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Reagan should be grateful for the open door, but it made her stomach plummet into her shoes. Blake encircled her waist from behind and buried his face in her hair. The intimacy was nice but ill timed.
“Listen to me.” His warm breath hit the back of her neck. His voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear the words. “Yes or no answers only when I ask. Understand?”
“Yes.” She got it—he didn’t want to be overheard. This wouldn’t be a practical tactic once they left the room, regardless of what waited, but for now, it helped calm her racing pulse.
“I’ll take the lead when we walk out of here,” he said. “Not that the gun will be much more useful than a club, once I fire it, but I need you to watch our backs.”
Of course she would. “Yes.”
“Two priorities. Find you a weapon—a stick, something, anything—and get an idea of where we are. Make sense?”
“Yes.” She could do this. The conversation was all logical steps she would have figured out on her own, but talking through them helped her segment her thoughts.
“And most important, though you’re more familiar with this than I am, we promise each other right now we don’t let this guy fuck with our heads. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Cuddle time’s over. Break it up.” Jabberwock’s volume made her eardrums throb.
Blake kissed the back of Reagan’s neck. “When we get out of here, I can have us on a flight to Fiji in about two hours.”
She had to hide her smile. “Yes.”
Blake stepped around her.
“Finally.” Jabberwock sounded bored.
This wasn’t going to get old fast or anything.
Blake nudged open the door, and a siren blared over the speakers. It echoed in her skull and vibrated in her feet and made it impossible to hear what he was saying, despite seeing his lips move.
He frowned and left the room. She willed herself to go with him, but her mind was sucked back into the cell she’d been kept in. The blare of the TV. The bright lights.
She clenched her hand until her nails dug into her palm, and focused on the pain to stay grounded.
There was a light touch on her arm. She’d squeezed her eyes shut? She looked up, to find Blake had returned and was watching her with concern.
She gave him a weak smile, not willing to try to be heard over the noise.
He gestured to the door, and she nodded. The last thing she wanted was to be a liability. She needed to hold herself together.
When she stepped from the room, the noise stopped. The silence that settled in was almost as disconcerting. A look up and down the hallway showed her lockers—some open, some not, some without doors at all—and rooms with closed doors. They were in the condemned high school, outside of town.
“We have to check each door.” Blake’s whisper in her ear mingled with the echo of ringing.
They approached the first classroom. She tried the knob, while he kept watch. It was locked. From the resistance the door offered when she leaned into it, it was heavy. Probably too sturdy for them to pop it out of its lock.
There was a tall, narrow window, with a wooden board blocking the other side. Even if they could smash the glass, it was too far above the knob, for her to reach the lock. As they moved to the next room, Blake kept his attention on the new territory, and Reagan watched where they’d been. A shiver fell over her and her breath came out in white puffs. In the room they’d been locked in, it was warm.
Out here, the temperature was low enough to remind her it was below freezing outside and their coats had been taken. They both wore heavy hoodies, but those wouldn’t keep their fingers warm, or really any of part of them for long.
The approached a locker the door of which hung from a single hinge. Blake handed her the pistol, and she adopted an alert posture. Part of her time over the last several months had been spent practicing with a firearm. She still didn’t know that she could fire it, if the situation called for it, but she could hit her target if she pulled the trigger.
A screeching sound made her cringe. Blake was kicking the sheet metal free and prying the bar that acted as a locking mechanism from it. He handed her the makeshift weapon, and she returned his Glock.
There was a stairwell at the end of the hallway, as well as an exit. Heavy double doors blocked both. She leaned into one and then the other with her shoulder. They let in a gust of frigid air, and she caught a glimpse of sunlight and heard the rattle of chains.
She couldn’t see any details outside, and they couldn’t get to the locks holding the doors in place. But if someone came in through those doors behind them, they’d hear it.
The sirens blared over the speakers the moment she left the landing. Her heart jumped into her throat, threatening to hammer its way free.
Blake glanced between her and their surroundings, his brow furrowed.
She swallowed her desire to curl up in a ball and scream for it to stop, clenching and unclenching her fist until her thoughts were clear. When they started down the next hallway, the sound cut out again.
They repeated the lock checking, then creeped forward, around the entire floor. It was laid out like a square. They found one way out—a doorway leading up one of the staircases.
Blake led the way up. When she climbed, the sirens blared again. She jumped but stayed with Blake. Within seconds, the sound stopped. She wanted to shout, I’ve survived worse, asshole, but was afraid he’d see it as a challenge.
“I knew they were wrong about you.” Jabberwock’s casual tone was as grating as the sirens. She was going to hear the bastard in her sleep for years. “At least a couple of Blake’s former colleagues insisted they had broken you. That the loud noise would be a surefire trigger. But you’re stronger than that, Alice. I never doubted it.”
“Do I have to kill myself, to get a person in here?” Her voice mocked her from the PA system, tugging her back toward the past.
She glared at the nearest speaker. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told them—I don’t know what you fucking want.” While she argued with the disembodied voice, she followed Blake through the new floor, repeating the routine they established downstairs—check the door, check behind them, move on.
“Whatever they told you they wanted, they lied,” Jabberwock said. “They were trying to break you, but don’t worry. Like I said before, Tony is gone. As for what I want? You. I want you to push aside all your preconceived notions and indoctrination about good and bad and right and wrong, and understand you’re not restricted by those rules.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she muttered, sarcasm dripping from her words.
“You’re welcome. But I’ll warn you—like with them, if you hurt yourself on purpose, I won’t come running.” Jabberwock’s tone was sad, but it wasn’t quite right. It took Reagan a moment to figure out why. It was exaggerated. Insincere. “You’re better than that, though. You won’t do that again.”
She wasn’t as convinced as him. Despite the voice in her head, chanting for her to keep going—to push through this—there was a part of her that didn’t know if she could. What happened the first time, when she was locked away, tore her down so much that she fought to keep herself calm now.
She refused to surrender or sink into despair. She and Blake could make it through this.
Couldn’t they?