Buried under a foot of rubble on a small ledge, with a section of metal railing barely hanging on, I could make out the back of Harm’s head and shoulders.
He shifted again, and more small pieces dislodged from his back.
“Harm, goddamn it, if you can hear me, do not move!” Fuck, fuck. “You’re on a ledge. Two inches to your left and you’ll drop fifteen feet. You hear me?”
He groaned once, and his shoulders moved again.
“Harm! Do not move!”
He pushed his arm out and jostled the metal railing.
FUCK.
“Harm,” I yelled.
Realizing his hearing was fucked from the explosion, I grabbed my Sig, flipped the safety on and reached toward a section of metal railing near me. Then I tapped out STOP in Morse code using the barrel of the gun.
Harm moved again.
I tapped again, then again.
Oh the fourth try he finally turned his head and looked up.
I switched to the military hand signals for stop and hold position.
Blood all over his forehead, he stared at me.
I did it again.
“I see you,” he rasped.
Thank fuck. I gave him the hand signal for wait before spreading my fingers wide to indicate five minutes. Then I verbally told him what I was doing. “I’m going back to the suite to see what I can find to get down there to you. Do not move. You’re on a ledge that’s barely holding. Stay.”
He shook his head, then winced in pain. “No.”
“Wait,” I reiterated.
“No.” Inhaling and coughing, he shook his head and cringed. Then he looked right at me. “Abernathy. Alive.”
I thought I heard Ronan yelling, but the sound was muffled through the mattress, and I couldn’t make out any words. Worried, I lifted a corner to peek, but I couldn’t see through the makeshift tent he’d made for me.
I hadn’t heard any more concrete dropping, and there hadn’t been another explosion, but the wind that was blowing in from the broken windows was picking up and making an eerie howling noise. A noise that sounded exactly like a hurricane.
Trying not to panic, adjusting the cloth over my face, I lifted the mattress another few inches. I was too warm and my heart was racing too fast. I wanted out from under here, but I’d also glimpsed the ceiling and the state of the suite, and I was too terrified to venture out.
“Ronan?”
Footsteps crunched across debris.
“Oh thank God.” I pushed the mattress up higher to crawl out. “Are you okay? Why were you yell—”
The curtain tent ripped back, and my heart caught in my throat.
Kyle Abernathy.
A decade older, his nose much smaller, his hair long like a woman’s, he was in a dress. Covered in soot, he sneered at me with the same beady eyes and thin lips I remembered. “Surprised? You shouldn’t be.”
Oh dear God.
With a device in his hand, and large headphones around his neck—the kind to protect your ears on a construction site—he kicked at the mattress. “Get up, bitch, or I’ll blow what’s left of this floor and you can kiss your pretty little self and your boyfriend goodbye. Or should I say boyfriends? Twins.” He snorted with disgust. “You always were a slut.”
Fear stole my breath and robbed my reason.
But then Kyle did something he shouldn’t have. Something Vance had always done when we were sparring to provoke me.
Kyle Abernathy yelled.
“Get up!”
It was automatic. My limbs loosened, my breathing evened and I cataloged. The distance between me and him, how he held the device, where his arms where, how his legs were positioned. I indexed all of it in seconds as I slowly, carefully got out from under the mattress and stood.
Then he made his second mistake.
Kyle grabbed me around the neck and brought my back to his chest in a maneuver Vance had done to me hundreds of times.
I knew this position.
I knew it well.
“We’re going for a little walk, bitch. Move.”
“Stop, please.” Hoping he would think I was terrified, instead of just very, very angry, I positioned my hands on his arm. “You’re choking me.”
“Shut up and walk or I’ll detonate the next bomb and you can kiss your boyfriend and your injured security detail in the stairwell goodbye.”
True fear eclipsed my anger. “If you blow up any more of this building, we’ll all die.”
“You think I care about dying?” He snorted again. “I spent nine years locked up. Death would be a fucking cake walk.” Holding me tight, he moved us toward the bedroom door.
“There’s nowhere to go, we can’t get off this floor.” Ronan would’ve told me if there was an easy way down.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” He didn’t wait for a response. “You think I’d blow up a building with me in it and not have a way out?” he asked, reeking of contemptuous superiority. “Think again, Songbird.”
Fury eclipsed all common sense, and I sucked in an angry breath as my fingers dug into his arm.
His breath putrid, Kyle laughed. “Oh, you don’t like me calling you that? Should I wait until I’m fucking you before I use that little pet name he gave you?”
Movement caught my eye at the doorway and the barrel of a gun appeared a split second before Ronan came into view.
Aiming at Kyle’s head, Ronan blocked the doorway. “Let her go,” he ordered, in a lethally calm tone.
“Ah, the boyfriend. Or maybe I should ask which one you are since you’re so fucking interchangeable now. The murderer or the one who pays off the cops—not that it matters, because it looks like you’re both still fucking her.”
“This is between you and me, Abernathy,” Ronan warned.
“Right,” Kyle spit vicious sarcasm. “Because she didn’t fuck me over ten years ago to work directly with Amherst when I was the one sticking my neck out to sign her inexperienced ass. Yeah, sure, she has no part in ruining my entire fucking life.”
“Release her,” Ronan commanded.
“Do I look that fucking stupid?” Kyle challenged.
His glare deadly, Ronan didn’t answer.
Kyle snorted. “Sure, go ahead and think I’m the stupid one when I got past all your security losers by getting a nose job and wearing a dress.” He laughed manically. “Keep underestimating me, Conlon. Go ahead and shoot me, or take another shot at beating me up. See what happens if my thumb releases this pressure trigger.”
“Let. Her. Go.”
“Well, now you have a choice,” Kyle gloated, ignoring Ronan’s lethal tone. “What are you going to do, lover boy? Watch us walk away or kill us all?” With his fingers firmly around the device in his hand, he used the back of his knuckles to stroke my cheek. “If my thumb slips even a millimeter…” He made a soft explosion sound. “It’s lights out, for all of us.”
“With the sole purpose of not spilling your blood on Sanaa when I shoot you, I’m giving you one last chance. The device is disabled. You’re not detonating anything. Let her go and you won’t die.”
Kyle laughed hard. “If you’d disabled the bomb, you would’ve shot me on sight.”