Page 73 of The Deeper Game
I didn’t want to unlock the door and let him in, but I couldn’t have him out there drawing attention to me—I still had forty-five minutes to go in this position.
I cracked the window. “What’s going on?”
“Hello, miss. I just noticed it was you.” He smiled the smile of a man confident of his charms. In some universe, maybe. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“I can’t talk,” I said, all terse and businesslike.
He didn’t leave.
My heart pounded. How was he not getting it?
He was in the scene. Not only in the scene, but he was a highly trained military man and security guy.
A cop car crawled down the street, slowly.
“Catch you later,” I said, a pretty direct message. “Okay?”
He launched into something about the hookup for the front door camera and a rain shield, whatever that was. He wanted to swing by and check out this rain shield. He thought it could short out the whatever thingy, though to give him his due, he used more technical sounding words than that.
It wasn’t his words that sent the cold, cold feeling spreading through me.
It was me suddenly knowing it was him. I knew it deep in my bones.
Manning was the feather guy.
He seemed to recognize right when I got it. I tried to put up the window, but he shoved a gun muzzle in there.
Shit!
A scratching at the door. He was picking the lock.
I could practically feel the blood drain from my cheeks.
With shaking hands, I grabbed the keys, fit them into the ignition, and started the engine. He wouldn’t shoot me—not out here. Before I could throw it into drive, he was sliding into the passenger seat, gun on me, end fat with a silencer.
I grabbed the phone, thinking to give the abort code.
“Don’t you dare, bitch.” In a flash, Manning had the phone. But it gave me the opportunity to grab the barrel of his gun. Quickly I got both hands involved, twisting it so that it pointed out the windshield. My arms and hands strained, trying to get the gun. He started forcing it around slowly. I put all my might into not letting him, but he was too strong, too big. I let go when he pointed it back at me.
“That was stupid. You want me to pull the trigger?” he asked, close to me now, breath stinky and warm.
“You’d get arrested.”
“Oh, I don’t know. They might be a lot more interested in what’s happening inside the Prime. If I were to tell them. Who knows? Maybe I’ll say I’m here stopping you.”
My blood went cold.
“I’ll say you’re part of the gang,” I said. “And that I’m here to stopyou.”
“Is that your story? Because I’m willing to take that chance. I think they’ll believe an ex-Navy SEAL over the word of aStockholm Syndrome hostage, but you go ahead and roll those dice.”
“Thor.”
“Yes, that was me. He’ll be stuck in traffic right about now. It’ll be at least three hours before he figures this out, but we’ll be gone. And if you do anything fucked up whatsoever, I’m going to have the cops in there so fast—you understand?”
I glared over his shoulder at the sidewalk. That was all the answer he’d get from me.
“Hands on the wheel.”
