Chapter 41
Gwen
The night exploded—no gunfire, but alarms. A screeching wail started from somewhere in the hallway, as red strobe lights patterned the space outside the door.
Arthur. He’s here.
“Armed men inside!” came a voice through the radio clipped to Rick’s belt.
Rick didn’t let go of me. The threat about my luck running out was still hot against my cheek, and his eyes flared hotter. “You fucking little cunt.”
“You swore he wouldn’t come in like this.” Dr. Hopkins marched toward us, jabbing a finger at Rick. “You swore you knew him—that he’d talk first.”
Rick’s hand rose, and I braced myself for another hit. But he didn’t do it. Instead, his snarl vanished, and his shoulders dropped. “He’s a fucking Boy Scout. He negotiates everything.”
“Apparently not,” drawled Dr. Hopkins.
“Theo, get downstairs.” To Big Hands, Rick said, “Send a man for the Warden. Pull everyone you can from the kitchen and get them downstairs.”
Big Hands nodded, pulled a gun from a holster at his side, and was gone.
Two guards ran by the open door. Open. It was open.
I wrenched my arm free from Rick and bolted. Past Dr. Hopkins, through the door, turn left toward the exit and—
I slammed into a solid body.
The guard locked his arms around my waist and hauled me backward. On his radio, someone said, “Warden’s at the door.”
Rick charged out of the room and grabbed me, taking me from the other man, dragging me back toward the center of the house.
Dr. Hopkins emerged from the study with the sword case in hand. “She’s our bargaining chip. Don’t hurt her.”
Somewhere above me, a gunshot rang out—two, three more. Something thudded, like a heavy weight dropping. Screams and hollers erupted from every direction.
Rick, the guard with us, and Dr. Hopkins remained calm, but they moved fast. We merged with at least a dozen people fleeing the dining room, men and women in their fifties, their seventies, and one woman in pearls with her napkin caught in her belt.
More gunfire, more thuds. Bodies? Was Arthur’s team slaughtering them upstairs?
Or is this someone else? Not Arthur at all?
“Arthur!” I cried out. “I’m in the—”
“Shut up!” Rick yanked me forward, and his fist collided with my stomach so hard the room spun. My legs gave out, and my vision darkened at the edges as I sagged toward the floor. But my world flipped. Tipped upside down as Rick threw me over his shoulder and hurried the group along.
I pounded on his back, but he didn’t flinch.
Where was his gun? I could grab it, and—do what with it?
I tried to push myself upright to throw him off balance, but he rammed an elbow into my side, and I collapsed against him.
I bit back a sob and whimpered, “He’s coming for me. Let me go, and he’ll leave.”
We paused next to a huge fireplace as the wall slid open.
I pushed myself up enough to look around the room.
The painting overhead belonged in a Roman basilica, with figures on clouds, horses, angels, rich blues and creams. Three crystal chandeliers hung from ornate plasterwork rosettes, and the walls were paneled in gold with heavy swagged curtains flanking floor-to-ceiling windows. Oil portraits in gilt frames.
How was any of this real? I was in a ridiculously opulent estate in a land of myth and legend, slung over a madman’s shoulder as he took me through a secret passageway in a wall.
A door in the far wall opened, and two men in all black emerged, with big guns pointed at us. “Give us the woman!”
“Get the fuck out!” yelled Rick as he spun, withdrew his weapon, and began shooting.
My ears rang, and the air was full of gunpowder and sweat.
If they shot at him—
Oh god! I was over his shoulder! He wasn’t just carrying me to move me! I was his shield!
I wrapped my arms over my head, as though my hands would stop a bullet. I needed Arthur. I needed out of here. I needed to go back to my little apartment in New York and forget all about this. Boring contracts for museums from now on. That’s all!
Within moments, Rick was following the crowd through the hidden passage, and I spotted the men. They’d withdrawn. They hadn’t returned fire. Rick’s shield plan had worked.
But a tiny metallic object flew from the doorway and landed in the middle of the floor.
My ears were still ringing from the gunshots, and searing white light blinded me. It must have been a flashbang. Was that what they called it?
Half-blind and half-deaf, I hung off Rick’s back as the depths of the estate swallowed us. The temperature dropped, and the air grew dry, with a faint musty scent.
“Arthur!” I screamed. Had I made a sound, or was the cry all in my head? I couldn’t tell anymore.
The edges of my vision faded back in as we crossed a steel threshold.
A door at least a foot thick swung shut behind us, and the pressure hurt my ears.
Rick bent and dropped me to the hard concrete floor.
My hip and bruised arm hit first, pain ricocheting through my body.
He growled at me, “Move and you’re dead. ”
I lay where I’d landed for a few seconds, doing nothing but breathing, before I rolled onto my side and propped myself against the corner.
What now, Gwen?
I blinked and popped my ears over and over until my senses returned.
It was a concrete room, but completely unlike the tiny safe house Arthur and I had stayed in.
With its desks and camera feeds from all over the property, it reminded me of an office building’s security station.
A hallway led deeper in, past shelving and couches to a large television at least fifty feet away.
This wasn’t just a safe room. It was an entire safe apartment. How long they lasted down here depended entirely on how well stocked the place was.
The ones who must have been the Custodians wandered down the hallway.
One of them took the sword case from Dr. Hopkins and vanished with it.
Two of the guards sat in front of the monitors, while Dr. Hopkins and Rick were deep in conversation with a man who must have been in his eighties.
Was he the one they called the Warden? The one a guard had been sent to retrieve?
The one mentioned in the Charter upstairs?
Another guard opened a tall cabinet by the steel door, withdrew two rifles, and headed down the hallway with them. They were arming up.
The screens showed the house being taken by men in pairs, rifles up, no hurry in them, moving door to door.
In a corridor: two of them put a guard on the carpet, cuffed his wrists behind him, and one checked the pulse at his neck before moving on.
On the kitchen feed: five of Rick’s men face-down among the scattered dinner plates, hands secured at their backs.
In a library: one of the Custodians’ guards put both hands up, and they knelt him down, zip-tied him, and left him breathing.
But the gunfire? I’d heard it before the screams started.
Had it only been the men from inside the house? Rick had shot at the two before we descended the stairs. They hadn’t fired back. They’d used a flashbang instead.
Feed after feed, room after room, Arthur’s team took them down with skill and strategy, not firepower. A speck of black flitted across several monitors. They must have had a drone inside.
I kept an eye on Rick as I pushed through the pain wracking my body and stood to get a better view. Two men came down the hidden staircase. Another two stood over three men who hadn’t been there when we came through. Maybe the flashbang took them out?
The two men stopped outside the door, near a keypad.
“—rescinding your key,” hissed the eighty-year-old man.
“You don’t have the authority.” Rick shook his head and moved to the security desk. He muttered, “Fucking Arthur Penn.”
One of the guards flicked a switch, and we could hear what the men at the door were saying.
“We can hack the control panel, but it’ll take some time,” said one of the men.
The other looked up at one of the cameras. He was covered from head to foot, including his face, but his eyes behind the lightweight glasses he wore? I’d know those eyes anywhere. Arthur said casually, “The safe room goes back a fair distance. I’d like to start with explosives.”
“Explosives?” Dr. Hopkins’s voice broke. “What have you gotten us into, Rick?”
Rick turned and grinned at me. His rage had been less unnerving than his grin. He pressed a button on the control panel. “Try it, Penn. And she’ll be standing in front of that door, waiting for the explosion.”
Ice climbed up my spine. I was going to be Rick’s shield for this, too.