Curse (Blur Trilogy Book 3) (30 page)

Tane and I hide behind one of the cars as the minivan’s driver maneuvers into a spot beside the building.

Parks.

Opens the door.

A man steps out and raises one arm to shield his face from the rain.

As he hurries toward the door, we’re right behind him, using the sound of the storm to cover the sound of our footsteps.

Once he’s beside the building, Tane taps him on the shoulder, startling him.

He spins, a look of surprise on his face.

It’s the same guy who was shooting at us when we escaped into the elevator in Atlanta.

Tane starts punching him and doesn’t stop.

Five, six, seven times, I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell.

But it does the trick.

The man goes down.

Knocked out cold.

Tane is proving to be a handy guy to have around.

Kyle’s watching us from near the shed and I motion for him to go.

Immediately, he takes off down the road.

Tane and I drag the unconscious driver to the door and place his hand on the reader beside it.

It only takes a moment to verify his identity.

The lock clicks and the door opens.

“What should we do with him?” Tane asks me. “We can’t just leave him here. He’s gonna wake up.”

I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.

Tane retrieves the minivan keys from the man’s pocket, and that gets me thinking.

There’s no trunk in his minivan.

But all the other cars do have one.

Nicole’s got Poehlman’s keys.

“We’ll lock him in a trunk.” I slide a rock in place to keep the door ajar. “Go back. Get the keys from Nicole. I’ll watch this guy while you do.”

From the shed’s doorway, Nicole watched as Tane left the Estoria and started running across the parking area back toward the shed.

What’s he doing? Why’s he coming back?

“So,” Alysha said to her, “are you the one Daniel was telling me about?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“The way you greeted him when we got here. I’m guessing you’re the girlfriend.”

“
The
girlfriend? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Yeah,” Mia spoke up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He just mentioned it, I mean, that he had a girlfriend. That’s all. You should feel lucky. He’s quite a guy. Cute too.”

Tane was halfway to them.

“How do you know he’s cute?”

“He let me feel his face.”

“He let you
what
?”

“It’s how I get to know people.”

“You haven’t asked to feel my face,” Mia noted.

“I—”

Tane arrived and told Nicole, “We need Poehlman’s ke
ys
.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“That wasn’t the plan.”

“Screw the plan.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Nicole is with Tane when he returns.

As soon as they get to me, I ask her what she’s doing.

“I’m gonna help you.”

“Nikki, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I have pepper spray.”

“I know, but still, it’s . . .”

Tane hits a button on the key fob and the trunk of a Ford sedan parked about thirty feet away pops open.

With Nicole beside us, we start dragging the man toward the trunk.

“Tell me about the face thing with Alysha,” she says.

“What?”

“She thinks you’re cute.”

“Oh, right. No, that was nothing. I had her at a disadvantage—wait, I don’t mean . . . That doesn’t sound right. I’m just saying, I could see her, but she couldn’t tell what I look like.”

“Okay.”

“She’s the cute one,” Tane mutters under his breath. “I’d let her feel my face anytime she wants to.”

Hmm.

I didn’t see that coming.

At the car, because of my shoulder, he insists on doing most of the heavy lifting.

“So nothing happened?” Nicole asks me.

“No. Trust me.”

Once the guy’s inside, Tane slams the trunk door. “Think that’ll hold him?”

“Let’s hope so.”

He pockets the keys and we hurry back to the Estoria.

I say to Nicole, “Whose phone number is that on your wrist?”

“Just this guy from the basketball camp, but, I mean—no, no. That’s not what it seems like.”

“I believe you.” We get to the building. “So believe me.”

“Okay.”

“We cool?”

“We’re cool.”

Before we go in, I try one more time to dissuade her from coming along, but her mind is made up.

“Keep that pepper spray ready.”

She pulls it out of her pocket.

Cautiously, I press the door open and peer inside.

Beyond the lobby, an empty hallway stretches before us.

It’s relatively dim, with only a few ceiling lights on. The rest of the light bleeds out from windows to the rooms.

The storm rages behind us.

After a short internal debate, I decide that since there are prisoners housed in here, this door might be set to lock from the inside as well. So, I leave the rock in place to make sure we can get back out.

As we enter, I ask Tane if he has any idea where Petra might be. “Did Malcolm give you any specifics when you were in the trance and heard him tell you that she was here?”

He shakes his head. “Uh-uh.”

Okay.

Plan C.

I mentally review the layout of the hotel. “We might as well start on this floor. Let’s go.”

Together, we cross the lobby and, after passing the stairwell, we come to the first room.

A man with black-as-night eyeballs is in it. Despite his bizarre appearance, I recognize him immediately.

Ty Bell.

“Daniel, is that Ty?” Nicole whispers.

“Yeah. It is.”

“What’s he doing here?” Her voice trembles. “What happened to his eyes?”

“I don’t know. Come on, we—”

“Wait.” Tane grabs my arm. “Someone’s coming. Get in the stairwell.”

“I’m done with this, done with the lies,” General Gibbons said to Adrian as he attempted to bluff his way past her suspicions. “This has to do with the senator and his daughter, doesn’t it?”

He blinked. “What?”

“You left me alone in here earlier. I work for the Department of Defense. How long do you really think it took me to get past the password prompt on your computer? Your brother’s date of birth? Really? That’s touching, Adrian, but hardly secure.”

She spun the laptop around on the desk to face him.

The ransom video that Deedee and Sergei had filmed was paused on the screen.

“Well,” Adrian said. “Look what you found.”

“Blackmailing a United States Senator after kidnapping his daughter? Are you
insane?”

“Sometimes justice requires bold and decisive action.”

“Bold and decisive action? That’s what you call this? Where is that young woman? Is she here? Did you bring her here?”

He stepped around to the other side of his desk while the general leaned over and snatched up the satellite phone. “I’m shutting this down.”

Adrian opened the drawer and reached inside. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

“Ex
cuse
me?”

He pulled out his 9mm handgun and aimed it at her.

“Oh. Are you really going to shoot me?”

“I would prefer not to.” He gestured toward a chair by the window, then took out a pair of Henrik’s handcuffs. “Sit down over there by the radiator.”

“I’m not sitting anywhere. Where is Petra Amundsen?”

“Please sit down, General.”

But instead, she took a step backward toward the door.

He squeezed the trigger.

He’d never shot anyone before.

And now, seeing the dismay on her face, and the red stain spreading across her stomach, he found that it did not bother him as much as he thought it might.

No. It didn’t bother him at all.

We left the stairwell door open a crack, and Tane is staring through it down the hall.

“Yeah, there’s a guard. I don’t think he saw us—but I don’t think we should stay on this floor.”

“Alright,” I sa
y.
“Let’s hit the basement. Work our wa
y
up.”

As we descend, Tane asks us, “So you recognized that guy in that room back there?”

“He’s from our hometown,” Nicole explains.

“How did he end up as one of Waxford’s test subjects?”

“That’s a good question.”

We arrive at the basement door and I whisper, “We’ll figure it out later, when all this is over. Right now we need to find Petra. They’ve obviously remodeled this place since that book came out, but according to the floor plan, there should be nineteen rooms down here.”

Tane offers to take the left side of the hall.

Nicole and I take the right.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

8:49 P.M.

11 MINUTES

Adrian stood beside the general and watched her bleed.

She’d collapsed near the desk and was crumpled on the floor now, leaning against it.

The bullet had hit her in the lower abdomen and, based on his knowledge of anatomy, Adrian didn’t expect that she was going to die immediately. He was curious what it would be like to watch her fade away, though, so he didn’t shoot her again.

“If you keep pressure on that,” he told her, “it’ll buy you a little extra time.”

Then he radioed his team. “Deedee, bring Petra to my office. There’s been an unforeseen turn of events. Garrett, go find Henrik. The last I heard, he was out by the shed. And keep an eye out for Sergei. I haven’t seen him come in.”

Then Adrian went online and typed in the code that would allow him to confirm when the senator’s email went through.

Just ten minutes to go.

“They’re sending someone named Garrett out here,” Alysha, who was monitoring the radio, told Mia. “We need to leave.”

Mia grabbed the flashlight Daniel had brought in earlier.

Before passing out the shed door, she used the Taser on Poehlman once more. “That’s for making me walk two miles.”

And then again. “And that’s for it being uphill.”

She took Alysha’s arm and hurried her outside, then around the back of the shed behind a downed tree.

In his estate on the outskirts of Atlanta, Senator Amundsen thought this through for the millionth time, still unsure how to solve things.

If he didn’t cancel the inquiry, his daughter would die.

If he did, others would suffer.

He needed a way to both save her and save them. A third option.

But he still couldn’t come up with what that might be.

Petra finished with the screw, tossed the clasp aside, and yanked the window open.

Rain blasted in, drenching her shirt.

It was nearly dark outside, but light from her window allowed her to see partway down the building.

The kudzu wouldn’t support her, but the poison ivy vines were thick enough. From walking through a patch of it last year she knew she was allergic, but she didn’t really have a choice. She could deal with any sort of reaction later.

But as she stared at them, the vines stopped being vines and became snakes again, scaling the building, coming toward her.

No, no they’re not. They’re just vines. You can get out of here.

Poised to strike.

Go. You have to!

Rain pelted her as she peered down.

Serpents.

They’re serpents.

It had to be close to nine.

She needed to go.

Leaning out the window, Petra grabbed the stoutest vine she could reach. As she swung her left leg out, the lock of the door behind her clicked loudly enough to get her attention.

She paused.

Turned.

And saw Deedee standing in the open doorway.

“Where do you think you’re going, my dear?”

“Don’t come any closer or I’ll jump.”

“Well, if you want to die, I’m sure that can be arranged, but I’m just here because it’s almost time to see how valuable you are to your father. I’m going to need you to come with me.”

“You want me? Come and get me.”