Chapter 6 #2
I take it and tuck it into the waistband of my trousers and pull my shirt over it and I stand and I say, to his back, "I need to use the bathroom."
He raises one hand in acknowledgement without turning.
I walk to the door and I turn the key that is sitting in the lock and I step out and I lock it behind me and I run.
The corridor is empty. I run anyway, expecting doors to open, expecting footsteps, expecting hands. Nothing comes. I find a staircase and take it down and push through a heavy door and I am outside.
The compound is open around me, and there are no guards that I can see. My heart is slamming against my ribs and I don't stop to question the absence because questioning it costs time I don't have. I run for the gate.
It is enormous and locked with a mechanism I have no key for. I grab the bars and shake them and they don't move and I step back and look at the wall.
It is high. But the stone is old and there are cracks and protrusions and I grew up climbing the oak tree in the garden of every house my father ever rented for campaign season because nobody told me I couldn't.
I put the gun between my teeth. I climb.
My fingers find the gaps and my feet find the ledges and I don't look down and I don't think about how high it is and I slip once, badly, my right foot losing its hold and my whole body swinging out before my hands catch and hold and I press my forehead against the stone and breathe through my nose until my arms stop shaking.
Then I keep going.
I get to the top and I jump and the landing jars up through my ankles and my knees and I stumble forward and I look up and there is a car idling directly in front of me. I know before the window rolls down.
I don't know how he got out of the locked room, but I know it's him.
"Fuck," I mutter and I run.
I am still running when the second car pulls across the end of the road and the doors open and he steps out.
He looks at me across the distance between us and he smiles. It is a genuine smile, which is somehow worse than anything else he has shown me.
"Princess." He walks toward me unhurried, hands loose at his sides. "You're quite capable. I'm hurt. It seems you didn't actually want to spend time with me."
"The hotel knows I'm missing," I tell him, and I am panting and I keep the gun up. "It's only a matter of time before the police raid this entire compound. Let me go now and I won't say a word about any of this."
He stops in front of me.
"Princess." His smile stays. "Can I tell you a secret?"
"Step back," I snap, jabbing the gun toward him. "Step back right now or I will—"
His hand moves faster than I can track it. The gun goes down, his fingers hook around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, forcing my chin up and my attention to him completely.
"The gun isn't loaded," he says.
I stare at him.
"And second," he continues, with the patient tone of someone explaining something to a child, "I own the hotel you stayed in. How do you think my men came in so easily?"
My legs stop working but he holds me up. One hand still at my throat, keeping me upright, and with the other, he takes the gun from my loose fingers. He steps back, raises it, and presses the barrel to my head.
I squeeze my eyes shut as the trigger clicks.
Nothing.
A tear runs down my face. He had let me find it.
Of course, the drawer had been slightly open and the corridor had been empty and the compound had been clear and all of it, every single piece of it, had been arranged.
He would not leave a loaded gun in a drawer that a captive could reach.
He would not be so careless about any of it.
I had run his obstacle course and congratulated myself on every step and he had been outside in a car waiting.
He lowers the gun.
"You've tried to escape twice now, princess." His voice is almost gentle. "I'm really going to have to punish you for that."
He signals his men without looking at them. Two of them move toward me. That's when I see the knife.
It is in the pocket of the man on my left, the handle protruding just slightly above the fabric, and I don't think.
I move. I grab it and I spin and every piece of rage and humiliation and exhaustion and fear that has been accumulating for six days comes up through my arm and out through my hand and I drive the blade into his chest and I scream as I do it.
Everything stops. I look at my hand and I look at him.
The knife is in his chest. He is looking down at it with an expression I have never seen on his face before, something that has no control in it at all, something unguarded and almost wondering. Then he looks up at me.
He smiles.
It is small and strange and completely unhurried. He lifts one hand and strokes my chin with his thumb, very lightly, and his eyes stay on mine. Then his legs go and he drops.
The knife falls from my hand when he does.
I don't know when I let go of it. I sink to my knees on the ground in front of him and my hands are shaking and I can't look away from his face and something is happening in my chest that has no business being there, something that has nothing to do with escape plans or strategy or survival.
"Why didn't you get out of the way?" I hear myself ask.
My voice comes out broken.
"Why didn't you get out of the way?"