“Why not?” he asked, staring at her in confusion.
She smiled and said, “I can’t reach my feet.”
Diesel made a light snort, then quickly bent down, found her shoes, and slipped them on. After he’d tied them up firmly, he asked, “Is there anything here that you need?”
“No,” she said, “I just need to get out of here safe and sound with my baby.”
“The belly is bit of a complication we hadn’t counted on,” Shane admitted.
“Why is that?”
“I needed you to climb up a bit of a wall and exit through a hole, but I don’t think it’ll be big enough.”
“Ah.” She nodded.
“We’ll just have to work around it,” he said. “Are you ready to go?” She nodded. “Come on then. How mobile are you? Do you need any medication or anything like that?”
“No,” she said, “and don’t you worry about me being mobile,” she said. “You show me a door out of here, and I’ll make sure I’m out.”
He nodded, and, leading her back toward the two guards, he held up a finger to his mouth and whispered, “The guards are in there, watching TV.”
“They never come down my way anyhow.”
“But we still have to get past their door,” he said. She nodded. And although he’d locked the apartment behind them, he didn’t trust that these guys wouldn’t go check on her, even though she said that they didn’t. What he really needed was to make sure that the guards had no clue what had happened. As he neared their break room and watched, one of the men got up and said, “What the hell happened to the popcorn anyway?”
“It’s over in the cupboard,” he said. “I told you that I moved it. We ran out of space.”
“It’s not a bad job, when you get to sit here and eat popcorn all evening,” he said, patting his belly. “Although I’ll get fat.”
“You already are fat,” the other guy said. That set the first man off in raucous laughter. He turned and started digging in the cupboard. “I can’t see shit in here.”
“I told you. It’s down in the bottom.”
He crouched at the bottom cabinet, and the second guy got up and joined him.
That was the movement they needed. With Diesel leading the way, and Shane taking up the rear, they quickly swept the pregnant woman across the open doorway. It occurred to Shane that he’d forgotten to ask for her name.
He heard the two men, still wrangling about popcorn behind them. After that, it was a simple case of leading the way back to the basement again. It was all too easy though. Something nagged Shane in the back of his mind, so he pulled up to Diesel and said, “I don’t like this.”
“Good,” he said, “because neither do I.”
The woman looked at them. “My name is Aleah, by the way, and what is it you don’t like?”
“It’s been far too easy. There was no need for all this preamble to this main event, if stealing you back was this simple.”
“Well, I know a lot of the building is booby-trapped,” she said. “So I think the point was to get us out without killing me.”
“Booby-trapped how?”
“All the exits and the doors,” she said, “even the windows.”
“Which is fine since we entered through a wall,” he said. “But getting you back out again? I don’t know. I’m not so sure that’s doable.”
“I can climb,” she said, a desperate note in her voice.
“I’m not sure you can,” he said. Swearing to himself, he quickly retraced their steps back to the loading bay area, where they had first entered the building. He looked at it and said, “If we could even get out one of those doors …”
“Those are bound to be booby-trapped too,” Diesel said.
Shane walked over with his flashlight, quickly checked, and swore. “Wires are everywhere here,” he said.
“Like I said, booby-trapped,” Aleah stated.
“And, once it sets off one, it’ll set off the others.” Shane turned to look at Diesel and asked, “Any ideas?” Diesel looked up at the hole that they had made, looked down at her, and said, “Nope,” he said, “but we need to come up with something fast.”
Chapter 8
Shelly woke and sat up with a start. A stranger was in the room, over by the table. She looked at the man in question and asked, “Who are you?”
“My name is Larry,” he said quietly. “Shane and Diesel left me in charge.”
“How are they?” she asked, pushing back the covers and realizing that somebody, likely Diesel, had thrown a blanket over the top of her.
“No word yet,” he said.
She winced. “How long have they been gone?”
“Over three hours.” He studied her quietly and said, “If you want, we can order up some coffee. If you think you can go back to sleep, that would be for the best.”
“What time is it? Three o’clock in the morning?”
“After four actually,” he said.
“When are they due back?”
“Anytime,” he said. “That just means there are probably complications.”
“Crap.”
“One of the things that you learn about this business,” he said, “is that there are always complications.”
“So it’s all about pivoting and adjusting as needed.” She hopped up, went into the bathroom, and splashed some cold water on her face, wishing she would have woken up later. But now that she knew, she didn’t think there was any hope at all of her going back to sleep. As a matter of fact, as she checked her watch, it was a quarter to five. Back in the room, she sat down and said, “My name is Shelly. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” he said, with a ghost of a smile.
She studied that smile and said, “Shane warned you that I would be difficult, didn’t he?”
“He said you might be a tad upset that they left without telling you.”
“No, that’s so typical of him,” she said. “I just want him to get back safe again.”
“We all do,” he said.
“Any update on his family?” He shook his head, and she smiled. “Would you tell me if there was?” He shook his head again. She sighed. “You cloak-and-dagger guys are all the same.”
“We all have responsibilities and duties, yes,” he said. “If that makes us all the same, well, maybe so.”
She sighed. “If you don’t know anything, how will we know if something goes wrong?”
“When the news reports hit the TV,” he said calmly.
She stared at him in shock. “Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Well, if the building blows up,” he said, “there’ll be a huge boom, and that’s one way to get information,” he said. “However, we’re hoping that something subtler happens.”
“A boom,” she said faintly.
He nodded slowly. “The entire building is wired.”
She sucked in a breath. “I know he does bomb squad and is some sort of an explosives expert.”