Chapter 27 #2
“Don’t let go of me and try to remain quiet,” I say.
Patel nods, fingers digging into my side. I can feel her haggard breathing, even as she tries to hide it, and the way her feet slide more than they lift. The trauma to her head is making this difficult, and I’m afraid of how this is going to go.
The gun is steady in my hands while I listen carefully for where Colby might be. If he’s still watching the security cameras that show me in the dark, he can follow me from anywhere.
The slightest noise sounds behind me, and I pull Patel to a stop. It only takes me a second to realize it’s some equipment kicking on deeper in the place. Has he turned it on to fuck with my ability to hear him coming?
The hum of it seems to echo down this long hallway where darkness creeps around every corner. My eyes are slowly adjusting, but the only hint of light that I’m getting is coming from a backlit sign on the wall that must run off batteries.
I begin moving again, pulling Patel toward the front door. I’m dragging her as much as she’s walking at this point, but I need to get her out of here so I can freely hunt Colby down.
There’s the slightest glint of something and I jerk Patel hard before I hear two bullets hit the spot where we just stood. I fire my gun twice but don’t bother a third time, having no interest in wasting bullets when I’m sure he’s already out of sight.
Patel’s grip on me tightens but the sharp jerk leaves her falling into me.
“Can you hold on to my back?” I ask, planning on putting my body in front of hers. I try to push her back there, but I’m not sure her grip is tight enough, so I sacrifice my left arm to keep dragging her.
I now know that Colby is between us and the door. He’s familiar with this place. He knows how to move around it with ease. And he knows how to keep me from getting out.
I’m not sure if he plans to drive me deeper in to either kill me or escape, but I’m not planning on either happening. Instead, I hold my gun steady and throw something into the hallway.
He immediately shoots it, telling me he’s on edge and he’s going to easily fuck up. He should know better.
“You really plan to replace me with those skills?” I call.
Colby doesn’t reply, but that’s fine.
“Put the vest back on yourself,” Patel says.
I ignore her and hoist her up a little better before stepping farther into the room we’ve found ourselves backed into, but I’m not sure how far I want to go.
Here, I run the risk of running into things, while in the hallway I know exactly where everything is after having walked down it mere minutes ago.
That means my risk goes up the longer I crash around in this room. Although… what’s a little risk?
I pull Patel back out into the hallway, dragging her after me while I quickly move a moment before I hear a noise to my right.
I jerk back just as something hard and probably metal slams into my hip.
I twist Patel away from it, but she loses her grip on me and goes down, nearly taking me down with her.
Suddenly, Patel is being dragged back, and while I can’t see it, I can hear her strangled cry. It’s too dark for me to shoot and chance hitting her, which is what I realize he wants. He wants to use her as a bullet shield, keeping himself safe.
Without warning, the lights go on, the brightness shocking my eyes, but it’s all I need to shoot him in the exposed shoulder. He loses his grip on her and dashes through an open door. I yank her to her feet as I hear him running from me.
Patel is gasping for breath while she reaches for the belt that had been looped over her throat and loosens it. I grab her by the front of her vest, hoisting her off the ground as I slip my gun into its holster and pull out another fully loaded one.
Now that I can see, I realize we are close to the exit; it’s only another fifteen feet. I rush to the door and jerk it open, but Jackson’s not outside waiting for me like he’d promised.
So is he the one who got the lights back on? And if he is, is that where Colby is heading?
Setting Patel on her feet, I order, “Try to get as far away from here as you can. Our car is across the street. If you can get to it, just go.”
I slam the door, closing her outside.
Trying not to let panic eat at me at the thought of Jackson being in this building, I dash down the hallway as I pull out my phone and click the tracker app that Cassel keeps on all of our phones.
It tells me which side of the building Jackson is, so I run for it, but moving through this unfamiliar building, not knowing where Colby is, is very much like a maze of doors and rooms.
Even though I know he’s likely going after Jackson, I can’t allow it to fuck with my focus. Jackson is not injured, he’s not weak, he knows what he’s doing, and I need to trust him just like he trusts me.
He would’ve known that the likelihood of Colby going toward him was high if he were to turn the lights back on, but he chose to do it anyway.
While the locator isn’t exact when I’m this close to Jackson, it gives me a good idea which direction to go in.
The room opens up and I see a smear of blood on the wall. With Colby’s gun in his right hand, he likely touched it with his left. Did he push himself this way? Glancing at my phone again, I see that I’ve now walked past the icon that is Jackson.
Good. He’s being careful, he’s staying hidden.
“Colby, if you want to destroy me, why do you keep running?” I taunt. “You are going to take my place, but you haven’t even hurt me and there you are bleeding out.”
He takes the bait; of course he does. He’s filled with rage and it makes him highly unfocused.
“I will fucking slaughter that husband of yours. I will make you watch him bleed. And then I will find your son and I will shoot him in the fucking head,” Colby yells.
I’m not sure whether it’s the pain getting the best of him or his temper.
“You’ve never been happy with what you have, have you?
I saved you from your father, but it wasn’t enough.
You could have started a new life. You could have sought help.
You could have done so much, but instead, you killed your sister in a fit of rage.
You strove to be like me… was it out of hope you could kill Lucas for refusing you?
You are irrational. You claim to do things for a reason that might make sense, but your actions tell me otherwise.
I think you just want to take and hurt for no reason other than it makes you feel good. ”
“Shooting you in the head is going to feel really fucking good,” he says with a laugh.
I start toward the room his voice is coming from and realize that if I’ve judged it right, he’s now in a room that leads outside.
Jackson must have removed my barricade to enter and turn the lights on, but it’s allowed Colby to leave.
I bolt toward it, but by the time I reach the room, the door is swinging shut.
There’s nowhere else for him to have hidden in the room, so I know he didn’t fake leaving.
Once I’m outside, I’m unsure which way he went.
Employee parking seems to be to the left, opposite where we parked across the road.
I know I’m wasting too much time trying to decide and go with my instinct, which is to turn right.
I think he’d believe that I would assume he’d go left, toward his car, then he’d likely slip back around the corner and shoot me when my back was turned to him.
As I turn the first corner, I see that Patel didn’t head for the car or for cover like I told her to. I’m afraid she was too wounded to get there and thought she could hide around the corner. She should have chosen somewhere else to hide.
This is why Lucas always told me to never worry about others. If they’re foolish enough to walk into the line of fire, then they deserve what happens to them.
It’s a good thing I don’t always listen to Lucas.
Colby laughs while he holds Patel against him, gun to her head. “You just can’t win, can you?” he asks me, as though he’s not the one over there bleeding to death. Like what exactly has he won in all of this?
He’s not yet done with his monologue and threats since he continues. “Her death is going to be on your hands. And then I’m going to find your husband and I’m going to kill him. And then your sweet little son. You have let them make you weak.”
“Colby… you really brought the wrong gun, didn’t you?” I ask.
He hesitates and I can see the slight shift in his body.
“You have one round left in that gun. If you use it on her… what exactly are you going to use on me?”
“You think I’m that fucking stupid? You think I don’t know how to reload my fucking gun?
” His hand turns crushing on her throat, squeezing it hard while she struggles but can’t get away.
He wants me to know he can kill her without ever pulling that trigger, but I know he won’t.
Not yet. But I’m sure it doesn’t feel that way to Patel.
“I guess we’re going to find out,” I say as I lift my gun. I know he could shoot her in the head, but he knows he’s dead if he does. He won’t make that mistake. He won’t fuck up like that because he cares about himself too much.
Colby tries to draw faster than me, but it’s not going to happen. Even when his gun is already lifted, he’s not fast enough. Though his head is merely inches higher than hers, I know my shot won’t miss.
I feel like there’s a split second where he looks surprised before he drops to the ground. Patel stays standing for a few moments before she falls to her knees, coughing and clutching at her throat. “Fuck. Fuck…”
“Are you alright?”
She manages to nod.
“You were supposed to run.”
“I tried. I couldn’t. So I thought I could hide.
I’m so pissed at myself. I wanted to be able to help you but I couldn’t.
Instead, I tried to hide and it got me nowhere.
” She closes her eyes and grits her teeth, struggling to get out the words.
“He would have shot me in the head if given the chance.”
“I know you think I took a risk, but I always count shots. I knew he only had one round left, and I knew he wasn’t going to use it on you,” I say as I pick up the gun with a gloved hand and show her the proof.
Honestly… I’m not quite sure she cares that I killed him instead of allowing her to arrest him. Maybe looking Death in the eyes changed her opinion on how by the book one should play.
I use my foot to roll Colby so I can reach down and check for a pulse.
“She alright?” Jackson asks as he comes jogging up.
“Yeah, have you called for an ambulance?”
“I have just now.”
“Cassel wipe the security cameras?” I ask.
“He’s on it,” Jackson says.
I turn toward Patel. “I don’t know what—”
“You weren’t here,” she says.
I hesitate, relief washing through me. “Thank you.”
“You’re positive he’s dead?”
“More than,” I say.
“Go. Get out of here before the police arrive,” she orders. “And… thank you.”
“I’m just glad we found you alive,” I admit.
“Me too. It didn’t look too good there for a while,” she says with a sound that kind of resembles a laugh, but I’m pretty sure it was a despairing one.
I grab Jackson’s hand and pull him after me as we rush across the street. She watches us go and likely knows that we don’t leave until the police have pulled up to help her.
“I’m nervous,” Jackson says.
“About Patel?”
“She’s so by the book. What happens when she looks into you? You know she’s going to. The second she has a phone in her hands, she’s going to be tearing your life apart.”
I lean back in my seat while Jackson starts the car. “I can’t tell you that. But maybe there’s a way we can win her over.”
“Please don’t tie her up in the basement.”
“You’re so picky,” I decide.
“That’s me. Jackson the picky, all because I don’t want a detective tied up in our basement. I really think that only works once.”
“That’s true. We’ll leave it reserved for Henry. You’re such a smart man.”
“That’s me… the smart one,” Jackson says, sounding quite sarcastic.
“You did good with the lights.”
“Yeah, but I left Patel vulnerable. If you hadn’t put the vest on her, this would have ended differently.”
“I don’t think this would have turned out as well as it did without the lights coming back on,” I assure him. “He had access to the security system from his phone and could see me easily because of it. It was making it rather troublesome. But my handsome man came to the rescue.”
“I’m just glad I figured out where the breaker box was.”
“That’s because you’re the smartest man alive. As long as there’s not a fence in front of it, you can accomplish anything.”
Jackson’s stare tells me that he definitely agrees.