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“Great.”
We walked into the warm lobby and headed to the conference room. It seemed bigger without the guys around. Despite protecting us from the cold, it felt ominous for whatever reason.
Mia tried to unlock the first door, but it was already open. “Weird. I thought I’d closed it before I left yesterday.”
Not giving that much importance to it, I followed her into the room and noticed the two doors to the storage were ajar, so I could see part of the many shelves we’d have to survey until we found what we were looking for. Talk about a needle in a haystack.
I was oblivious to anything else, too focused on getting to the task at hand. It took me a while to realize Mia had stopped and was perusing the space. Before I could ask her anything, she lifted her hand, signing for me to stay quiet. Her shoulders were rigid, her stance became cautious, and her eyes were sharp as she walked quietly to the large wooden table in the middle.
After pressing a button on the underside of it, she fished a handgun from the waist of her pants. I knew we were under a threat, but until that moment I hadn’t seen a gun up close. Ben was always mindful of keeping them out of my sight when we were together. Her eerie silence added to her sudden predatory posture, which enhanced my fear. At what, I still didn’t know.
She tiptoed to one of the opposite doors. I was so close to her, I swore I could hear her heart beating. Maybe it was mine. She tensed in front of me and walked back, forcing me backward as well. “Go back to the car.” Her voice was so quiet, if I wasn’t glued to her back, I wouldn’t have listened. “Lock yourself, get out of here, and call Ben.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
“You can’t stay. If there’s someone in the building, I can’t let them go away.”
“But—”
“Do as I’m telling you.” It was the first time I heard her give an order. That the situation warranted her to speak like that was all the indication I needed that things were about to get ugly.
I was about to turn around to head away when I heardhisvoice. “What a nice surprise. I was looking forward to a family reunion again.”
As Mia raised her gun at Michael, I felt someone grabbing my neck from behind, making me scream. I felt something cold pressed against my temple and started shaking as three other men joined Michael and my captor. From the faraway voices, there were more in the storage.
One of them smiled at Mia. “Remember me?”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to try anything stupid, little girl,” Michael admonished. “You wouldn’t want to give the news to my loving son that he became a single parent, would you?”
“This has nothing to do with her, Michael. You wanted my attention, you have it. Let’s solve this between me and you.” She stepped back, getting closer to me, making the man holding me growl. “You don’t need a flock to do your dirty work, just like I don’t need to worry about another person. She leaves, they go back to the cave they came from, and you and I can put our unresolved issues to rest. What do you say?”
“I say you’ve already tested all the limits of my patience. You better play accordingly—”
It all happened so fast. As Michael rambled on, Mia shifted to pull my head down from my detainer and shoot him in the shoulder. But could someone stand a chance of protecting a helpless person against several armed men and still stay alive?
She turned ahead again and shot another goon. Then one of the men kicked her knee and Michael hit her ribs with the butt of his assault rifle.
After surviving giving birth in a crashed car, death once again surrounded us. The odds weren’t letting me believe we’d be that lucky a second time.
As she dropped to one knee, holding her torso, Michael stepped closer and fisted her hair. “I’m tired of your shenanigans. Today is the last day I witness any of them.What do you say?” He spit her words back at her right before he banged her head with all his might against the wooden table, letting her limp body fall on the floor.
“Maybe we should’ve looked for an artificial tree. I’m freezing,” I complained.
“They don’t smell like these. We’ll find one soon enough,” Zach countered.
“That’s the thing, we need more than one, and so far we have a total of zero. I don’t wanna leave them all alone for so long.”
Zach’s face fell, and I felt like a jerk. “Maybe you’re right. I just...I wanted something good for Christmas. Something real.”
I was never one to analyze emotional responses, but that one seemed kind of obvious. “Maybe instead of trying to overcompensate for Christmas, we could just fix things with her.”
“I don’t know how,” he admitted in pain. “As much as I know I hurt her, I’m still afraid. Where does that leave us?”
“We’re working on it.”
“Not fast enough! They’re still out there, planning God knows what, while our family is in jeopardy.”
“We set things in motion already. Soon enough, they’ll come for us—well, you—and we’ll be waiting, because this time we know it’s coming.”
