CHAPTER THREE #3
Riley has come full circle.
‘You won’t break under torture, and you can’t be killed. What do you suggest I do with you?’
‘Let him go.’
‘I asked about you.’
‘Do whatever you want with me.’
‘I don’t want to do anything with you.’
‘Why is he so important? You’ve had seven years to ransom him. That’s not it. You’ve hidden him. Kept him here, but why?’
‘I couldn’t make you understand even if I wanted to. What,’ Riley asks, ‘am I going to do with you, hmm? Let you go and you’ll come back. Let you stay and there’ll be a mutiny. You killed eighteen people who never even set eyes on those kids.’
‘They gave as good as they got.’
‘That your version of an apology?’
‘What does he mean to you? Money? Influence? Name your fucking price. Whatever you want, whatever he’s worth to you, I’ll pay it ten times over.’
‘You could never understand his worth, Bodyguard.’
Lachlan spits in his face.
Kade’s jaw drops.
Riley wipes it away slowly, lips curled but otherwise calm.
‘You’ve been through a lot. You guarded two kids that you loved, and they died in front of you, but the truth is that you couldn’t save them and nothing is ever going to change that.’
Lachlan darkens. ‘Jules is alive.’
‘Julian Penhalyx is dead.’
‘Let him go.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I’ll do anything you want. Name it.’
‘That’s not my interest.’
‘What is your interest?’
‘You want to know?’
‘Yes.’
Riley pulls a gun out from his rear holster, says, ‘This,’ and then fires a single bullet into Lachlan’s left thigh. Lachlan grunts but otherwise doesn’t react. Intently, Riley observes the bullet do what all the others did.
Wriggle its way out of Lachlan’s body.
‘This is my interest,’ Riley declares quietly. ‘This isn’t a Knot. You didn’t do this yourself. You had help. I want to know everything.’
‘Like what?’
‘Did you get your ritual from a book?’
‘What will you give me for it if I tell you?’
‘Time with Kade.’
‘Whoring him out to me?’
‘Don’t pretend it’s not what you want.’
‘Maybe.’ Lachlan nods, sobers a little. ‘Time, yeah. Hey, speaking of.’
Kade tenses up sharply.
On screen, Riley does the same.
Lachlan asks, ‘What is the time?’
Riley steps back towards the door.
Kade’s instincts flare. ‘Thermals were clear, right?’ he asks the boys.
‘Yeah, absolutely.’ Cole types. ‘The whole place was swept.’
‘You’re positive?’
Finn says, ‘Yes.’
‘The tunnels?’
‘Yes.’
‘The incinerators?’
‘All closed off, but yeah.’
‘Something’s fucked,’ Kade says, running out of the Watch and grabbing a radio along the way. ‘All teams, all teams, get to the basement.’
‘Heard.’
Kade’s almost to the ground floor when he feels the vibration through concrete, hairs on the back of his neck standing on edge and the lights go out again, only this time it’s different. He sprints the rest of the way.
His radio is dead when he tries it, no signal, no static, nothing.
The air tastes sour. The lights flicker after about ten seconds, coming back on. He knows the radio will take longer if it is what he thinks. An EMP.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ He’s running full tilt down to the basement, but he can already hear the panicked yells, knows what’s happening.
The Drowner is flooding.
The doors are stuck.
He skids around the last corner, sees six people trying to open the steel door. The lights are still flickering. Kade starts counting in his head. Instead of talking, he scans around, throat thick, chest tight.
The doors won’t open during flood, so he needs to stop it.
He needs to kill the flood to open the doors.
Water pumps, isolated flow, engine room.
Kade runs inside, yelling over his shoulder for one of them to get the AED ready just in case.
Inside the engine room, it’s a flash-fried mess but Kade helped design most of these elements.
He finds the water pump valve, twists it tight, watching the pressure gauge drop slowly.
Once it gets low enough, the doors can be opened manually.
Kade activates the drain function and runs back to the Drowner.
‘Come on, come on, come on,’ he wheezes, desperately impatient.
From inside, he hears a faint thud-hiss as the mechanism releases. ‘That’s it! Jam it open.’
Using pry bars, they manage to open the door.
The room wasn’t quite drained yet, so a surge of water floods out, knocking Kade down but he recovers fast, squeezes into the room through the gap they managed to pry open.
‘Riley!’
His boss is conscious and breathing, but Lachlan is free.
He has Riley by the throat, seems to have pulled himself out of the bolted chair because he’s still wearing it around his ankles, but both hands are free.
Lachlan’s eyes are only for Kade, his gentle expression belied by the fingers digging cruelly into Riley’s throat.
‘Let him go,’ Kade warns. ‘Don’t you dare hurt him.’
‘Jules, I need you to just—’
‘LET HIM GO!’
‘I will!’ Lachlan barks, gripping harder, throttling Riley once for emphasis. The boss of Iron Star has always needed a bodyguard, and this is the second time tonight Kade has fucked up. ‘But first, let me show you something.’