldn’t be sure it was coming from inside the building and not a neighboring house with the volume up too high.
He glanced down and saw Dec moving toward the first floor in a crouch, his black figure nearly disappearing into the surrounding darkness.
That was the idea.
He waited until Dec disappeared below him on the stairs then murmured softly into the microphone positioned near his face. “In position.”
Ronan’s voice came through the system first. “Check.”
“Check,” Declan’s voice said in his ear.
“Let’s do this,” Nick said. She was in there. He could feel her, knew she was alive, knew she was waiting for him. “Five… four… three… two… one.”
27
Alexa was still conscious when she heard the keys outside the door. After the initial shock of pain, the cut on her arm had gone numb, and she’d been both relieved and horrified to watch the blood drip onto the floor.
She’d stopped with one cut, positioning her body so that her bloody arm would be visible to whoever opened the door next. She wasn’t worried about whether they’d take her mock suicide attempt seriously. By the time they got close enough to realize there was only one cut on her arm and it was superficial, she’d be on the move.
She hoped.
