Mr. Mysterious: A Mister Standalone (The Mister Series Book 4) (35 page)

Nolan takes a breath, nods, and then he’s gone.

“There’s another shaft up here, you guys,” Ariel calls back to us. “But there’s smoke pouring out of it. Whatever’s behind that wall is up in flames.”

“There’s another shaft, Ariel. Somewhere close by. The one that leads outside. Can you feel a draft? Something that tells you air is leaking through?”

Silence for almost a minute.

“Ariel?” Oliver yells, jumping up to grab the pipe again and then swinging his arms to grab another so he can poke his head into the hatch. “Ariel?” he screams.

“I found it!” she finally calls from some distance off. “It’s off to your left. Hold on.”

A few moments later the wall to our left begins moving back.

“Nice funhouse,” Ariel says, standing on the other side. “Whoever built this place is a complete freak.”

“Claudette,” Five, Oliver, and I say together.

We go through the passageway and end up in a tunnel.

“It’s a road,” Ariel says. “Nolan will be on the other end. They left here in a car and Nolan will head them off at the other end.”

“Fuck that,” I say. “He just left here five minutes ago. There’s no way he can get out to the end of that tunnel in time.” I take off at a run and leave all three of them behind.

“Pax,” they all yell after me.

“Pax, stop! There might be more of them!”

“You won’t make it in time!”

“Pax!”

I don’t stop. I don’t even consider stopping. I run harder, my long legs finally good for something. They will not take Cindy. They will never take her away from me. I don’t care if I die trying, she will not end up under the thumb of whoever these sick Silver Society assholes are.

Chapter Forty-Three - Cindy

There’s a limo waiting in a tunnel once we get through the passageway. A tall guy, about Paxton’s age, stands waiting for us dressed in a dark suit.

“Let’s go,” Claudette says.

“Who’s that?” I ask, once I get inside the car and the driver closes the door.

“You’ll find out soon enough, little pretty.” Claudette’s smile is sickly sweet like the perfume that permeates this car. It makes my stomach heave. “But now we can celebrate.”

“What about all the people in the resort? There’s hundreds of people there tonight, including my sister and brother. And Pax.”

“All expendable, dear.” She pats my leg.

“I thought you wanted Pax alive? I thought—”

“We did.”

“What do you mean you did? You just told me Pax and I could be together.”

“Oh,” Claudette laughs. “No, no, no. You sweet, sweet innocent thing. I said we wanted him. But I never said
alive
.”

I punch her in the face. Right in her fucking teeth. Blood goes spurting out of her lip and her hand comes up, eyes wide with surprise.

“You little bitch! Stewart!” she screams. “Stop this car right now and come tie her—”

I grab Claudette’s hair, bring my knees up, and then smash her teeth again. I think I knock one out this time.

But she’s fighting back, ignoring my attack. Her eyes rage at me as she drags her nails across my cheek. The sting shouldn’t be enough to stop me, but she clips the corner of my eye with her nail and it fills with blood.

That one pause is all it takes to give her the advantage. I’m still half-drunk on the drugs she woke me up from. And the guy she called Stewart has both my arms and Claudette is sitting on my legs. She throws a hood over my face and then ties my wrists together.

“Get back in and drive,” Claudette says, out of breath. “Now! We need to get to the gate before my worthless brother figures this tunnel out.”

Chapter Forty-Four - Paxton

Up ahead I see brake lights. But before I can celebrate or even aim my rifle at the man I see struggling with someone in the back under the dim glow of the inside dome light, he closes the door, gets back in the driver’s side, and they take off again.

Oliver catches up with me, panting and breathing hard from his sprint. “Was that them?” he asks.

“Yes,” I growl. “That was them. Come on, we’re not done yet.”

We take off running again. Oliver keeps pace beside me as the car slows, then stops once more.

We keep running until we’re within a hundred yards of them, when we realize what happened.

The tunnel has a gate.

And it is closed.

I will kiss you, Nolan Delaney. If I see you again, I will kiss you right on the fucking lips for coming through for me.

Chapter Forty-Five - Cindy

“Why are we stopping?” Claudette asks. “Keep going!”

There is so much blood inside the hood, it’s running into my mouth.

“The gate,” the guy called Stewart says. “The gate is closed.”

“It cannot be closed! I opened it myself when we got in the car.”

“Well,” Stewart replies, “your program appears to have been overridden.”

“You’re not going to escape,” I say, choking my words past the blood. “Not this time, you stupid cunt.”

She whips the hood off my head and grabs me by my braids, bashing my head into the seat in front of me. “If I go down, Cinderella, you go down with me.”

“I’m OK with that,” I say, looking at her through one eye. “I’m so OK with that.”

“My brother did it,” Claudette says, looking away from me. “He must’ve found the tunnel on the security system. But there’s a manual switch on the side of the wall over there.” She points to a faint glow coming off an electrical panel. “Get out and open the gate.”

Stewart doesn’t exactly complain, but he doesn’t exactly hop to it, either. He opens the door and gets out, shooting Claudette a very dirty look as he does it.

“Hurry, you stupid piece of shit—”

And then Stewart’s head explodes.

Claudette doesn’t even blink. She opens her door, grabs me by my feet, and starts dragging me out of the car.

I give her a two-footed kick, but miss everything except her shoulder. She is not deterred.

“Stop right there!”

It’s Oliver!

“I’ll kill her,” Claudette says, forcing me to my feet. “I’ll do to her exactly what you just did to my driver.” She pushes the gun to the side of my head, making her point.

Oliver comes into view, rifle out in front of him, laser scope mounted on top. The red dot hits me in my bloodless eye, making me blink, but it’s gone when I open it back up.

“How about we make a deal, Claudette?”

“No deal.”

“Just listen, OK? It’s a good one. You let her go and then we’ll kill you.” And then he starts laughing. Like one of those crazy, madman laughs.

“You stupid, arrogant—”

“Shoot her!” I scream. “Shoot her, shoot her, shoot her!”

I swear to God, I can
hear
her finger tighten on the trigger of the gun. I close my eye, waiting for the moment when the explosion blows my brains out.

It comes.

Blood, and bone, and tissue. I’m covered in it. I stumble back, fall, my head hitting the pavement. I can hear screaming and it takes me a second to realize it’s me who’s screaming when I open my one good eye.

Pax walks out from the shadows off to my right, his gun still raised, smoke flowing out from the end of the barrel. “Fuck that bitch,” he says, kneeling down to smooth the blood-soaked hair off my face. “She deserved that.”

“Yeah,” I whisper, as Oliver unties my legs and Pax takes care of my wrists. I lean into him and he hugs me. Nothing has ever felt so good before in my life. “Fuck her.”

My head swoons. Things go blurry and gray as Pax lifts me up. People are shouting now. Sirens and helicopters are blaring in the background. I hear Ariel talking to me at one point, chanting, “You’re going to be OK. You’re going to be OK…” over and over and over again. But I can’t see her because my eyes won’t open. Only my ears work.

And then… even that stops.

That’s all there is.

Story’s over, Miss Cookie,
I hear the detective say
. Story’s over.

Chapter Forty-Six - Cindy

I wake up of course. In the ambulance just a few minutes later.

Paxton shot cunty Claudette, she didn’t shoot me.

I never doubted him.

The drugs Claudette fed me have some kind of weird side effect that sticks in your system for a while and can cause you to flow in and out of unconsciousness for up to forty-eight hours. So they brought me to San Diego General Hospital for observation.

It’s not so bad being injured in battle. I mean, it’s a hell of a lot better than being Nolan and Ivy, who are stuck out there in the desert answering questions about why there was a secret unpermitted tunnel underneath their five-star resort.

Not to mention the fire in the room of mirrors. The cops actually asked Ivy if she was a devil worshipper.

That
conversation was a hoot to listen to.

I’m still privately cracking up about Ivy Rockwell being painted a Satanist.

Or Pax and Oliver, who were taken into custody and are being held for questioning in the shooting of Claudette Delaney.

Five’s handling that. Turns out Oliver and Pax were filming the whole thing using cameras mounted on their rifles, so there’s plenty of proof to back up our story. That fucking Five. He thinks of everything, doesn’t he? Even gun cams.