Boots. She was going to need boots—they were more critical than pants in the snow. Scrambling around, she picked up the first one she came to, only to have it slip right out of her hold.
Blood. There was blood all over her, her right hand especially.
Wiping her palms on her floppy parka, she went back to work. One boot. Then the other. Laces sloppy but double-knotted.
Back to her victim.
She paused for a beat to take in the mess.
Shit, she was going to be seeing this on the backs of her lids for a very, very long time.
Assuming she survived.
Making the sign of the cross over her chest, she got down next to the man and patted around. The gun she found was a godsend; so was the iPhone that was … shit, password protected. Plus it wasn’t getting a signal, although maybe that would change when she was aboveground.
All she needed was the emergency call feature and then she could toss the thing.
As she leaped out of the cell, she slid the bars shut behind her. She was pretty sure that the bastard was dead, but horror movies and the entire Batman franchise suggested that belt-and-suspenders were a good call when it came to bad guys.
Quick survey. Two more cells just like the one she’d been in. Both empty. That was it.
Outside of the open area, there was a short hall and then that set of stairs, and it took her forever to get over there. Goddamn leg of hers. Pausing before she went up, she listened. No sounds of anyone moving upstairs, but there was a distinct smell of cooked hamburger.
Guess it was her kidnapper’s last meal.
Sola stuck to the wall side of the steps, the gun out in front of her, the shuffling of her right boot kept to a minimum even though she had to stop and catch her breath twice.
The first floor had plenty of lights going on and not much else: There were a pair of cots in the corner, a galley kitchen with dirty dishes in its shallow sink—
There was somebody lying on a third cot by a bathroom.
Please let that be the other dead guy, she thought … and shit, what kind of night was this that that was even on her radar?
The rhetorical was answered as she went in for a closer look.
“Oh—” Clamping a hand over her mouth, she turned away.
Had she done that with the flare? Jesus … and that smell hadn’t been from somebody doing a DIY Big Mac. That was human flesh burned to a crisp.
Focus, she needed to focus.
The only windows in the place were the squat prop-open casement ones that you usually saw in basements and they were mounted high off the floor so there was no seeing out. And there were only three doors: the one she’d used to come up from the basement, the other that was open and flashing a toilet seat, and the last … which certainly looked reinforced.
It had a punch bar on the inside.
She didn’t bother to look for any more weapons. The forty she had in her hand was sufficient, but she did go across to snag an extra clip from the kitchen counter—
Hello, Powerball winning ticket.
Car keys had been thrown casually with the clip, and if she hadn’t been so afraid for her life, she would have taken a moment to cry like a little girl.
Yeah, sure, whatever car she’d been in probably had a GPS tracker like the phone.
But compared to the option of getting out of wherever she was on foot?
She’d take it in a heartbeat.
Limping to the door, with her vision going wonky on her, she hit the bar—
And smacked right into the steel panel.
Nothing budged.
Trying again and again, she found the door locked from the outside. Damn it! And as she checked out the car keys, there was nothing else on the ring. No—
Oh, right, she thought.
Mounted beside the door, there was a small square security sensor.
Of course you’d fingerprint it—on the outside and on the inside.
Glancing over her shoulder, she looked at the body across the way—specifically the hand that had flopped off the cot and was hanging halfway to the floor.
“Fuck me.”
Going back to the dead guy, she knew dragging him over was not going to be a party. Especially with her leg. But what other choice did she have?
Glancing around, she—
Over in the corner, at a makeshift desk, there was a rolling chair, like you’d find in a proper office. It even had padded arms.
Better than yanking him across the floor, right?
Wrong. Stuffing flare-in-the-face guy into the thing was harder than she’d thought—and not because rigor mortis was an issue, as he’d apparently died not long after she’d melted his puss off. The problem was the chair—it kept slipping out of reach every time she got the deadweight—ha, ha—anywhere near the padded seat.
Not going to work. And P.S., the stench of that flesh was like a football coach urging her stomach to punt.
Breaking off with the corpse, who was now half off the cot, she scrambled for that bathroom, and the dry heaves were soooo helpfuclass="underline" First of all, there was nothing in there to toss, and second, if she’d thought her concussion was bad before?
Back at the dead guy’s side, she went around to his shoulders, grabbed him at the armpits, and dug in with her good leg. His boots banged into the floor one by one as she got him completely off the makeshift bed, and those Timberland heels scraped their way over to the door. Fortunately, the guard had arms long enough to be a center for the Knicks, so she was able stop a good four feet away from her target.
His elbow even bent in the correct direction.
The thumb went right where she needed it, and the light at the base of the reader went from red to blinking orange.
The instant she got out of here, she was going to jump into that damn car and hit the gas—
Red.
The reader went back to red. So his print didn’t work.
Dropping his hand, she sagged in her skin and hung her head. As a wave of pass-out threatened, she took some deep breaths.
The other guard was now locked in the cell all the way in the basement—and she’d barely been able to get this one across the damn floor. How the hell was she going to hump the man she’d killed up here?
Other man she’d killed, that was.
And shit … she’d locked him in downstairs. If that cell was print-locked, too? She was liable to starve to death first.
Unless Benloise got here soon.
Leaning up against the wall, and bracing her hands on her good knee, she tried to think, think, think …
Looked like God had taken her prayers literally: She’d gotten out of the trunk after her first “Help me, Father.” The second “Dear Lord, please let me get free” had only sprung her from the jail, but not the house.
As she offered up a third prayer, she got real specific.
Oh, Lord, I promise to get out of the life if you let me see my grandmother’s face once again. Wait, wait, that could happen if she were on the verge of death and somehow vovó came here or to a hospital. Dear God, if I can just look into her eyes and know that I am home safe with her … I swear I will take her somewhere far away and never again put myself in harm’s way.
“Amen,” she said as she struggled to straighten.
Reaching deep, she found the strength to weave her way back to the stairwell and—
Sola stopped. Pivoted back to face the counter where she’d found the car keys and the clip. Locked eyes on a solution that was at once utterly repugnant, and evidence, arguably, that God was listening.
It appeared as if things were looking up.
In a sick way.
NINETEEN
“There it is,” Assail said, pointing through the windshield. “The turnoff.”