Page 49 of Gatling
“I have to tie up loose ends. I have to kill him for attempting to ruin my future bride.”
Goosebumps rippled across my skin that had nothing to do with the frigid bunker, as cold as an ice box. It was like watching Olson flip a switch. Agitated and irate one moment, quiet and controlled the next.
Olson rushed to a work bench on my left and grabbed his knife, tucking it into his belt. Then he pulled a set of keys from his pocket, flipped through them, and unlocked the door.
“Wait,” I called with a jolt of panic. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me here alone!”
Ignoring me, he dragged the door open with a groan of metal hinges.
“Don’t worry, my darling. I’ll make that man pay for the things he did to you. No one will come between us again. I swear it. And when I get back, you can show me what a good wife you are by apologizing.”
I sputtered.
“Apologizing? For what?”
Olson’s eyes darkened.
“For thinking whore thoughts about that biker. Do you have any idea how close you came to becoming like the Jezebels and Delilahs of this world? You’re not unfaithful like them, Kelsie. That’s not you. Iknowyou.”
He placed his hand over his heart with sincerity to punctuate his words.
If that was true—if he actually knew me as well as he claimed to—then he would have realized the hellfire that was about to rain down on his head for targeting me.
Olson pulled the door closed, and locked it with a thunderous boom.
Chapter fifteen
Gatling
“I followed Olson’s paper trail,” Credence said. His voice sounded tinny over the speaker of Crash’s phone, holding it up for us to listen. “He bought a tract of land a few months ago. Back in May. Seven acres of undeveloped forest, about twenty miles outside of town.”
I exchanged a look with Kingpin. It would be easy to disappear and live off wild land like that. Olson probably took Kelsie there.
“Is that what the building materials are for?” Kingpin asked. “Can you tell if he’s putting a house on that land?”
Credence made a noise of disagreement.
“I called the contractor Olson hired and asked some questions. According to him, he gets enough doomsday preppers to recognize them pretty quickly and Olson was a textbook example. And the doomsday preppers all want the same thing: an underground bunker.”
"Jesus Christ," I muttered, scrubbing a hand through my hair.
“Well, shit,” Blackbeard said. “That complicates things. If Olson had holed up in a house or a motel room, we could use that to our advantage. There would be multiple points of entry.”
I shook my head as my mind reeled through possibilities, spinning one strategy after another.
“A bunker typically has one entry point. You go in, lock that shit down, and you donotintend to come out for a long, long time.”
That meant we were flying blind, too. We couldn’t get eyes on Kelsie—if she was injured, if she was even alive. Olson could lash out at her over the slightest provocation. Or she could get caught in the crossfire. A bunker just made a successful infiltration and rescue ten times harder.
“Credence,” Kingpin said. “Do you have an address for Olson’s land?”
“Sending you a map now,” Credence replied. “I’ll meet you on the road.”
Everyone scattered to their bikes. I climbed into the cage, thumping my fist against the back of Big G’s seat to signal that I was ready to go.
“We need to make a pit stop at my place,” I said.
“What for?” he called back over his shoulder.
