IMOGEN
A fist pounded on our door, the locked handle jangled, and Jack’s face popped into the small glass window.
My eyes widened, and I gave Finn a playful shove.
“See, chap! I told you they’d come for us.” I jumped up from my seat, ignoring the fact that Finn had actually been the one telling me.
“It’s locked!” I shouted at Jack when I reached the window.
“No duh, Einstein!” Jack shouted back at me, his voice sounded muffled through the weight of the door.
Despite his sarcasm, I’d never been so happy to see him.
“We can’t get out!” I cried.
Jack rolled his eyes. His head disappeared for a second, and then I heard him yell, “Stand back!”
I took a step back just as his fist, covered in a t-shirt, pounded on the tiny glass square. It took four punches for Jack to break through the glass. He brushed away the shards with the t-shirt and then peered in. “Everyone okay? How’s Finn?”
“Alive and well, but we can’t fit through the window, Sherlock.”
“I’m working on that, alright? Just stay back.”
“Sage?” Finn called out weakly from the bed. “Are you there?”
A gasp came from the hall, then Beckett’s hesitant voice.
“Hi … Finn,” Beckett replied. “Good to hear you talking, buddy. She’s here, just not up for saying hello at the moment.”
Then someone—or something—in the hall growled.
“Don’t come any closer,” Jack ordered someone behind him. “He shouldn’t see you right now, anyway.”
My chest flip-flopped.
“Who you got with you?” I said tentatively, already dreading the answer.
This wouldn’t be good for Finn’s psychological rehab, not at all.
“Tell you later.” Jack grunted as his body—and what sounded like another body—hit the door. “We’re on a time limit. Seven minutes until explosives.”
Time limit?
Explosives?
They were blowing this place up?
But what about …
“Bert!” I cried to Jack. “In the basement! They put him in the basement! Finn’s dad!”
Jack’s body stopped ramming the door.
Silence.
Then Beckett’s voice, “We’ll go. You get them out.”
I heard footsteps retreat down the hall.
“Imogen,” Jack said. “I’m on my own. I need something to bust the hinges. Anything inside that room?”
“My dad?” Finn said, his voice full of confusion and betrayal, and I wondered if I should have told the kid earlier about Bert.
But Jack’s voice interrupted that thought.
“Uh, Imogen? Little help?”
I glanced around the room. Unable to contain my smile at our luck. “Will a sledgehammer work?”