Take the Key and Lock Her Up (26 page)

She noted with interest that he still had his gun in a holster on his belt and the
knife sheathed on the other side. She down on the bed and prepared to ask him all
the questions swirling through her mind. Once she had the information she needed,
she’d pressure him to let her out of the cell. Or distract him somehow while she grabbed
his gun and left
him
locked up in here instead of her.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Let’s skip the small talk and not pretend we’re anything other than enemies.”

He slowly shook his head. “I’m not your enemy, Emily.”

“Right, because
friends
drug each other, tie them up, and stuff them into suitcases.”

“They do if that’s what it takes to keep their friends alive.”

“Yeah, about that. That’s the part where you lose me. Because I don’t understand any
of this. What’s going on? Why did Cougar and that other guy—”

“Ace.”

“Whatever. Why did they come after me?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Emily, but the less you know the better.”

“Better for whom? You? If you were in my place, wouldn’t you want to know why this
was happening?”

His look turned guarded. “I can’t answer your questions without putting you more at
risk. You’ll just have to trust me about that. The only way you may be able to return
to your life the way it was is if I can convince the people who are after you that
you aren’t a threat.”

She blinked. “
May
be able to return?” She swallowed hard. “Are you saying I was right all along? I
was fishing, reaching, when I originally accused you of being an assassin. But Cougar
talked about an EXIT order, making it sound like a contract on my life. If that’s
true, if EXIT really is a front, then what happened at my house makes a twisted kind
of sense. It was my conversation with Cyprian, wasn’t it? When I told him my assassin
theory, that’s when he put out that EXIT order, right? That’s why—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Devlin shoved away from the bars and strode to the bed. He stopped
less than a foot away, staring down at her, his face a mask of worry. “Tell me you’re
generalizing about your conversation. Please tell me that when you spoke to Cyprian,
you did not say I was an assassin.”

For the first time since interviewing Devlin, she began to comprehend that the way
she’d been throwing her theories around might have been a horrible mistake. She’d
always felt a certain invincibility as a member of the law-enforcement community:
respected, supported by the majority of citizens who believed in the laws that made
society function and kept people safe.

But what if there really were huge corporations like EXIT Inc. to whom the law didn’t
matter? How could she fight an entity like that if she was in their crosshairs?

Her hands started to shake. She clasped them together, hoping Devlin wouldn’t notice.
“No, I wasn’t generalizing.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

He stepped closer and put his hands on top of hers. She should have snatched her hands
back, but the concerned look on his face brought up all her fears again and, instead,
she clutched his hands with hers.

“Tell me what you said to Cyprian.”

“I wanted to shake the tree, see what fell out. So I . . . ah . . . bluffed my way
through the conversation. I
might
have implied that you had confessed to being an assassin for them and that you had
told me . . . um . . . everything.”

He closed his eyes, a pained look crossing his face.

She fought down the panic rising inside her. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,
a scattergun approach, throw crazy theories out and see what happens. But I’m guessing
now it probably wasn’t the brightest thing I could have done.”

He laughed bitterly. “No. It wasn’t.”

Earlier, when he’d faced a man with a knife or dove in front of a man with a gun to
protect her, he’d seemed strong, confident, invincible. Now, at this moment, he was
none of those things. His gaze darted around the cell without really seeing anything,
as if he were considering different courses of action, reading through an invisible
playbook in his mind and discarding every option as unfeasible.

“You really are a hired assassin?” She wanted him to deny it, but when his dark gray
eyes stared back at her, unblinking, she knew the truth. She tugged her hands out
of his and wrapped her arms around her waist.

He dropped his hands to his sides and took a step back. The earlier worry on his face
was gone. He’d steeled his deceptively handsome features into an unreadable mask.

“I don’t . . . understand,” she whispered. “You . . . kill people. For money.”

“Yes.”

Her gaze flew to his. “You work for the same person as Cougar and Ace.”

“Yes,” he repeated, his voice firm, matter-of-fact.

“But . . . but instead of letting them kill me, you risked your life to save me.”
Her fingers dug painfully into her skin as she stared up at him. Anguish and confusion
washed through her. “Why? Why did you do that?”

“It’s . . . complicated.”

Her shock gave away to anger again. “Killing people isn’t complicated, Devlin. It’s
wrong. Plain and simple.”

“Is it, Emily? Wrong? Simple? If a terrorist plans to maim and kill dozens of people
and someone like me takes him out before he can destroy all those lives, is that wrong?”

“Is that what you’re saying you do, Devlin? Kill people you think are bad
before
they commit a crime?”

“What would you say if I said yes?”

“I’d say that’s wrong. Simple. That you have no right to judge someone else. That’s
not how society operates. We have rules, laws, for a reason, to keep us all civilized,
to keep us all safe. I’d say that you’re deluding yourself if you think you’re a hero
for making preemptive strikes against people you perceive as evil. That makes you
just as bad as the people you kill.”

The skin around his jaw tightened. “Now who’s judging? I may not be a hero, but I’m
not a damn hypocrite either. You police say you want to protect people, but you come
to their aid only
after
a crime has been committed. That’s not protecting. That’s just cleaning up the mess
when it’s too late.” He leaned forward, his dark eyes flashing with anger. “If the
police had done what they should have done, if they’d really cared about helping people,
Arianna wouldn’t have died.”

The pain in his voice, and the surprise on his face, told her he’d said more than
he’d meant to say. He drew a ragged breath, obviously struggling to get his emotions
back under control.

“Who’s Arianna?” Emily whispered.

He stiffened. Without another word, he turned and left the cell, locking the door
behind him.

It was only then that Emily realized she’d forgotten to try to grab his gun.

S
HE MUST HAVE
dozed off because all of a sudden, Emily jerked awake and sat up in bed, disoriented,
trying to get her bearings. Without a clock or a watch or even windows, she had no
real perception of how much time had passed since her devastating conversation with
Devlin.

Since leaving her in the cell, he’d spent most of the time sitting at a desk in the
middle of the other room. Ignoring her repeated questions and requests that he let
her out, he’d focused entirely on the laptop in front of him, occasionally printing
out information and making handwritten notes. Twice he went through one of two doors
on the right side of the room. But he ignored her when she asked where those doors
led.

He must have been behind one of those doors again because she didn’t see him anywhere.
A few minutes later, one of the doors opened and he stepped through it.

He was dressed all in black, right down to his boots. The telltale thickness beneath
his shirt told her he was wearing Kevlar. His knife was sheathed, hanging from his
belt on one side, his holstered pistol on the other. But what had Emily paying close
attention was the network of elastic bands fitted over the top of his head, connected
to a chinstrap. Attached to the front, currently tilted up out of the way, was a piece
of equipment she’d never used but recognized—night-vision goggles. He was dressed
to go out into the night, maybe to tangle with some bad guys. So what did that mean
for
her
?

Without a glance in her direction, he headed to the stairs. Was he going to leave
her behind? Panicked, she hopped off the bed and ran to the cell door, yanking on
it even though she knew it was locked. “What are you doing, Devlin?” she called out.

He didn’t answer and started up the stairs.

“‘
Take the key and lock her up
,’” she yelled. “Is that what you’re doing? You’re going to just leave me to rot here
like those other women in that basement in Savannah? Like Shannon Fisher?”

He froze, his hand clutching the handrail. Even in profile, from twenty feet away,
tension was evident in every line of his body. She immediately regretted her outburst.
In spite of what she’d learned about him—that he was the assassin she’d originally
feared him to be—she was confident he would never hurt an innocent person, especially
a woman. His sacrifices for her, if nothing else, told her that. But the idea of being
locked up, helpless, alone, was more than she could bear.

“Please,” she said, hating that he’d forced her to beg. “Please don’t leave me here
to die.”

“You’re safer here than outside. I’ll be back soon.” He jogged up the stairs and disappeared
through the trap door.

P
LEASE DON’T LEAVE
me here to die.

Emily’s parting words echoed in Devlin’s mind as he paused at the edge of his property,
looking down the sloping front lawn at his house. The accusation in those words, the
comparison between him and the animal who’d butchered those women, had sent a hot
rush of fury through every muscle in his body. But the underlying anguish in her words
had sent guilt crashing down on him. For years he’d performed his job without doubts.
Since meeting Emily, he was questioning every decision and, for the first time in
years, asking himself whether what he was doing was
right
.

He still didn’t know the answer.

Contrary to what Emily must think of him, taking a life was never something he took
lightly. It was a distasteful, necessary consequence of actions his marks had taken.
A last resort when other forms of justice had failed. Thankfully, not all of his missions
involved executing someone. The majority centered around reconnaissance, intelligence
gathering, or escorting operatives from various alphabet agencies to and from sensitive
locations. On occasion he even provided evidence to law-enforcement agencies—anonymously,
of course—to point their investigations in the right direction. But never before had
he forcefully abducted someone who wasn’t his mark, someone who’d done nothing to
warrant such treatment. It didn’t feel right. But what was the alternative? Let her
go free, only to die at the hands of an enforcer?

The solution, whatever it was, would have to wait. Right now he needed to be on his
game, in case anyone was out here watching his house to see if he’d come back. Originally,
he’d planned to use only the hidden bunker—a brisk thirty-minute hike away—and not
come near the house itself, but while he’d sat watching Emily, waiting for her to
wake up, he’d begun weighing the risks of sneaking back to the house versus the rewards.

Hiding in the bunker long-term wasn’t an option. He had to find Kelly. To do that,
he needed information. Which was why he was here.

Technically, it was already Sunday morning, a little after one o’clock. Ace was, hopefully,
asleep somewhere, licking his figurative wounds. But he might have asked Cyprian to
assign him a group of newbies, more probationary enforcers like Cougar to keep an
eye on all of Devlin’s known properties overnight, just in case he showed up at one
of them. Which meant a team could be close by.

He had security cameras inside and outside the bunker, accessible through the panel
in his bedroom, so he could check on Emily while he was here. That helped assuage
some of his worries about leaving her alone. The trapdoor entrance at the top of the
stairs was locked and concealed. There was no reason to worry that anyone would find
it. And if all went as planned, he’d be back in less than an hour.

Keeping to the tree line and using his night-vision goggles to see, he circled around
to the bolt-hole a hundred yards behind the house. He’d read about bolt-holes—secret
exits—in a book on castles years ago and thought that sounded like an excellent strategy.
Since then he’d ensured he had one in all of his hideouts, just in case he needed
to get out in a hurry undetected. Except this time, he was going to use the bolt-hole
to get
in
undetected.

The bushes had grown thick around the concealed entrance. It took several minutes
of careful trimming with his hunting knife to make a space big enough for him to slide
into the tunnel. About ten feet in was a steel door secured with an electronic lock
and keypad. He entered the code and jogged down the tunnel the rest of the way. A
second door required another code, and then he was sliding the wall panel back and
stepping into his master bedroom. The house was dark, but there was enough light from
the moon filtering through the pinhole openings around the cords in the window blinds
to make the goggles still useful.

He accessed the hidden security panel in the wall and pressed his thumb to activate
the wall scanner. He swiped his finger across the screen, checking each camera angle
of the house, both inside and out. All clear. Even the long winding road that led
to the house was deserted.

He keyed in an access code to check the camera views of his other properties, including
the bunker. Each view displayed the GPS coordinates so he could easily direct fellow
enforcers to one of his hideouts if he ever needed help. Of course tonight that was
the last thing he wanted.