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“Focus, please,” I pleaded. “Help me. You know this place better than I do. We have to run right now!”
Holly’s eyes welled full of tears as she glanced at Mick, but she blinked them away and grabbed my hand. “This way,” she said, taking off at a dead run.
We sprinted together. The kid was holding up like a pro, after everything that had happened. I followed her off the terrace and down two flights of stairs, then out a gate that led to a wooden walkway that disappeared into the forest.
We took off down the walkway. I pushed Holly ahead of me to shield her from whatever was behind, and then saw the red dot of the laser sight on the back of her head.
“Stop.” A harsh voice shouted. “Stop running, or we’ll shoot. Turn around! Hands up where we can see them! Both of you!”
I stumbled to a halt, stopping Holly, too. The strength went out of my knees.
I couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t go through it again, the horror of seeing a little girl shot down. I squeezed her hand. “I am so sorry, baby,” I whispered.
Holly nodded, doubled over and panting. “Not your fault,” she whispered.
We stood there and waited for them, those little red laser dots of instant death trained on us, as men boiled out of the gate we had recently left, swiftly overtaking us. They jerked our hands back, and put plastic cuffs onto both of us.
“Really?” I asked the guy securing Holly. “You’re that insecure? You feel the need to cuff an eight-year-old girl?”
“Nine,” Holly corrected.
“Shut the fuck up, or I’ll gag you both,” the guy snarled.
We were dragged by the arms, back up the way we had come. Up the stairs, onto the big terrace, then down the breezeway.
Nicole was waiting for us, Mick next to her, looking ashamed and miserable.
“Mick?” Holly quavered. “Did you…are you on her side? Really? Why?”
“I’m sorry, Holly,” he said. “So damn sorry. They got to my Uncle Jay, and they were torturing—”
“Shut up!” Nicole rapped out. “Asshole. I didn’t tell you to run your mouth.”
“So sorry, sweetheart,” Mick said brokenly. “So sorry.”
“Don’t call her that, asshole,” I said icily. “You no longer have that right.”
“I said shutup,bitch!” Whack, Nicole bashed the pistol across my face, a sharp blow that made my head ring and my vision blur.
I lost track of the conversation for a while, and finally words made sense again.
“…don’t have to kill them! They’ve been drugged!” Mick protested. “They’re still out cold, and they will be until well after you’re gone. Leave me here, unconscious. Just leave them where they lie. Let them think she did this.” He gestured at me. “Wasn’t that the plan? Isn’t she the new fall guy? She brought them the sandwiches! And I only escaped because I didn’t eat any, since my ulcer was acting up. It all tracks, see?”
“Fall guy?” That zapped me back to absolute attention. “Me? What? Who?”
“I wanted to thin them out,” Nicole complained. “This is the perfect time.”
“But you can’t. It ruins the story,” Mick pleaded. “You lose me as your inside man if you do that. If you kill them, I have to come with you.”
“Or I could just kill you, along with them,” Nicole mused. “That would look good, too.”
Mick gulped. “I can still be useful,” he said thickly.
“Hmm,” Nicole scoffed. “You think?”
“You still need me here to establish her as your inside man,” Mick insisted. “She’s your infiltrator. She drugged the guys, and screwed us all over. If you kill them, that story won’t stand up. There won’t be anyone to incriminate her. She’ll just look like a kidnapped victim to them.”
“Don’t try to do my job, Drummond,” Nicole said. “Are you wearing Kevlar?”
