The room shuddered around them. Kaylee lifted her hand and wiped the blood from her mouth with her thumb.
Trina stood across the room, a knife in one hand. She’d hit Kaylee across the face with the hilt of it. “This needs to be done right.”
Kaylee just stared at her. The head cold that had been her constant companion since she had left Last Chance crystalized, lighting pain all through her muscles. She took a step back. Trina stood between her and the door, which was locked anyway. She still wanted to shove her former friend back and try the handle anyway.
“What do you want?” Kaylee refused to cower. Never mind that she had no training and no clue, Kaylee wasn’t going to back down. Not when this woman, supposedly her friend, had so clearly betrayed her.
Trina wore workout clothes, her hair pulled back in a ponytail except for fly-aways around her face. A bruise darkened her cheekbone. “This doesn’t need to take long and probably shouldn’t.”
The room shuddered around them again and dust drifted down. Maybe this whole place would collapse and Kaylee wouldn’t have to deal with the overwhelming terror she didn’t even seem to be able to feel anymore.
“Come here. I’ll make it quick and painless…mostly. When they come for us, I’ll tell them you killed yourself.”
“Why?” They would probably die soon anyway. What was the purpose of Trina killing her before then? She shook her head, genuinely not understanding why Trina needed to do this. What was the point? Satisfaction, or something far more sinister? An agenda of some kind.
Seemed like everyone had one, and Kaylee floundered in the middle. Tossed around in a boat on the sea while others decided where she should go and what she should be doing.
Trina’s eyes narrowed. She held that knife out, steady like the entire place wasn’t coming down around them. “I’m going to kill you myself. Then the director will know I’m the clear choice for his wife. Not you.”
“Marry him. What do I care?”
“It’ll take more than your disapproval to get him to change his mind. You need to be dead.”
“So, stop talking about it, and kill me.” She shrugged. “What do I care?” She said it with more emphasis this time.
Kaylee just wanted all this to be over already. What was the point in dragging it out?
She rushed for the door. If Trina thought she was going to escape, maybe she would just stick that blade in her heart and get it done with.
Kaylee wanted to feel the betrayal. To feel the sting of the knife and know it was all done. She didn’t want to be here anymore.
She wanted… Don’t think about him. She had to pay attention to what was happening around her. Otherwise she would never get out of here alive.
Her fingertips touched the door. It wasn’t a handle, more like a lever, and it locked automatically when it closed.
Pain cut like a whip of fire across her stomach, a brand, of sorts, that ran from right beside her belly button to her ribs underneath her arm.
Kaylee hissed.
The door could only be unlocked from the other side. Unless the next explosion blew the door open, the only way they were getting out was if someone in the hall had a key. Trina had trapped herself in here with Kaylee.
Unless she had a way to get out.
The crazed look on her friend’s face—those wide, glassy eyes—and her quick, panting breaths led Kaylee to believe she wasn’t all that mentally stable.
As Kaylee clutched her side and tried not to think about the wet under her fingers or the cut in the material of her shirt, she backed up to the wall beside the metal toilet. She needed to get out of here but that was next to impossible since God had abandoned her so thoroughly. She’d tried to live a quiet, peaceful life, but that had imploded. People with their agendas, who thought they had power over everyone, decided differently.
Those men, especially that one suited, older man and his ideas about how her life should play out.
People like Trina.
Even her brother, who had sold her out for his own freedom. Or Stuart, dying before he could keep his word that he would take care of her.
A sob worked its way up her throat. Kaylee refused to embrace the emotion. It was better to hold onto this coldness she’d discovered. The pure ice of being all alone with no hope. No future. No way to be anything other than a helpless victim of other people’s ideas and plans.
“Nice try.” Trina launched at her with the bloody knife outstretched.
Kaylee screamed. A protest to getting cut again. Too late she realized Trina had only flinched at her.
Trina tipped her head back and laughed.
The door thumped. Probably debris from an explosion. “We’re going to die in here.”
“You will.” Trina grinned.
The latch clicked, and the door flung open. A man filled the doorway, but before she could see who it was, Trina grabbed Kaylee and spun her to the front as a shield. Trina’s arm banded around her waist and pressed deeply onto the cut she’d made on Kaylee’s waist.
She cried out.
The knife pressed against her neck, Trina spoke right beside her ear, “One step closer, and she bleeds out.”
This woman sounded nothing like the friend she’d known. A completely different person than the one Kaylee had spent time with. Felt for. Bought gifts for. Cried and laughed with.
“Let me go.”
Trina laughed again. “Now this is interesting.”
The man lifted a gun and crossed the threshold. Stuart. “Hi, Kaylee.”
Trina let out a cry of frustration. “You should worry a whole lot more about me right now. Otherwise she’s dead, and all the trouble you’ve caused is for nothing.”
“Let her go.” His voice washed over her like a cooling balm. Like her memory of her father’s voice, or the way it felt to be held by the man she was growing to love.
“Stuart.” She whispered his name. Everything in her tensed to move toward him, to rush over and fling herself into his arms. He was the safe place she wanted to be. But no, not a place—not even Last Chance—just Stuart, and what he had become to her.
She stared at him while a whimper worked its way to her throat. See me. I’m right here. Every fiber of her being yearned for him, called out to him, and ached to be by his side. In his embrace.
He didn’t look at her. All his attention was on Trina, the lines of his body giving away nothing. Not even tension. His face was blank. So emotionless. She wanted to weep. Father.
Stuart had come for her. He wasn’t dead. You never abandoned me, did You?
She didn’t want to correlate the two with one another, or maybe ‘shouldn’t’ was the better word. But in her mind, they were synonymous. Stuart was God’s blessing in her life. He was love, acceptance, and peace.
Trina gripped her tighter, causing another stab of stinging pain to catch her breath. Trina said, “You think I can’t slit her throat before you even get a shot off? If I don’t, she and I are both dead, so I have nothing to lose. The only one who loses is you.”
He didn’t back down or lower the gun. A muscle ticked in his jaw. That was the only indication of his stress level. Aside from that one thing, he looked like a tower. A pillar of strength, everything she wanted to be instead of this blank, frozen being who felt nothing and could do nothing.
All Kaylee had was cold and pain.
“The whole compound is coming down on top of us. Let her go, and we all get out of here.”
Trina’s body flinched.
Kaylee jumped on the reaction that suddenly flooded her heart; the desire to run. To flee death and escape. “We can go, Trina. Let’s just go.”
“I’m going to be his wife.” She sounded desperate now and not so sure of herself.
“Great. You go, and I’ll pretend to be dead.” For good measure, Kaylee added, “He’ll never know.”
The knife dug into her skin. Kaylee sniffed in a breath, her whole body tensing. She was so fatigued, it was like one full body cramp. She wanted to cry out, but there was no breath in her to do so. Her legs started to give out. Until Trina was the only thing holding her up.
“You die. It’s the only way.”
Kaylee fought the collapse. She started to slide, the knife cutting along the skin on the underside of her chin, and she gasped at the fresh wash of pain. And yet, wasn’t this far better than the alternative? If she was going to die, it would be on her terms.
Stuart looked at her then, and she saw an infinitesimally small nod of his chin. Kaylee knew what she had to do.
She looked up, stretching her chin up as far as she could and, in an instant, let her legs give out. It wasn’t hard. The gun exploded. In one move she was on the ground, clutching her chin in her hand. Stuart’s gun smoked.
Kaylee started to turn.
He reached for her. “Don’t look.” Stuart pulled her up to stand again, holding up her weight. “Come on. Let’s go. Don’t look at her, Kay. Just come with me.”
Kay. “My dad called me that.” She moved her hand away from her chin. It was covered in wet, slimy blood. Her head swam.
“Easy.”
The hallway shifted. An explosion tore through the hallway. Stuart half carried her to the stairs where he set her down. She landed on her hands and knees and scrambled up.
She sensed him right behind her and gasped out a sob, tears rolling down her face.
At the top of the stairs, he gathered her up again, and they ran down the hall. Kaylee grasped his arm around her and tried to burrow her face in his shoulder even as they ran. Her side stung. So did her chin. Along with everything else.
Her foot went out from under her, and she nearly dropped. He didn’t let her fall. “Come on. Quickly now.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re doing great, babe. The best.”
All Kaylee could do was whimper. She wanted to sleep for a month, but that would bring nightmares. She would wake up still in that room. Edmond would come in… Don’t think about that.
“Come on!” Zander stood at the end of the hall, holding the door open. “You need to run!”
Beyond him, a helicopter had its rotors already spinning so fast they blurred. Either that, or her eyes just couldn’t track the rotation.
“Come on.” Stuart’s grip on her was tight.
Another explosion threw everything into chaos. Her ears cut off, the boom so loud she could feel it reverberate in her chest. They cleared the door and were now running outside. Kaylee’s ears registered the helicopter, just as Zander climbed in. He reached a hand out, and she took it. Stuart got in right behind her just as she turned to see the building, the one they had been in only a moment ago, collapse into the ground.
An explosion swallowed the structure, tugging it down like a sinkhole. The concussive force rushed at them, swaying the helicopter as it lifted off.
Kaylee gasped. Stuart tugged her onto a seat and clipped a seatbelt around her waist. He pulled back the sliced edges of her shirt. She couldn’t help but pant for a stress-free, full breath of air.
“Sorry.” His face was close. His eyes soft, and kind.
Kaylee touched his cheeks with bloody fingers. “I guess I can forgive you.”
His lips twitched. Kaylee decided she didn’t care who was watching.
She smiled as much as she could and pressed her lips to his.