Page 17

Chapter

Seventeen

GRACE

T hree days after eating the fresh-baked cinnamon rolls in the kitchen with Lunchbox and drinking coffee, I jerked awake, heart pounding, and breath coming in short, desperate pants. They were coming.

The man with his big hands was dragging me down the hall to escape, but more hands tangled with my legs and I sank into the floor. I could barely move. It was worse than trying to wade through heavy mud. The sucking sensation threatened to pull me even deeper.

Trapped, I couldn’t turn around. But they were coming. The pound of their feet, the pop of the weapons, and the screams—it was all happening behind me and I couldn’t see. I couldn’t do anything.

Then…

I snapped awake and I couldn’t suck in enough air to keep from being dizzy. Sweat had my tank top clinging to me and feeling gross. Even worse, the air was almost too damn cold against my skin so I could add chills to the shivering going up and down my spine.

Voodoo wasn’t in here again. I hadn’t seen much of Bones or Alphabet at all the past few days, but Voodoo and Lunchbox had been there. Most of the time, Voodoo woke me up before the dreams got too bad or he’d be right here to talk to me if I snapped awake.

Tonight was the second or maybe third time he’d been absent. Maybe Lunchbox was right, maybe I needed to talk about this shit so the dreams would stop. But I didn’t want to talk about the dreams any more than I wanted to talk about the events populating them.

I was a big girl. I didn’t need someone holding my hand. But rather than go back to sleep and risking more shadows, pain, and fear, I headed for the bathroom and a shower. Showers couldn’t fix everything, but they could help you feel better.

Even a smidgeon better was better .

The bathroom was filled with steam by the time I finished. While I couldn’t wash away all the shadows, I could at least warm up from the chill they left behind. It also helped clear up the fog and left me far more awake than tired. I had no idea what time it was, but I didn’t want to stay up here by myself.

Maybe downstairs by myself wouldn’t be much better, but I needed to do something . Guilt raked against my belly cause in and around wishing that Voodoo was in here, I was also annoyed that he wasn’t. It made absolutely no sense to be alternately grateful and irritated.

It wasn’t his job to look after me. It wasn’t any of their jobs. Despite that, here we were. The conflicting reactions competed for dominance over my mood and left me even more restless than when I’d tumbled out of the nightmare.

Dressed in an oversized sweatshirt, again, and a clean set of sleep shorts, and thick socks, I finger combed my wet hair so I could go downstairs. One second before I reached for the door handle, I hesitated. Most nights when I woke up and Voodoo was in here, I didn’t leave the room.

What if they’d locked the door again?

Would they do that? They hadn’t since those first days, but would they when I was asleep and didn’t know? Wrestling with the what ifs was just giving me a headache. Now as annoyed with myself as I was with them, I turned the handle and the door opened.

See.

The mental castigation didn’t do me any good. The house was dark save for a couple of night lights that led to the landing the stairs. Dark and quiet. The other doors along the hall were quiet. Weirdly, I didn’t know where anyone else’s bedrooms were. I’d not bothered to look.

Note to self, time to stop soaking in my self-pity stew and figure that out. I was supposed to be convincing them to help, to keep looking, to do more, and was I doing any of those things?

Eleanor would slap me, if she could see me right now.

The thought stopped me dead at the top of the stairs and pain bloomed around my heart. Eleanor was dead. She wasn’t going to be doing anything anymore. She was dead and I had to ask myself if that was also my fault. Was it really an accident? Even when the guys described it, they didn’t make it sound like an accident.

Grief twisted up my insides. Tears clogged my throat, and I had to swallow hard to try and choke that emotion back down. I’d never see her again.

Never hear her salty tone when she wanted me to get my shit together. Never savor the laughter in her voice when she chortled over coming out on top with a competitive deal. Never share a toast when we cross another item off the bucket list of my career and hers.

Closing my eyes, I dipped my chin and fought the tsunami of emotion threatening to drown me. The silence closed in on all sides, leaving me alone with the painful thump of my wounded heart. Flexing my hand against the newel post, I wasn’t sure how to breathe anymore.

Then a masculine sound drifted upward, piercing the quiet. A hum of a voice. I could hear them speaking, but I couldn’t quite make out the words. Someone was awake. Blowing out a breath, I made myself head down. Once on the first floor, I recognized the voice

It was Alphabet.

Following the sound, I found the door to Alphabet’s office open. Light spilled out into the hallway, and his voice grew clearer and clearer with each step I took.

“Standby, I’ve got the codes. I want to be fully into their system before you make entry.” Music rolled out of the room, but it wasn’t cranked up.

It was also disco .

I blinked at the clear notes from Donna Summer singing about MacArthur Park . Cool song, but also… weird.

“Okay, I’m in,” Alphabet said and I moved closer to the doorway. Goblin sprawled on his bed, completely flipped onto his back and snoring. He shifted a little when I appeared and his eyes slitted open. He thumped his tail twice, but when I didn’t come any closer, he seemed to go back to sleep again.

“Keep your pants on, Bones. This isn’t just picking a lock. I am rewriting their logs to erase any trace of us being here.” Alphabet sat at his computer, his screens all lit up with a dozen different images including what looked like security camera footage.

Arms folded, I frowned. Bones was clearly off on some mission somewhere. If he was gone and Alphabet was here, I’d bet that Voodoo or Lunchbox or both were with Bones wherever there was.

“Cycling the power now. Fence is shutting down, you’re clear to go through it or over it. Dealer’s choice.” He rolled his fingers against a track pad and the camera angles changed.

There the guys were. All three were visible briefly. The images were kind of green and they were moving at speed. Something landed on the top of the fence. Then they were over it. One. Two. Three.

It was almost blink and you would miss it. They were off the cameras again.

“Hold, ten seconds,” Alphabet ordered and his fingers flew as he counted it down. When he got one, he merely said, “Go.” Then the screens rotated again. I couldn’t see where anyone was or even where they were. It was all dark, even with the green tint.

“You are clear in three, two… go.”

His fingers flew in a little symphony of their own over his keyboard.

“Doors open, boys. Come on in.” Then the screens changed to interior shots. The sudden brightness had me squinting even across the room from the monitors. Alphabet had a headset on, so he could hear the guys and I couldn’t…

Wait, there they were. They were dressed in dark clothes and masks or balaclavas or whatever those things were called. The guys were moving steadily through wherever the hell they were. I glanced over at Goblin again as his snores climbed in volume once more.

Whatever they were doing, it wasn’t upsetting. At least it wasn’t upsetting for Alphabet at the moment. I had a dozen questions, but I didn’t want to interrupt. An entirely different tension wound through me.

Hot cocoa.

I was going to get hot cocoa for me and for Alphabet. At least that was something useful I could do. I needed the damn cocoa if nothing else. I could make it on the stove, but we had an espresso machine so I could also steam the milk. I went through the cupboards first to check for chocolate.

It really depended on what kind of chocolate they had. Once I found that, I could decide how to make the cocoa. They had to have chocolate. My side ached and so did my gut. It rolled, cramping a little. Maybe I was hungry, but I didn’t want food.

The chocolate was in the pantry. There were containers of powder, also a couple of boxes of standard hot cocoa mix, there was also some Hershey’s chocolate syrup. Plenty of options. I grabbed the second and the third before retreating back into the kitchen proper.

Steaming the milk was the way to go. Yes, it was noisy, but I doubted that it would bother him if he even heard it through the headphones. It didn’t take me long at all to fix the two huge cups of hot chocolate. I sipped mine once it was ready.

It tasted a little like heaven. Chocolate might not fix problems, but it went a long way towards making them easier to deal with. Even better than a shower, really.

Fisting both mugs, I headed back to Alphabet’s office and made it just in time to hear him say, “Behind you…”

Flashes on the screen showed one of the guys with a gun raised as he fired it. There were bodies down. It was—surreal. Like a movie or something.

Only it definitely wasn’t a film.

It was real.

It was people I knew.

A cold band tightened around my core. I dragged my gaze off the screen and then glanced down at the hot cocoa in my hands. What was I doing?

The soft woof pulled my attention down to Goblin. He’d abandoned his dog bed and leaned against my leg. The soulful look in his eyes reminded me why I’d come in here. A glance at the screen showed the guys moving through some facility, but they weren’t shooting at anyone anymore.

Alphabet had also turned away from the screen and his deep blue eyes fixed on mine.

No backing out now. I was here and he knew it.

So I held up the hot cocoa mugs as an explanation.