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“Thought as much,” the thug coughs out. “You”—he waves the gun at me—“on ye’ knees, too.”
Reluctantly, I do as told. And then I scream when the fucker swings his foot and kicks Archer in the face, sending him onto his back. He spits loudly on the floor and leaves, taking his buddy with him, the sound of a heavy metal bolt drowning the hissing that comes from Archer.
“Archer, baby.” I crawl toward him and help him sit up. “I’ll fucking kill them next time. Let’s kill them,” I keep murmuring as if I can heal Archer’s bleeding nose. “Let me see.”
I lift his face up toward the light, pick up the hem of my shirt, and carefully wipe away the blood around his nose that’s starting to swell, then run my fingers along the bridge.
“Not broken,” I say, inspecting it. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
With my teeth, I tear a piece of fabric off my shirt, then make two small patches and roll them. “Hold still,” I tell Archer and insert them into his nasal cavities to stop the bleeding.
His hands take mine in his as he looks around at the dark splatters of blood on the concrete.
“They are not pros. And they didn’t take us for themselves,” he says.
“I know. One of the guns was a Grach. I’ve seen those on the charts when Dad used to teach me different kinds of arms. It’s Soviet. Americans don’t use them, so they must’ve come from Eastern Europe.”
“We need to get out,” I say, and then remember that we were going to do just that before the thugs came. “The safety pin!”
I had it in my hand when the guys came in. But Archer attacked them so suddenly that I joined on instinct.
Frantically, I look around the floor, then see the pin by the door. Crawling on all fours, I’m only several feet away when I jerk hard against the chains.
“Fuck!” I panic.
I lie down flat on my side and stretch one foot toward the pin, swiping right past it.
“Shit. It’s stuck in a crevice in the concrete.”
Archer is next to me. “Let me try.” He does the same, wiggling his toes to coax the pin out of the crevice, but it doesn’t work. “It could be done if one of the hands was free.”
Archer shifts to stand on his knees before me then sits back on his heels and takes my face between his palms.
“What do you know about dislocating joints?”
51
KAT
My stomach turns.
What the…?
I want to scream in frustration but take a deep breath instead, calming my nerves.
“It’s painful and… Well, technically I know how to do it. I’ve seen it done before in the prison escape seminar my uncle watched with his buddies.”
“So it works.”
“Yeah… I mean.”
“You need to do it, Kat.”
Momentary horror washes over me. Me? Right now?
“Kat, sweetheart, listen to me.”
