She felt an inexplicable surge of guilt as she reached down, slowly twisting the doorknob.
It turned.
More groaning, more desperate now.
Her heart skipped a beat, and she pushed the door, sharply, but instead of bursting in, she stepped back and dropped to a knee, allowing herself a good long look at the room before rushing into potential danger.
The door settled with a dull thump against the wall, spread over the white carpet.
In the room, in front of the neatly made bed, her father sat bound to a spindly wooden chair. His hands were tied behind his back; duct tape sealed his mouth. He was bleeding from cuts in his forehead and along his cheek.
Adele could just make out the edge of his fingers, from the way he was positioned facing the door, but turned slightly toward a window. Droplets of blood trickled from his fingertips and tumbled to the pristine carpet, staining the white beneath his chair and joining a larger stain caused by the blood seeping down his pant leg and soaking into the carpet beneath his foot.
“Dad!” Adele said, her hear in her throat.
She pushed off her knee and surged forward, rushing toward her father.
But he began shaking his head wildly, bucking and thrashing, a desperate look in his eyes she’d never seen before. He was staring at her, and kicking as wildly as he could, sending droplets off blood flying around the room, further staining his white carpet in complete disregard.
Adele hesitated for a moment in the doorway, entranced by her desperate desire to obey her father in all things, but also a sheer sense of duty to help those in danger.
Especially her parents. She only had one left.
Adele ignored his thrashing and bullishly entered the room, rushing to her dad’s side and ripping the duct tape from his mouth as quickly as she could, like pulling a Band-Aid.
Her father’s eyes narrowed as he winced, his cheeks bunched, but once the duct tape left his lips, his groaning and mumbling ceased and, in a loud voice, he shouted, “Sharp—no! Run!”
Adele heard the faintest of creaks behind her, from where the bookcase levied against the doorframe. She whirled around, gun raised. Something whistled as she ducked again, like she’d done before, and a heavy, metallic object swished over her head, rushing through her hair.
Her dad shouted incoherently.
There was a loud curse as a hooded shape swung a metal crowbar a second time, trying to crush Adele’s upraised arm. Her gun went off, but she knew she’d missed before she lurched back, avoiding the attack.
At the same time, her father kicked out, trying to trip the assailant, but the man—though not particularly large—was clearly strong.
Adele raised her gun again and squeezed off a shot, blind, still reeling. She finally managed to reset, bracing her back against the window to her father’s room, and she aimed now.
The hooded man cursed and kicked out, scoring a strike against Adele’s wrist. She grunted in pain and her gun went flying. She tried to track it, but lost it as the killer surged at her, trying to overwhelm her. Still, she might not have enjoyed firearms, but she was a trained investigator; she knew how to find things.
And while she hadn’t seen where the gun landed, she heard a quiet tick, suggesting the weapon had brushed the glass window, followed by a dull thunk, suggesting it had ricocheted off the jutting windowsill, followed by nothing further. Which meant, instead of landing on the carpet, it had likely landed on the soft pillow in the empty chair facing the window.
She didn’t have time to check this theory, though, as the killer came at her like a bat out of a flooded cave. His hood obscured most his features, but now he had a scalpel in one hand and a crowbar in the other. Adele lurched beneath the swiping blade, but this time couldn’t avoid the crowbar.
It struck her a glancing blow to the side of the head.
Immediately, she tasted iron in her mouth, and her head started spinning. Being struck in the side of the head was a lot harder to track than stories made out. It almost, inevitably, always came with a surge of shock and lost time.
Adele blinked and the killer seemed to have transported, the blow from the crowbar creating a gap in her memory. Still, she had the wherewithal to roll onto the bed as another swipe of the scalpel threatened to open her throat.
She couldn’t move too far, though; if he reached the gun, it was over.
Adele didn’t have time to look. She didn’t have time to shout out a warning. If the gun was on the floor instead of the cushion, she was dead.
But while she struggled with firearms, she could follow clues to their inevitable conclusion. The soft tick, the dull thunk, the lack of any further sound.
The gun was on the cushion. It had to be.
The killer swiped at her again, this time with the crowbar. But instead of surging back, as he’d anticipated, she shoved forward, slamming her head into the hooded man’s chest and sending him reeling into the window. Then, shooting up a desperate prayer to all listeners, she blindly groped toward the chair beneath the window, felt only cushion—horror flooded her—but then, at last, her fingers met metal.
She cried out in alarm and relief as her hand came back with her gun once more. She aimed it again, finger tightening on the trigger.
But the killer’s eyes widened in the moonlight streaming through the window. This time, he didn’t come for her again and instead, he flung himself backward, with impressive speed. Adele’s finger stiffened on the trigger.
“Shoot him!” her father kept screaming. “Do it, Sharp! Kill the bastard!”
But Adele couldn’t. The Sergeant was in the line of fire. She tried to shift, moving toward the door for a better angle, but the killer’s eyes flicked from her, to her father, and then teeth flashed in the shadow of his hood as he grinned.
The scalpel fell, descending toward her father’s neck.
The blade pressed against his throat and the Sergeant fell quiet, suddenly, swallowing.
“Hello, Agent Sharp,” said the killer in perfect German, smiling at her.
He reached up and lowered his hood, revealing his face.
Porter Schmidt had the reddest hair Adele had ever seen. Robert had been right. He also had a nearly perfect nose and sculpted cheeks. He would have been alarmingly handsome, except something about his appearance seemed a little too intentional. Though Adele couldn’t be certain, it seemed to her that Porter had booked appointments with the same sort of doctor who’d restored Robert’s once fading hair.
“Mr. Schmidt?” Adele replied, also in German, breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling in rapid motions. The man frowned briefly, and Adele noted the reaction. “We know everything about you. There are ten officers closing in as we speak. They’re downstairs. If you want to make it out alive at all—”
“Shh,” the man said, quietly, drawing the scalpel across her father’s neck and leaving a thin, red line.
The Sergeant winced and, for a brief five-second window, seemed to insert all the prohibited words he’d suppressed over the course of the year.
“Stop!” Adele said, desperate. “There are snipers just outside, and—”
“Shh,” Schmidt repeated, smiling again. Another tracing of the scalpel, and her father hissed in pain, kicking his feet.
“Stop!” she screamed.
“Lower your gun,” he said, quietly. “Please.”
Adele hesitated.
“Don’t, Sharp—shoot him. Do it now! Do it, or we’re both dead.” Her father’s voice cracked. “Don’t you—don’t you dare. Please. Honey, please. Don’t—I’ll be fine. Don’t—” This time he howled in pain as the scalpel bit deeper, dragging across his chin down to the collarbone, in the same position where John had his burn marks.