Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The elevator doors opened, but Eliana didn’t move. She held the knife in front of her and rose slowly, Tony facing her. A heartbeat the only space between him either backing off or coming at her—and getting stabbed.
Her breath caught in her throat. She reached out with her free hand and found the rail that went around the elevator, worked her way to the panel, and looked at it long enough to find the button to hold the doors open.
The last thing she wanted was to be stuck in this box with the guy who’d dragged her in here.
She had no phone. No weapons but this knife.
It wasn’t like security in this museum actually had to subdue anyone. Ever. She didn’t even carry a stun gun, just a set of keys. And while those could injure someone, they weren’t exactly lethal.
“Out.” She jerked the knife toward the door.
Her hair still hurt, her scalp stung. Her head was just one mass of throbbing pain. Even calling the police or trying to get backup here wouldn’t help. It might actually make this all so much worse.
She took a side step toward the door, aware that the doors would close anyway before long. They wouldn’t stay open forever.
Tony dove at her. On a reflex, she moved the knife away from him. He grabbed her, and the blade glanced across the front of his bicep. He roared, grabbing her with a punishing grip and shoving her out of the elevator.
Her foot caught, and they tumbled onto the floor just outside the elevator car. Eliana cried out, and the knife skittered across the floor to hit the wall.
They weren’t alone.
“Get him off her.”
She tried to turn her head to see who was there, but Tony’s weight held her down.
Someone lifted him from on top of her, and she scrambled around, sitting up in the process. Breathing hard. Every bit of her body thrummed in pain like she was one giant bruise. How did her mother do this?
She ended up between the elevator and what she presumed was the vault—a giant metal door with the big wheel, like she’d seen in banks.
It certainly looked like what she’d expect a vault door to look like.
All that was down here apart from that was a sparse lobby, nothing on the walls and no furniture.
A single door to the right totaled three doors down here.
Four people stood around the vault door, duffel bags on the floor. Equipment out. Little devices with tons of wires coming from them.
“What is this?” Eliana lifted her chin but didn’t get up.
Two men slammed Tony against the wall, bringing the group to a total of six. The young people she’d seen upstairs. Which had to have been them scoping out the place.
Tony scoffed. “You’ll never get into the vault.”
The man in the center stepped forward and came to stand over her. He had dark hair, long and tied back behind his head. Leather jacket, jeans, and a T-shirt. Black boots. Nothing special. He’d blended in upstairs until he opened his mouth up there and she’d noticed the group.
“Saw you scoping out the place.” She gave him a second. “Who are you guys?”
He crouched. “You can call me Miles. Because I’m miles of fun.”
Ew.
“Question is, who are you?” He reached up and touched her wig, which she realized was hanging off her head where Tony had torn the adhesive away. “A security guard wearing a wig?”
“Medical condition.”
“Sure, it is.” Miles straightened. “Lucky for us, you’re just the people we need to get into the vault.” He turned to his crew. “Change of plans. She’s going to get us in.”
One of the guys holding Tony said, “Miles, what do you want us to do with this guy?”
Miles spun around and went up to Tony, standing between the men, pushing him against the wall. Tony struggled, his expression slightly dazed as if he were in shock. Miles drew a gun and took a step back, pointing it at Tony’s head.
Eliana gasped. “No!”
Miles turned to her, a smirk on his face. “Guess we know now where you stand.” He didn’t shift his aim from Tony’s forehead. “Tell me how to get in the vault, and I won’t blow his brains all over this wall.”
She needed…
Eliana had no idea. Her knife was across the room. And what good would that do, anyway?
Lord, help me.
She’d never asked God for help out of a dangerous situation before. Did He actually direct things and help her mom? She wasn’t sure how far His power stretched to the second-by-second development of a life-or-death scenario.
Was it copacetic to ask Him to stop the gun from firing, or maybe the ceiling could fall down unexpectedly? Help could arrive…from somewhere. Directed by On High.
Amen. Amen.
“Ticktock,” Miles singsonged. “We’re all getting older while you’re deciding whether this guy ends up in a grave.” He glared at Eliana. “So what’s it gonna be?”
“I…” She managed to swallow. “I don’t know how to get into the vault.”
“Only one person goes in the vault, and that’s me!” Tony roared, pushing against the men holding him and forcing them to push back.
Miles’s gun touched Tony’s forehead.
Eliana’s breath caught in her throat.
“Guess we know who’s expendable and who isn’t.” Miles lowered the gun, brought it around, and pointed it at her. “Let’s find out exactly what these legendary security measures are.”
Eliana shook her head, still sitting on the floor. Even if it put her at a serious disadvantage, she wasn’t sure she wanted to stand up. “What are you talking about?”
A young woman stepped forward. “Just kill her.” She had straight almost-black hair, wide-set round eyes, and a full mouth. She was gorgeous, but with that scowl on her face, her attitude wasn’t doing her any favors. “Obviously, she knows nothing about this.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Eliana reached up and slid the wig all the way off, trying to pretend like it didn’t hurt that much to take off the rest of the adhesive. She tossed it aside, pulled the pins from her scalp, releasing it from the net, then shook out her hair.
Then she looked at the young woman.
Miles.
No one said anything.
Miles shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, one of you can get in the vault, right?”
“Only one!” Tony looked around. “W-what’s going on?” His words were slurred, but he’d regained his sense of self.
Miles turned to him. “Can you get in the vault, old man?”
“You’re not getting into the vault,” Tony sputtered. “It only admits one person at a time, and that person’s DNA has to be coded to the system.” Right now, he sounded a whole lot more in control of himself.
Eliana nearly sagged onto the floor out of sheer relief.
Not being promoted to head of security? She didn’t mind so much right now, considering she didn’t have to figure a way out of this situation by herself.
“I guess there’s no way for you to get in, then.” She shrugged, but there wasn’t much to it. “You should all leave before we get the police down here to arrest you. We’ll call it even. No harm, no foul.”
Maybe her mom just argued people to a rational conclusion so no one got hurt, and everyone went on with their lives. She’d have to ask.
The young woman touched the outside of Miles’s arm. “Just kill her. We’ll use the old man to get into the vault.”
“Someone needs to see if the rumors are true.” Miles stared at her.
“Rumors?” Eliana asked.
The young woman smirked. “If you’re vaporized before you can even step foot into the vault, then we’ll know it’s true.
” She looked at the man and the other woman beside her, then lifted her chin.
“Get her.” Then turned and walked to the vault.
“Someone’s eyeball will get us through this door.
Shame we don’t have to cut it out to find out. ”
They hoisted Eliana to her feet.
“My retina—if that’s what the scan is—won’t get you through there.” Eliana glanced between them. “I’ve never even been down here.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and it’ll vaporize your eyeball in your head.” The young woman laughed, but Eliana didn’t think anything about this was amusing.
They dragged her forward.
“No!” Tony yelled. “Don’t!”
Eliana struggled against their hold, but it didn’t work. She tried to scramble back.
They walked her to the panel on the wall and forced her to bend until her eye was in front of the camera.
She gasped. A green light flared, swelling until it eclipsed everything.
The door clicked.
She pushed back, and they let her go. Light flashed in her eyes, no matter how much she blinked.
A recorded voice emerged from a speaker overhead. “Insert for stage two.”
“How?” Tony asked. “It should only be one person.”
Miles pushed her toward the door. “Go ahead and do the next part.”
“I don’t know what it is! I’ve never done this before!”
“Let go of me!” Tony came over and stood beside her. “How’d you do that? It’s not coded to your DNA.”
She blinked tears away, desperate in a way that made her want to run and not stop running. “I have no idea what’s happening!”
Something hard touched the back of her head. “I’m growing impatient.”
Miles.
Tony looked back, flinched, then told her, “Put your finger in here.” He slid up a flap under the keypad and grabbed her hand. Stuck her index finger in.
She felt the prick of a needle and pulled her hand back to suck at the bead of blood on the pad of her finger. “Ow. Why are we letting them in? They can’t have access to the vault!”
“We aren’t more honorable if we’re dead,” Tony replied.
“You think giving your life for something isn’t honorable?”
“I think I’m not discussing it right now!”
The door whirred. “Enter passcode.”
Tony hammered a series of numbers, the sequence going long enough that she felt her eyebrows rise. Finally, he hit Enter.
“We can’t give them access to the vault.” She bit her lip.
“We don’t have a choice,” Tony said. “They’ll kill both of us.”
Miles grabbed her shoulder, the gun still pressed against the back of her head. “At least someone here understands how this is gonna go.”
”Entry authorized.”
The door mechanism whirred. Behind the metal surface of the door, Eliana heard a series of cogs click around, finally settling into place with a louder click. Tony grabbed the wheel of the vault door and spun it, then pulled it open, which meant they all had to step back.
Stale air drifted out from inside the vault, a larger room than this entryway.
Down both sides of the room, crates were stacked on top of each other.
At the back wall, between the stored items, was a stack of what looked like lockers, most measuring a couple of feet squared.
A few in the middle were only inches high, but the same width.
Maybe this place really had been a bank at one point.
Or a library with secure places to keep valuable items.
Miles shoved her into the vault.
“No!” Tony yelled.
She stumbled and turned to them. Saw the horror on Tony’s face. What was that about?
“You shouldn’t be alive.” Tony looked astounded.
Two of the guys behind Miles shoved him in.
Tony yelped and nearly fell. She grabbed him, making sure he didn’t go down. At the doorway, Miles and all his friends watched them.
“What’s going on?” Eliana was missing something.
Tony whispered, “The vault kills anyone except the person whose DNA is coded to the entry.”
But it had scanned her retina and taken her blood. Even though she’d never coded her DNA to this thing. It made no sense.
Miles said, “I guess we can assume that’s one rumor that isn’t true.” He grabbed the jacket sleeve of one of his crew members and shoved him into the vault.
The young man stumbled forward.
Something in the ceiling hummed, and the guy froze.
His jacket started smoking.
His face reddened, then twisted in pain. A low moan emerged from his lips, and it seemed like he couldn’t move even if he wanted to. Heat wafted off his body in waves, and his skin started to peel. First small flakes, then bigger pieces, leaving behind a red glow as if he had magma under his skin.
Eliana gasped and got two lungfuls of the scent of burning flesh. She must’ve started toward him, because Tony grabbed her.
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said.
More and more of the guy’s flesh peeled off as he burned from the inside out. By the time he fell to the floor, he was a husk of what he had been, just the charred remains of a person that hit the tiles and broke apart into what looked like charcoal.
“Take cover.” Tony shoved her back and raced to the wall beside the vault.
Eliana didn’t know what to do.
Miles lifted his gun, and she realized what was happening. He swung it over to where Tony flattened himself out of sight, to the right of the door, near a panel on the wall.
She raced to the back corner and ducked behind a crate, crouching out of sight.
Bang.
A bullet pinged off the metal cabinet behind her, ricocheting in a different direction. She didn’t know where the bullet ended up. She just ducked and covered her head with her arms while more gunfire echoed through the vault.
Bang. Bang.
The young woman told Miles, “Cut it out,” and he quit shooting.
Eliana peered around the crate and saw Tony ease toward the panel. He reached out and hit a button on the wall.
A metal door slid across the entrance, cutting off Miles and his crew.
Shutting them in here.
Eliana could only hear her own breathing, a rush in her ears. It was like being shut in a vacuum. “What’s going on?”
Tony turned to her. “You agreed. Just like I did. Not to let anyone else in the vault.”
Eliana shook her head. “I have no idea what’s going on!” She gasped. “Did you just lock us in here?”
He stalked across the room toward her.
Eliana tried to talk, but all she could do was whimper. Was this about the needle mark again? What was he going to do to her now?
He crouched, and she flinched. But the glassiness was gone from his gaze. He hadn’t been slurring just now. Seemed more in control of himself than he had before. “Eliana—”
She cut him off. “I don’t know what’s happening!”
For the first time since she had arrived in Chicago, she didn’t want to be in this vault.
She wanted to be anywhere else in the world.
He held out his hand. “Come on.”