Page 8

C HAPTER 8

W atching the tweed man struggle to position an unconscious Anthony in a chair beside me gave me an appreciation for the man’s size all over again. He grunted and cursed, and by the time he had outfitted Anthony with a set of zip ties to match mine, hands bound and feet shackled to his chair, he was wiping his brow and declaring the need for a drink.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said to me with a sick chuckle, obviously proud of his twisted joke.

He marched up the stairs and left us alone.

The space suddenly felt suffocatingly tiny. I was no longer by myself, but the fact Anthony sat beside me, equally as defenseless, was a source of terror more than comfort.

His shoulders drooped forward and his chin nearly rested on his chest. He was out cold, and I still had a gag in my mouth, so the best I could do was grunt at him and try not to cry.

He’d walked straight into the trap—the big, sexy, reckless oaf. It was like he’d seen me, and all sense of reason and precaution abandoned him—I didn’t really want to unpack what that meant, though the thoughts were dancing through my mind like a chorus line.

How had I become leverage over him ? We’d known each other for barely three days, and here we were tied up together like some bizarre couple’s retreat gone wrong.

From my position beside him, I studied the architecture of his body. Even drooped over and slack, he was all muscle. His hair fell forward, nearly covering his face, but I could still make out his long lashes and the way they fanned over his impossibly high cheekbones. His lips pursed out in a loose swell, slightly parted and relaxed like a pair of pillows. He was unfairly beautiful, and I hated how attractive I found his attempted rescue—how attractive I found him.

What a mess we were in, all because someone saw us arguing over a pair of candlesticks and got the wrong impression.

He suddenly stirred and inhaled a sharp breath.

I jumped at the sound and felt tears blur my eyes in relief.

A gravelly grumble escaped his mouth as he sat up and blinked a few times. It took him several seconds to gain his bearings. I watched as it happened, knowing the feeling for having gone through it myself not long before. He winced, the same as I had done, when the pain in the back of his head reminded him of what had happened.

I waited for him to turn and see me. When he did, his face lifted and then fell.

“Penny!” He leaned like he meant to reach out for me before the restraints held him back. He said my name in the same reverent tone he’d used when he came down the stairs. It stirred a confusing warmth in my chest.

My eyes welled up again. It was all too much. Being snatched and hit and tied up, all to end up with Anthony Pierce gazing at me like the missing piece that completed a puzzle.

“No! Please don’t cry,” he said with a shake of his head.

But I couldn’t help it. The tears were coming in a flood of relief and pain and anger at him for putting me in this situation.

He leaned in again, and I saw the muscles in his arms straining against the ties. He looked like he could Hulk out of them, but they wouldn’t give. “Penny, you can’t cry,” he said desperately. “Not with that thing in your mouth. You won’t be able to breathe if your nose gets stuffed up.”

As soon as he said it, I noticed the limited air flow battling the clog of tears, and it only made me cry harder, more desperately. Messy, wet, panicky tears.

“No, no, no!” he pled. He jerked his body so his chair moved an inch toward me. His knee and elbow pressed into mine. “You have to stop. Here, I’m going to help you.”

I flinched when he leaned in farther. A strangled yelp garbled from my mouth.

“I’m not going to hurt you! Relax. I’m going to take your gag out.”

I turned to look at him with a question on my face. How? Because the last I checked, his hands were bound behind his back too.

He understood my silent query and answered by way of snapping his teeth together.

His mouth?

I gaped at him in disbelief, but based on the determined yet soft look in his eyes, and the way he was leaning in as if to kiss me, he was serious.

His chest and arms strained against his bindings and his T-shirt. I leaned in, still crying, and let him come close. When he was an inch away, he looked me in the eye and nodded, silently asking for consent for his strange and wildly desperate plan. I nodded back, just as desperate, and felt my heart pound my ribs like a drum.

In a move that ended up being absurdly tender, he brought his face against mine and bit at the gag. His nose pressed into my cheek, and I felt his lips brushing my skin as he searched for purchase with his teeth. A tear rolled from my eye and followed the curve of his nose. It was all so obscenely intimate, I would have collapsed if I hadn’t already been sitting down and tied to a chair.

“Almost,” he said in a muffled burst of warm breath. The motion of the word pressed his tongue to my cheek for a split second, which made me gasp. I shut my eyes at the dizzy spell that came over me in a wave. His hair brushed my temple, and I reflexively leaned into him. There may have been a moment of involuntary nuzzling. “Turn your head,” he said softly.

I followed his command, under a spell, and felt his mouth move closer to mine until they overlapped at the corner. I’d never touched lips with someone I wasn’t kissing. What an odd situation to have one event occur without the other.

Anthony’s lips were soft, so incredibly soft, where they touched mine. I wanted to melt into them and stay there forever. I’d lost sense of what we were even doing, until I felt him bite down and tug. He grunted at me and tilted his chin up, indicating I should do the same. He had a solid grip on the gag; all I had to do was move my jaw back and tilt my head up. I did as much and felt it slide off over my chin.

I exhaled in relief. He lingered with his face in the crook between my chin and neck, buried in my hair, and deeply inhaled.

“Thank you,” I muttered. My mouth was already parched again. My voice still strangled with tears.

“No problem,” he said in a deep rasp, and sat back against his chair.

The longing I felt for him to return burned in my veins. Whether it was from fear, desperation, or pure desire, I couldn’t tell, but the confusion pushed a fresh set of tears up into my eyes. I sniffled.

“Hey,” he said. “No more crying. We’ll figure this out.”

“What are you even doing here?” I said, a blubbery mess.

“What?”

“I said, what are you even doing here? You’re one of the bad guys!”

He reeled back as far as he could go. “ Bad guys? Penny, have you been paying any attention?”

I swallowed a sob and nodded. “Yes! They murdered Portia, and you and your uncle covered it up for them.”

“What? Penny, that’s not true.”

My voice continued to get higher pitched and more waterlogged. “Yes, it is! I found her other shoe in your closet! I know she’s dead, and I know—”

“She’s not dead.”

“What?”

He turned to me with a serious yet guarded look in his eyes. “Portia is not dead.”

I blinked at him in confusion. He said it with such certainty, I could only assume he knew the rest of the story. “Then where is she?”

He clenched his jaw tight enough that I could see his muscle twitch. “Gone.”

The word didn’t ring with a finality to indicate he was using a euphemism, but I still didn’t understand.

“What does that mean?”

He glanced at the staircase and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “It means Portia wanted to disappear, so we made it happen. But things got . . . complicated.”

I gaped at him in shock. The pieces I’d been turning over and over for days suddenly fell into a new pattern that made a whole different kind of sense.

“Wait,” I said, still piecing it together. “Her husband didn’t kill her?”

He shot me a sideways glance. “No. He’s looking for her. Hence all this.” He gestured at the room with his chin. “He wants her back,” he said, sounding like he was spitting out a bitter seed.

“Oh, my God,” I muttered. My head was spinning fast enough to make me feel like I’d taken an ill-advised turn on a carnival ride. The cast of characters I’d had listed in my mind shuffled and reorganized into a whole new reality.

Portia was missing, but on purpose. And Anthony and Lou had set it up.

“So, then, where is she?” I repeated my question right as the door at the top of the stairs opened.

Anthony sucked in a sharp breath, and I flinched.

“Don’t say anything,” he whispered.

I nodded in agreement. My whole body vibrated with tension. I fought to steady my breath.

The tweed man appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a grin on his face. “Mr. Pierce, nice of you to finally join us. Dr. Collins and I have been anxiously awaiting your arrival.” He nodded his head at me and took note of the gag hanging around my neck, instead of firmly stuffed in my mouth. “What happened here?” He stepped toward me, and Anthony tensed.

“Leave her alone. She has nothing to do with this,” he growled. The sound of it sent a shiver through me.

The tweed man stopped his approach toward me midstep and pivoted to face him. He tilted his head with the grin I’d come to recognize as his signature look. “Oh, but she has everything to do with this, because without her, we never would have gotten your attention, Mr. Pierce.” Anthony shifted uncomfortably as he came closer and leaned in. The tweed man’s voice dropped to an icy hiss. They were nearly nose to nose. “We killed your uncle, and you didn’t get the message. We dumped that two-faced piece-of-shit bodyguard on your doorstep, and you didn’t get the message. We broke into your house, and you didn’t get the message. I was starting to wonder what it would take. And then, like a godsend, the girl next door shows up, and all we have to do is snatch her, and you come running. Makes my job a lot easier.”

The tweed man turned his head to wink at me and found a look of shocked horror on my face.

They killed his uncle? And the bodyguard?

I suddenly saw the past days’ events in a new light. The tweed man had been outside Libby’s house the day with the reporter to keep tabs on me. He had broken into Anthony’s house that night we hid in the closet. And, surely, Connor was at the funeral earlier to intimidate Anthony, or at least let him know he was watching. And the tweed man had come to the reception to snatch me, because none of the other things had had the intended effect.

The revelations crashed over me in pounding waves. I was drowning; I didn’t know which way was up. The sensation left me both spinning and aching with sorrow for Anthony’s loss. Not to mention, petrified I was wrapped up in something far more sinister than I’d realized.

“Now that we have your attention, Mr. Pierce, I have a simple question for you: Where is Portia?” the tweed man asked.

“Go fuck yourself,” Anthony spat out without a second’s hesitation.

A dark chuckle popped from the tweed man’s mouth as he stood up straight. “I figured you’d say as much.” With a windup quicker than a blink, he pulled his arm back and threw his fist at Anthony’s face.

I shrieked in fright and flinched. The sound of knuckles against cheekbone made a sick, hard crack, not the pumped-up sound effect of a movie. It made me realize I’d never witnessed someone get punched in the face in real life.

Anthony took the hit like he had, in fact, been previously punched in the face in real life. He shook his head with a rough breath and worked his jaw. Clearly, the hit had been intended to hurt him, not knock him out again. An angry red welt bloomed out over his cheek, like he’d stepped out into a cold morning, but he only looked a little fazed.

“Any idea where she is now?” the tweed man asked as he flexed his hand.

Anthony glared at him with a silent fury while I held my breath.

The tweed man released a frustrated sigh. His voice took on a cold, taunting edge. “You know, your uncle didn’t even beg. Most guys plead and cry; I’ve seen grown men piss themselves. But the only thing he said before I shot him was: ‘Anthony will take care of this.”’

A tear rolled down my cheek at the anguish on Anthony’s face. He tried to hide it, but I saw it in the corners of his mouth, the set of his jaw, the sheen that glossed his eyes.

The tweed man huffed a tiny, dark laugh. “At first, I thought he was simply being stubborn and putting on a show. A real tough guy. But then I realized he didn’t beg because he had nothing to beg for. No family—except you—no wife, no real friends. What was the man even living for in the end? It felt like a waste, actually. To take a life no one cared about.”

“Fuck you,” Anthony barked, and fought against his restraints again. Veins throbbed in the side of his neck. The muscles in his arms looked fit to burst through his shirt.

The tweed man laughed again. “So you do care. Then why wasn’t it enough? Why didn’t you give us what we wanted then? Because of you, we had to keep going, and now here we are.”

He stepped over in front of me and reached out to smooth my hair like I was a pet. I flinched and turned my head, but he kept his callused palm pressed against my cheek. Another tear spilled out from my eye. “What’s it going to take, Mr. Pierce? How many people have to die before you tell us what we want to know?”

“Leave her alone,” Anthony demanded.

The tweed man pivoted with a scrape of his shoes. “Gladly. Just tell me what I need to know.”

Anthony silently glared at him, as if he was trying to melt him with his eyes. The pause seemed to stretch forever.

My heart had lodged in my throat like it planned to never leave.

Eventually the tweed man got tired of waiting. He sighed. “Mr. Slate told me to handle you by whatever means necessary. If you’re not going to cooperate, then you leave me no choice.” He reached into his waistband and pulled out a gun. Whether it had been there all along, or was Anthony’s gun he nabbed after he knocked him out, I wasn’t sure, but he used it to smash into the side of Anthony’s face and then pummel him in the abdomen with two sharp blows. The series of hits left the room echoing with cracked bones and scented with blood. The tangy bite almost made me gag. A large gash had split open over Anthony’s left eye and began streaking his face red. He sat hunched over as far as he could bend, struggling for breath and wheezing.

“Stop!” I wailed. “Please!” Tears strangled my voice. I felt them streaming down my face in hot rivers.

The tweed man grabbed Anthony’s hair and tilted his head up. I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he struggled to swallow. Blood colored his cheek red, from his temple to his chin. His brow had begun to swell. The gun was inches from his face. “I’ll ask again: Where is Portia?”

“Anthony, tell him!” I begged. I fought against my own restraints, as if I stood a chance of intervening. The ties bit into my skin in reminder that I didn’t.

Anthony licked a trickle of blood, which had found its way to his mouth, and exhaled a tight breath out of his nose. His lips parted to speak, and my pounding heart surged in the hope he would put an end to this before he got himself killed.

“She’s nowhere,” he said.

The tweed man snarled and released his hair with a sharp shove. “Fine. You want to do this the hard way? We will.” He stepped back and cocked the gun, loading a bullet into the chamber with a sharp click, and then pointed it at me.

I flinched with a frantic yelp.

“Where is Portia?” he asked again, directing the question at Anthony.

My vision swam with tears. The whole room narrowed to that beady little black eye. I couldn’t form words to beg, to plead, to try and talk my way out of an impossible situation.

He moved his finger to the trigger, and I winced—as if it was enough to prepare me to die.

“Stop!” Anthony shouted. His breathing was labored. His voice cracked and broke. “Stop. I’ll tell you.”

The tweed man relaxed his elbow, but didn’t lower the gun all the way. He turned to look at Anthony. “Go on, then. Tell me.”

Anthony heaved a painful-sounding breath. It looked like it took all his strength to lift his head to speak. “She’s in Iceland. There’s an isolated fishing village on the east coast. You’ll find her at the Glacier Point Bed and Breakfast.”

A small smile broke out over the tweed man’s face. He moved to stand in front of Anthony and bent over so they were face-to-face. He pressed the gun barrel into Anthony’s knee. “You better be telling me the truth. I’m going to go confirm. If I find out you’re lying, I will come back, and I will hurt her.” He nodded toward me.

I shriveled at the sincerity in his voice.

He headed for the stairs and left us alone again.

Anthony immediately sagged forward and closed his eyes. Blood continued to drip from his temple, now landing on his pants.

I knew he’d bought us time and I hoped it would be enough to come up with a plan.

It’s just a puzzle, Penny.

I forced a deep breath to fill my lungs. Think. We were both tied up; he was seriously injured, perhaps on the verge of losing consciousness again; and I had nothing more to work with than I had before he’d arrived, other than the knowledge he’d go to desperate measures to save me.

Except for one thing. One thing that the tweed man didn’t account for. I’d willed him not to notice the whole time he was tying Anthony up. I found it a small miracle he overlooked it again when he came back to question him. It might have been our only shot. But getting to it would be risky. And painful.

I weighed the risk and decided it was worth not dying in this basement.

“Anthony!” I whispered.

He grunted in acknowledgment, but didn’t lift his head. His chin pointed at his chest. A stream of blood still trickled down his temple. I ached at the sight. It made me all the more determined to get us out of here.

“Psst! Anthony!” I hissed again, this time rocking sideways to bump him with my elbow as much as I could.

His head bobbed. He angled his face at me a half turn. Blood dripped into his eye and caught on his lashes like red dewdrops. “Hmm?”

“How much time do we have?”

“What?”

“I know you lied to him about where Portia is, so how much time until he figures it out and comes back for another round?”

He blinked away more blood as a small smile twitched his lips. “How do you know I lied?”

“Because Portia hates the cold. She would never go to Iceland.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve read her entire life’s history on the internet. Now, I have a plan. How long until he comes back?”

He cast an appreciative glance at me before he tried for a deep breath. He didn’t get far and winced. “Hopefully, long enough for my ribs to heal. I think he broke them. What are you doing?”

As he spoke, I did my best to hop over closer to him. With a good upward bounce—never mind the zip ties slicing into my skin each time—I could move a few centimeters. I stopped, once my shoulder was flush against his.

“My plan. I want you to bump me.”

“What?”

“Knock me over.”

“What?”

“Look, I know you’ve taken a few hits to the head, but this really isn’t that complicated. If we get enough momentum going, you can tip me sideways and my chair will fall over.”

“Are you nuts? That’ll break your arm when you hit the floor.”

“Perhaps, but your knife is behind me, and I think I can reach it.”

“I—” A breath caught in his throat, and he paused the next argument on his tongue. He shifted his head to glance behind me. “My knife?”

“Yes. It went flying when the tweed man attacked you. He didn’t notice. It’s been there the whole time.”

“The tweed man?” he asked with a curious tilt of his head.

“Yes. I don’t know his name, and he’s always wearing tweed. Do you see the knife? If I land right, I think I can grab it.”

I could feel him calculating: He was weighing the risk of my injury to set us free, potentially versus the beating we both might take when the tweed man discovered his lie and came back downstairs to express his discontent.

“Penny, that’s really going to hurt. How about you knock me over?”

I scooted a centimeter closer again, ready to get to work. “That’s very noble of you, but you’re already injured—”

“Exactly. What’s one more hit?”

“—and you’re twice my size. There’s no way I can knock you over. It’s simple physics: I’m smaller. Now hit me!”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“Not like that. You know what I mean. Come on. Bump me. Scoot me. Nudge me—Ah!” I yelped when he rocked to his right and then slammed into me from his left. My chair rose up on two legs, but not quite far enough. I landed with a soft thud.

“Good! Do that again, but let me get ready this time.” I braced for impact as he winced. A fleck of blood had escaped from his brow and landed on my thigh in a little crimson dot. The visceral reality of our situation hit me like a gut punch. I took a deep breath. “Okay, ready,” I said.

This time, when he rocked over and slammed into me, I threw all my momentum with it. My chair lifted again, teetering on two legs, and teasing us with a promise.

“Come on, come on, come on!” I begged. I was a domino about to crash. All I needed was a breath of air, a hair to fall into place, a dust mote to land. But the chair wouldn’t cooperate.

“Shit,” I spat when I landed on all four feet again.

Anthony groaned, clearly in pain and now frustrated too.

My skin was raw beneath my zip ties. I’d nearly lost sensation in my hands and feet. But a determined fury burned in my belly.

“Okay, one more time. Give me all you’ve got.”

“Penny, I—”

“Just do it!” My voice cracked in a desperate wail. I felt tears prick my eyes, but I would not let them fall again. Hope wasn’t lost yet.

Anthony glanced over at the fraught sound I made.

“Please,” I begged.

The same last-ditch desperation burned in his eyes. He nodded. And then he came in like a wrecking ball.

I gasped when he slammed into me and I threw everything I had into leaning sideways. The chair went up, up, up, on two legs, and I held my breath.

“Yes, yes, yes! Go, go, keep going!” Anthony pled.

“I’m going! I’m going!” I squeaked. My whole body tensed. I tottered on the precipice, hoping to fall and fearing it at the same time. With one final inch, I passed the point of no return, and the cold, hard floor was all too eager to greet me.

I slammed into it with ten times the force I’d expected. My teeth rattled in my jaw. The chair smashed into my arm like a club. No bones snapped, but surely my arm would be ten shades of purple. My body sagged against the bindings, tearing my skin in at least three places, but we’d done it. I was on the floor.

“Penny?” Anthony asked. His voice hovered above me, cautious and full of desperate concern. “Are you all right?”

The wind had left my lungs and taken my voice with it. “Yeah,” I croaked. “You were right: That hurt like hell. Don’t look up my skirt.” I could feel my dress flipped up around my thighs and exposing my crotch, a consequence I’d overlooked in my plan. At least I had put on nice underwear this morning.

“It’s kind of impossible, given your position, but I promise I’m not looking on purpose,” Anthony said. I detected a hint of a smile in his voice.

I’d worry about my dignity later; there were more important matters to tend to. I moved my hands as much as I could, feeling around for the knife behind me. “Am I close? Where is it?” I’d lost sight of him completely, but the sound of his voice fell over me like a raspy, warm blanket.

“To the left and about six inches back.”

“ Inches? I hoped you pushed me right on top of it.”

“Sorry. Next time we’re kidnapped and tied up, I’ll be sure to have better aim.”

I thrust my hips back into the chair as hard as I could, ignoring the pain shooting through my left arm pinned beneath me, and managed to move back an inch. “I mean, it’s really not too much to ask when you think about it. I’m trying to come to your rescue. The least you could do is shoot for accuracy.” I thrust again and moved another inch.

“There you go. Do that again,” he encouraged.

I did it again, sure my left arm was losing a layer of skin against the cold floor. I felt the chair grinding against my bruised bone. “You never answered my question,” I said for distraction.

“Which one?”

Once more, I scooted. “The one about how much time we have.”

He paused as I scooted a final time and felt the icy edge of the blade kiss my fingertips. “Hopefully, enough. There! You’ve got it.”

My hands were half numb and I felt something warm and wet when I gripped the knife’s handle. The zip tie had cut into my skin; I was bleeding. “How sharp is this thing?” I asked as I maneuvered the handle into my palm and the blade beneath the plastic band holding my hands in place.

“Sharp enough,” Anthony said. “Flip it around; the blade is the wrong way. You’re going to cut yourself.”

“Judging by the blood I can feel, I think that ship has sailed.”

“Well, yes. But there’s a difference between a ligature laceration and a blade.”

“Spoken like someone with experience. I thought you weren’t one of the bad guys.” I grunted as I locked the knife into position and began to saw. In that moment, I didn’t know if accidentally sinking the blade into my skin would have been worse than the pain I was already in from the zip ties. It was a true toss-up.

He ignored my sarcastic comments. “You’ve almost got it. Just push down and pull up.”

“Push down and pull up?”

“Push down with the knife and pull up with your arms at the same time.”

“What’s that going to do?” I asked as I did it, somewhat annoyed he was micromanaging my escape attempt.

“It will create leverage. There! Like that. Keep going!”

A high-pitched whine spilled from my lips as I pressed the knife down and lifted my elbows as much as they could go. My hands were either going to fall off, or I was going to pass out from the pain.

“Almost! Almost, ” Anthony cheered me on.

Sweat broke out on my brow. I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut. I was seconds from giving up, from surrendering and dissolving into a puddle of defeated, bloody tears, when three things happened at the same instant.

The pressure around my wrists released with a snap, Anthony desperately whispered, “Yes!” on a broken breath, and the door at the top of the stairs opened.

I didn’t have time to cut my feet free before the tweed man came stomping down the stairs.

“I told you that you’d regret lying to me,” he boomed in an angry voice while we could still only see his feet. “And now—” He stopped at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the rail, and surveyed the scene.

I was still on the floor, hands behind my back, but head angled enough to see him, and Anthony was still bound to his chair, bloodied and bruised.

“What happened here?” the man asked.

Anthony didn’t speak, but I could feel him silently willing me to do something. What, I wasn’t sure.

I thought as quickly as I could. Flailing my arms at the man would only prompt him to tie me up again, so I played the part of still-helpless victim.

“I had an accident,” I said.

The sound of his shoes scraping the concrete floor came closer. “An accident?” he purred. His voice took on a completely different tone when he spoke to me. Something dark and indulgent, like a big cat playing with its food before he ate it.

My hands twitched with urge to pull my skirt down, but I kept them behind my back. “Yes. I tipped over,” I said.

He leaned down to meet my eyes, and I felt his gaze slowly travel over my bare thighs and upturned skirt. The smell of cigarettes wafted off him in noxious clouds. Checking Anthony’s information on Portia wasn’t the only thing he’d done while he was gone. “Well, I bet that didn’t feel very good, did it,” he said in a low hum. He placed his palm on my thigh and slid it upward. I tensed at the contact, my stomach turning over, and fought to hold still. He grinned and kept sliding his hand higher toward the exposed lace of my underwear as Anthony made sounds of protest I couldn’t make out. My hearing had gone offline. I seethed in rage and fear while a primal instinct buried in the most basal part of my brain took over.

I quietly mumbled.

“What was that?” he asked, and leaned in closer, leering and choking me with the scent of stale smoke.

I lifted my head to meet his eyes and made sure he heard me the second time. “I said, Don’t touch me. ” While he was still bent over with his hand on my thigh, I swung my right arm around and drove the knife into his torso. It sank between his ribs with a sensation I couldn’t describe, and never wanted to feel again. Anthony was right about his knife: It was certainly sharp enough.

The man gasped. His eyes went wide in shock before he stood and stumbled back. The knife slipped out, but stayed in my hand and was now dripping blood. I blinked at it in horror, stunned at what I had done. The white noise of shock filled my mind with a buzzing that drowned out everything. I couldn’t be sure how long he’d been calling me, but Anthony’s voice eventually penetrated the haze and broke through.

“Penny! Penny, cut me loose!” he demanded.

I was still staring at the knife in my hand, which had begun to tremble. The man lay on the floor in a heap, moaning and swearing. “Holy shit,” I muttered. “I stabbed him.”

“Yes. Yes, you did,” Anthony said. “Now cut yourself loose so you can cut me loose before he gets back up.”

He’s not dead, I convinced myself based on what Anthony said. He wasn’t going to get back up if he was dead.

“Penny! We’re on borrowed time here!”

The urgency in his voice snapped me back to reality. I twisted to push myself up with my right hand and free my left arm. I yelped in pain, once the pressure of the chair was released from on top of it. The bruise inside my elbow already bloomed like a small flower bed beneath my skin. The limb dangled like a useless noodle. My wrists were bloodied, as were my ankles. I finally took a moment to smooth my skirt as I sat up to free my feet.

“I didn’t mean to stab him,” I muttered, mostly to myself. “I didn’t plan on that.”

“That’s okay,” Anthony said. “You did what you had to do to save us.”

“To save us,” I parroted as I sliced my right foot free.

The man continued groaning. I averted my eyes from the pool of blood leaking onto the floor. The tablet sat on the concrete beside him, where he’d dropped it.

I got my left foot free and struggled to stand on wobbly legs. Vertigo hit me as I stumbled a few steps. How long had I been tied up? I had no idea, but the blood in my body looped around in disorienting ways. I yanked the gag off and threw it on the ground.

The man muttered something that sounded like you bitch as he tried to sit up. I took a step toward the sound as Anthony called again.

“Penny! My hands! Cut my hands free!”

“Yes! I’m coming,” I said as I fled the man rising from a pool of his own blood like a scene from a nightmare. I ran around behind Anthony and sliced through his plastic handcuffs. He immediately grabbed the knife from me and cut his feet free. When he stood, he instantly doubled over in pain, wincing and cursing.

“Yeah, ribs are definitely broken,” he muttered at the floor.

Any hope of him carrying my bruised body to safety was out of the question. He could hardly stand up.

I slithered under his dangling arm and threw my arm around his back. “Come on, big guy. Let’s go.”

We stood, both of us wincing, right as the man on the floor sputtered at us, “Y-you’re not g-going . . . anywhere.” Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth in a syrupy line, and I wondered for a stomach-churning second what I’d hit with the knife. I expected to see him reaching for a gun, but instead he was reaching for the tablet.

“No!” I said, and lunged for it, shrugging off Anthony in the process.

“What are you doing?” Anthony said, and clutched his injured side.

I kicked the tablet out of the tweed man’s reach and then grabbed it. “He was using this to monitor you finding me; we were watching security feed. He said this place is surrounded and everyone had been instructed not to interfere until you got to me. He’s going to tell them we escaped!”

“Give me that!” the tweed man groaned, and then coughed up blood.

“Oh, God,” I said, realizing I was right, and horrified for multiple reasons.

Anthony took the cue and marched over to him with newfound strength. He stepped on his hand that had been reaching for the tablet, and then reached around his back to free the gun he somehow knew was stashed there. Then he took the gun and used it to strike him in the temple.

“ You’re not going anywhere,” he said, and shoved the gun into his waistband. He stood for several seconds over the man, knocked out cold in a pool of his own blood, as if contemplating what to do with him. Then he turned to me. “Come on.”

I poked at the tablet, deciding it might offer a handy escape map. I still didn’t even know where we were. “I assume we’ll need this to help us get out of here.”

“Good idea,” Anthony said with a nod. “Let’s go.”

We hobbled toward the stairs, and after he winced on the first few steps, I shoved myself under his arm as a crutch again, for fear that otherwise we weren’t going to make it.

“Thank you,” he muttered, and sounded only a little embarrassed.

“Mmm-hmm. Think of me as a flotation device. A water wing, if you will.”

He huffed a tiny, painful sound. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“Sorry. But can I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you shoot him?”

We were halfway up the stairs now. The flight seemed endless—with my battered body and a two-hundred-pound man draped over me like a shawl. Sisyphus had nothing on this.

“Because someone would have heard it,” he said.

My heart sank at the realization of what he meant. “So, this place really is surrounded? Where are we?”

“The Slates’ estate.”

“What?!”

“Shhh!”

“Sorry.” I lowered my voice. “But what ? We’ve been at Connor Slate’s house this whole time?”

“Not exactly the vision you had in mind?”

We were so close to the top now. The door stood three steps away. I was sweating and shaking under his weight, but determined to make it, though I feared what was on the other side. “I mean, I can’t say I’m shocked a billionaire genius has a secret torture basement, but I thought it would be a little more posh.”

“That’s the rest of the house, don’t worry.”

“You’ve been here before?”

We reached the landing. He delicately lifted his arm from my shoulders with a wince. “Yes. Now stay close and keep quiet.”

I opted to follow directions when he reached for the gun and checked it was loaded.

He opened the door very slowly and peeked into the hall before motioning for me to follow him.

“Anthony, wait,” I whispered after a few steps. I paused to look at the tablet. The screen had lit up, and on it, I saw video of us. From the angle, I knew the camera was in the ceiling behind us. I grabbed his arm and pulled him around a corner, hoping there wasn’t another camera there waiting for us.

“What is it?” he whispered.

I tapped the tablet screen in an effort to figure out what program was running. It was not an app I recognized. Given our location, I surmised it was probably a bespoke smart system designed by Connor Slate. “We’re on camera right now,” I muttered, and tapped through a few screens. Black-and-white images flashed by: exterior shots, a kitchen, an office, a bedroom. “This thing pinged earlier, and the tweed man showed me a video of you climbing a wall. It’s a motion-activated security system. It looks like it covers the whole—” I cut off with a gasp when I saw a figure move through one of the images.

“Shit,” Anthony hissed, looking over my shoulder. The person in the video, another burly-henchman type, was watching his own tablet. “We’ve got a long way to go to get out of here without getting caught. Can you turn it off?”

I glanced up at the hopeful look on his bloody face. “The security system?”

He nodded like it was a simple request.

“Um . . . maybe,” I said, and went back to tapping the screen. I spent most of my time teaching JavaScript, Web building, and database management to undergrads. Sure, I might have known my way around the Dark Web or how to bypass a firewall in a pinch, but I’d never tried to override the security system in a billionaire’s mansion before. I chewed my lip and followed a few screens into the settings menu.

“Well?” Anthony said impatiently. “Can you?”

“I’m a professor, not a hacker,” I said, and shot him a glare before I went back to tapping the tablet. When I got to the screen I wanted, my heart sank at the confirmation of what I feared. “No, I can’t. It’s biosecurity protected.”

“What does that mean?”

I flipped the screen around to show him the prompt. “It means we need Connor Slate’s retina scan to turn it off. Does he happen to be home at the moment?” I was joking, but he answered me seriously.

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he would have killed us by now.”

I seized in fear and felt as if I’d walked through a sheet of ice. “I get the sense he is one of the bad guys?”

“The baddest.”

I swallowed and flipped the screen around to navigate back to the security footage. A second person had come into view somewhere in the house. The grid of images with thugs moving in and out of view made me feel like we were Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man trying to evade ghosts.

I suddenly had an idea.

“Maybe we don’t need to turn it off. Maybe we need to use it to navigate our way out. As far as these other guys know, we’re still tied up in that basement.” I pointed at the second person who’d sat in front of a TV. “Where is this room?”

Anthony squinted at the screen. “Not on the way out.”

“Great. One down then. Where’s this guy?” I pointed to the roving henchman. He paced a hallway full of windows.

“Looks like the east wing,” Anthony said with a tiny upward lift of his lips. “Also not on the way out.”

“Perfect.”

“Let’s go,” he said. “If you see anyone start to move fast, let me know.”

I nodded and followed like a shadow as he led us down a concrete hall underlit with little spotlights, like it was an artsy gallery rather than a creepy basement. Only the sound of our footsteps, his labored breathing, and my pounding heart filled the long corridor. I kept one eye on the tablet at all times. Our friend in the TV room remained committed to the screen. The one patrolling the east wing had paused to gaze out at the yard.

When we reached the end of the hall, we turned up another staircase, shorter this time, which led to a wide landing with an overstuffed couch and a pool table. A full bar nestled in the corner, complete with taps and a mirrored wall of bottled booze. A TV the size of a small theater screen filled the opposite wall.

“Nice home theater,” I bitterly muttered.

“This isn’t the theater,” Anthony muttered back, and led me away from the man cave.

We turned up another short staircase, and I wondered how many levels subterranean we’d been. We entered another hallway, this one gleaming white with vibrant art splashed on the walls like graffiti. Anthony turned to me and pressed his finger to his lips in another reminder, perhaps because we were getting closer to the inhabited parts of the house.

I kept quiet for half the hall, until we passed an open archway, and it gave way to lanes of glossy wood and a telltale smell.

“Is that a bowling alley ?” I said, still whispering, but unable to stop myself.

Anthony took my elbow and pulled me along from where I’d stopped to gaze in wonder. His grip was looser than I’d ever felt it, perhaps because he was holding the gun in his right hand and had to grab me with his left, and that was the side where his ribs were broken.

I silently vowed to behave so I wouldn’t cause him any more injury.

We emerged from the hall into a soaring room—the likes of an Architectural Digest feature, and much more in line with what I expected for a billionaire’s home, though the secret basement, man cave, supermax prison security system, and bowling alley were on par as well.

A literal tree stood in one corner, potted in a small vat. Sectional sofas surrounded an island-sized coffee table. Large, original, and imposing art filled the walls. The entire back wall of floor-to-ceiling glass shimmered from the swimming pool’s reflection on the other side of it. The single room put Libby’s entire house to shame—it made Lou Griotti’s Victorian look pitiful.

“Wow!” I said in awe.

Anthony turned us toward another hall, and I wondered how many times he’d been inside the Slates’ compound to be able to navigate what seemed like an endless maze. We passed doors to an office, a guest room, a bathroom, a full-on gym. When we got to the end of the hall, he held up his hand, and I came to a stop behind him. He peered side to side around the corner and then turned to me. He used his T-shirt to swipe at the blood on his face, which really only succeeded in smearing it around. The wound still glistened, fresh and open above his eye. He would need stitches.

His voice came out so softly, I leaned in to hear him. “There are doors into the backyard at the end of this hall. We just need to make it there, and we can get outside.” He glanced down at my feet. “Can you run?”

I still wore the heels from the funeral. I’d been walking on my toes to keep them from clicking during our escape. But footwear was the least of our worries at this point.

“Can you run? You’re the one with the busted ribs.”

He pressed his palm to his left side, as if trying to stop his bones from poking out. “It’ll be rough, but yes.”

I’d expected him to say no and was now second-guessing my footwear. Running in heels was a surefire way to snap an ankle. “Wait!” A thought struck me as I backtracked into the hall.

“Penny, where are you going?” he whispered.

I held up a finger and slipped into the doorway leading to the gym. I knew from the shoe I’d found in the closet that Portia and I wore the same size. I could only hope she kept her workout shoes in her home gym.

Like in the rest of the house, expensive things filled the glossy space. In this case, exercise equipment. I didn’t waste any time appreciating the collection of cardio and weight machines. I beelined for the small rack on the floor that held neatly stored pairs of athletic shoes.

“Thank you,” I breathed in relief for the first break in what felt like ages. I kicked off my sister’s heels and stepped into a pair of squishy pink sneakers that felt like little clouds in comparison.

“What are you doing?” Anthony said from the doorway when he caught me lacing them up.

“Getting ready to run.” I stood and smoothed my skirt, debating if I had time to find Portia’s closet and borrow a change of clothes as well. Judging by the look on Anthony’s face, I suspected the answer was no.

“Come on,” he said, and tilted his head.

I abandoned the tablet, seeing that we were a few feet from freedom. We reentered the hallway, him with gun in hand, and me with Libby’s shoes in hand—which could have served as a close-contact weapon if needed, given the spiked heels. Thankfully, we made it to the end of the second hall without needing either. We stopped in front of a set of French doors, which led onto the pool deck. The Slates’ swimming pool glowed a deep emerald and turned the light wobbling through the glass an otherworldly green.

Anthony paused again and gave me another serious look. “Opening this door is probably going to trip an alarm. If they’ve got the inside of the house rigged, we can only assume the exits are monitored too. So, when I say go, you run, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”

I nodded as nerves gripped my body like fists. “Where am I running?”

“Across the yard. Cross the pool deck and head for the lawn. Then go straight.”

It sounded simple enough. “Okay.”

“Ready?”

“Yes.” It was a flat lie. I was trembling.

He nodded once and turned the door handle. Where I expected a blaring bullhorn, the alarm was merely a soft beeping. A set of staccato bursts, like a repetitive, robotic songbird. I imagined all the tablets lighting up in a much more aggressive warning. The urgency of Anthony’s hand in my back and the sound of his voice told me the threat was indeed real.

“Go!”

I threw myself through the door and into the warm night. My skin tingled at fresh air after so many hours underground. I inhaled deeply, drinking it in and replenishing my lungs. My ankles throbbed with each step. I felt the cuts from the zip ties on my legs and wrists stinging. But I ran. I ran as fast as I could across the pool deck, around the glistening green puddle sunken into the center of it, and onto the lawn.

It stretched for what seemed like miles, but was probably a good fifty yards. Still, who needed a yard this big? What were the Slates doing in their backyard, playing polo? Halfway across the lush stretch, floodlights flashed on behind us. I knew Anthony was a few paces behind, both by the sound of his strenuous breathing and the long shadow suddenly thrown out like a black ribbon beside me.

Clearly, he’d been right. We’d set off an alert.

I turned to look over my shoulder and nearly tripped at the sight of the estate lit up in all its glory. Massive was an understatement. It was a hotel. A cruise ship. A compound with more space than any two people could ever possibly need. In the second before I turned back, I swore I saw the outline of a helicopter perched like a bird of prey atop the east wing.

“Keep going!” Anthony shouted behind me. There was no longer a point in keeping quiet.

I kept running as we quickly closed in on a stone wall. The smooth expanse that stood at least eight feet tall unfurled in each direction, with no gaps or gates I could see.

“Anthony!” I screamed, and pointed at it as if we were about to drive off a cliff.

“I know! Keep going!”

“Going where?!”

“Over that wall! My car is on the other side!”

I slowed to a stop with my arms in front of me so I didn’t crash into it and dropped Libby’s shoes, which I was still holding. My momentum pushed me up against the cool, smooth stone anyway. Its earthy scent pressed into my nose as I felt its grittiness beneath my fingertips. I could sense Anthony rushing up behind me. The heavy thuds of his steps closed in fast, and I had a vision of him scaling the wall like a cat on the way in.

“Okay, but you have to understand when you say over that wall, that doesn’t just happen for me, like it does for you. I’m not—” I cut off with a squeal as I felt his hands grip my rib cage on either side.

“Jump!”

I jumped and flailed my arms above me, desperately reaching into the night sky like I might grab onto a star. He’d thrown me a solid foot into the air, but it wasn’t high enough. My palms slapped at the wall, my left arm screaming in protest from the chair injury. Gravity eagerly pulled me back down, until I felt a second thrust. This time, his hands were beneath my feet, like he was the base in a cheerleading squad, and I was the flyer ready to touch my toes midair.

He let out a groan of pure agony, like his body was splitting in two—which it may have been, given the broken ribs—as he used all his strength to hoist me up on top of the wall.

I flung myself at it, ass in the air, throwing my arms over it like a barrel, and landing on my belly. It was thick and at least a foot wide.

“Don’t look up my skirt!” I wailed.

“Penny, just go!” he commanded. His voice shrank away as I realized he was backing up for a running start to launch himself over the wall as well.

In the time it took him to run three steps, plant a foot, and pull himself up like a cat, with maybe eight lives now, but still a cat, I’d managed to fling one leg over the wall. I lay parallel atop it, holding on for dear life. Anthony pulled himself to sit, then agilely spun around to face the other way.

I simply gaped at him. “Didn’t that hurt?”

“Very much,” he said on a tight breath. He clutched his ribs and pushed off the wall to fall eight feet and land like a cat, with seven lives, on the other side. “Kick your leg over and come down. I’ll catch you.”

I moved with the grace of a beached whale, gingerly bringing my other leg up, and turning on my belly so my legs hung over the other side. I gripped the top and slowly slid my feet down against the stone. “That’s really not necessary. It’s not that far, and you’re hurt. I’ll lower myself far enough to—”

The sound of a gunshot split the air in two. I flinched so hard, I let go of the wall and fell. Luckily, he was right there to catch me.

“They’re shooting at us now?!” I screeched.

He recovered from the force of my body hitting his—despite the circumstances, a warm and stirring sensation—and reached for my hand. “It appears so, yes. Time to go.” He pivoted and ran two steps, dragging me behind him, and then stopped.

“What?” I asked, breathless and trembling in anticipation of the next gunshot.

“My car’s gone.”

“Gone?” I said, too shocked to register what it meant not to see the old green Cadillac in front of us.

“Yeah. It was right here.” He let go of my hand and swiped his hair. In spite of our dangerous situation, the familiar move brought me an odd sense of comfort.

I took a moment to look around and realized we stood at the edge of a heavily wooded area. The gravel beneath our feet must have been a back entrance driveway to the Slates’ estate. Aside from the house glowing in the distance, and the stars and moon overhead, it was dark. I saw the wet shine of Anthony’s eyes and the glint of his teeth when he winced and palmed his ribs again.

“So, what do we do?”

The question was hardly out of my mouth before another gunshot rang out, this one much closer. I flinched and covered my ears, but it had been too close and too loud. The ringing nearly muted Anthony’s voice when he reached for my hand and shouted: “Run!”

I thanked every star in the sky that I’d put on Portia’s shoes as we disappeared into the woods.