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Those would provide a nice enhancement to the explosion of the C-4. His mind hummed frantically.
He angled himself sideways, pressing the plastic binding against the metal box’s sharp edge. He sawed vigorously, ignoring the bite of the plastic digging into his skin. Finally, the tie snapped and his hands sprung free with a burst of relief. In short order, he snapped the tie at his ankles and lurched upright, swaying as dizziness swamped him.
Leaning against the bookshelf, he drew in gulps of frigid air until the lightheadedness passed. His probing fingers came away slick with blood from a gash on his scalp. Jaw clenched, Montgomery banished the pain to the back corners of his mind. He felt his pockets for his phone. Gone. Likely the tablet, too, since he didn’t remember seeing it on his scramble across the floor.
His brain urged him to get up and find Hartley, but his eyes were drawn to the narrow bookshelf. He couldn’t leave the explosives rigged.
Crouching, Montgomery carefully eased the blasting caps from their bricks of C-4. He coiled the wires loosely in his hand, passing them behind the rear leg of the bookshelf and following them up the wall. They looped around a nail and followed a beam, disappearing into the gloom.
Shit, the entire basement is rigged. More explosives had to be wired across the ceiling above the dungeon, following those tunnels under the Castle. And somewhere in all of those miles of wires would be the hub. The ignition controller. What he’d decommissioned was not the source of the signal.
He dropped the wires. Cavendish was Hartley’s baby, and if one property was rigged to blow up, he knew the others were, too. But only one thing drove him now, and that was the need to find her.
Leaving the dungeon behind, he crept up the stairs as quietly as possible. He strained every sense, listening for the barest hint of movement above. The door at the top was open a few inches, daylight streaming around its edges.
He leaned close to the door, listening through the crack. He doubted she was still anywhere in the Castle, but he couldn’t risk being wrong. When he heard only silence, he pushed on the door. He winced as it creaked and stepped through the narrow opening quickly.
The grounds looked deserted.
Where would her captor have taken her? Not to the Manor—the teams would have encountered them or seen them on the cameras. Some remote corner of the estate, then. But how had he gotten to the Castle without Claire spotting him?
Realization struck like an icy deluge, pooling in Montgomery’s gut. Whoever had done this was no outsider. He was one of them.
He crept out of the doorway, keeping to the deeper shadows of the stone corridor that led around the Castle’s perimeter. He heard no sounds other than those of a cold, damp December day. His brain hurried his footsteps as he imagined all the C-4 that lay under his feet. Why hadn’t it been detonated? And did that have something to do with the bomber kidnapping Hartley?
CHAPTER28
I’m awake. I was…gone, but now I’m here. In the Treehouse, it looks like.
I stand in the center of the structure, staring out at the vast landscape before me, feeling the weight of something in my hand. What is it?
It’s a screen. On it is a line in the shape of a P, with little rectangles strewn around it with names. They glow, and one of them looks familiar.
The Medieval Castle. That’s where we found the woman. I’m pleased that I remember. She was with someone… Right, her husband. He’s probably still there, with quite a sore head, if he’s even awake yet.
Montgomery. He’d stare at me with suspicion, but I took his woman’s side whenever I could, so he couldn’t make me look bad in her eyes.
Why did we do that? I can’t quite recall…
Cold air rustles through the gaps of the Treehouse, yet my insides feel ablaze as the other one surges forward. Him.
We both stand on the platform, half new, half charred from that old fire. The horizon is a blue that hurts our eyes. It won’t be long before they come looking for her.
“Don’t let them ruin our fun,” he sneers in my ear. “You know what we have to do. Destroy them, one by one, until there’s nothing left.”
I look past the device to the dark-haired woman. I’d almost given up entirely to Jackal until I felt her fragile wrists in my hands. I was dragging her up some stairs in the dark. When I saw her, I felt…sad. Her hair is so like Anya’s.
He’s fighting me, though. When I try to remember the soft touches and whispered promises with Anya, it gives me a little strength to fight him back.
“We don't have to do this, Karol,” pleads the woman. She’s staring at me. Staring at me with anguish. It makes me sad again.
Jackal chuckles, a dark and derisive sound that occupies half my head. “Love is pain, Karol,” he whispers. “Look at her. She and her friends are the problem. And the solution is in our hands.”
I know he means the device, but I can’t look away from the woman. She looks scared, and I wonder if I’m having this conversation in my head or out loud. I want to help her, to release her, but I don’t think Jackal will let me.
“Why her? What has she done?” I ask him.
Jackal snarls. “She’s the closure, Karol. For both of us. If we end her, it will help me. You’ll be free of me. Isn’t that what you want?”
