Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
“Anything?” I ask, not wasting words at this point. I don’t want niceties. I want Alana back.
“We’ve entered the basement,” he says, pulling us onto the road. “And no, I don’t know if she’s there. We’re in operational silence until they clear any hostiles.”
Hostiles.
The one who’d use and abuse Alana in their captivity.
I curse and curl my fingers into my palms, needing to punch someone right now, and that someone would be my father. My jaw tics, my head throbs, and when the vehicle once again ends up trapped in hellish traffic, I’m not living this shit again. I open my door. “I’m taking the subway,” I announce, and this time, I don’t wait for approval.
Five minutes later, I’m already on the train. Another five, and I’m exiting the tunnel a block from Alana’s mother’s building, and one glance at the packed roadways in all directions and I doubt Casey has moved at all. I run the remainder of the distance between me and what I hope is Alana. I arrive at the front door of the building, and one of the Walker men waits on me, introducing himself as Smith. As expected, he’s on par with the rest of the Walker crew: tall and fit, with sharp, unreadable eyes, but unlike the rest of them, he has a whole hell of a lot of good news to deliver. “Alana’s down there and alive,” he announces. “We have one hostile in custody and currently cuffed to a chair.”
Relief washes over me hard and fast. “What does safe mean? Is she injured?”
“She’s talking to us, but she’s in a locked room that we’re trying to get inside.”
“Make the bastard give you the key.”
“It’s electronic, and he swears he doesn’t know the code. Blake’s hacking it now.”
“Holy fuck,” I murmur, scrubbing my jaw in utter consternation. I can barely believe the way history is repeating itself, and not in a good way. Alana’s locked in a room with a password-protected door that isn’t working. I can only hope like hell it’s not pitch dark in there.
“Can I go down?”
“Yes. Blake is asking for you.”
Blake, but not Alana. I don’t miss his word choice, which is no accident, but he’s already walking away, and I’m fast on his heels, impatient for the answers I will only find with Alana. We travel through the wide girth of the lobby, and in the process, my mind slips back into the past, to the night when Alana ended up trapped in that wine cellar. I’d quickly ushered her away from my father and out of our house to walk her home. I’m back there now, living it all over, hyperaware of her silence, concerned with how withdrawn she’s become.
She’s silent when she normally chats me up, I think, and when I stretch my arm and wrap it around her, she doesn’t pull away or object, when she’d never allow such an action any other time. We’re “just friends,” after all, and it’s not appropriate.
But she doesn’t just let me hold her. She leans into me, and she is soft and delicate next to me. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted from Alana.
We travel the six steps to her porch and halt at the top. It’s then that she seems to realize the intimacy of our bodies, and she abruptly rotates to face me, a doe in the headlights look in her eyes. Everything about her is in a state of alertness and panic right now, and guilt stabs at me for allowing her to get locked inside the darkness.
I attempt to drive away her panic by just getting back to us. “We never got that pizza.”
“No,” she whispers, “no, we didn’t.” Her eyes flicker with trepidation, and I know then that our little exchange has reminded her of why our evening was abruptly halted. It’s reminded her of being trapped in the pitch-black basement.
I dare to catch her hand and walk her to me. “I never got my kiss. If I’d kissed you when I wanted to, I would have been locked in the cellar with you, and we could have made out until the lights came on.”
Her laughter is soft, and it fills me with relief. She’s not all fear right now. I’m breaking through the darkness now. She even pokes my shoulder. “You know that wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Why is that, Alana?”
“You know why,” she chides, but when her hand settles on my chest to push me away, there’s a moment of pressure before her palm settles softly against me, signaling how conflicted she is with her words. “We can’t ruin a good thing,” she whispers.
“What if we make a good thing better?”
It’s right then that the headlights flicker and blast across the driveway as her parents return home. The moment is lost, and this night has officially gone everywhere I didn’t want it to go, and nowhere, I’d hoped.