Eyes Wide Open (The Blackstone Affair 3)

Right. Fucking. Now!

I took ahold of the damn thing and launched it with all my strength at the back of Karl’s head.

I had done the shot put in high school, and I did it now. Contact coupled with perfect precision and brutal force. Karl went down like a rock in a pond. Maybe the stories about mothers lifting cars did apply to me.

I was a mother, and Karl just got reminded of that very important fact.

I grabbed his phone off the floor and did the first thing I could think of. I held it up to the window and took a picture of the skyline. Then I sent it to my old phone number.

I hoped I’d killed Karl, because it was precisely what he deserved, but I couldn’t be sure and I didn’t want to stick around to find out. I was getting out of there.

The door ate up a precious minute of time because he’d finagled a chain lock on the inside that took me a few tries to undo because my hands were shaking so badly. I knew we were up three or four stories, and that I had to get down to the street to find safety, but when I exited the attached flat, I found myself in a corridor. This place was a mess of architectural planning. Make that complete unplanning. I looked around for the best way out. The fastest way.

The corners and stairwells reminded me of the Mission Inn in Riverside that I’d visited with my parents as a kid. You could follow different paths and end up going in crazy loops, up and down stairs and around secluded alcoves that turned you right back where you had been before. Where were the elevators in this place?

I thought about Ethan and wondered again if he understood my message in the text, and how he would ever find me. Then I thought about the GPS stuff we’d discussed, and it came to me in a flash. Facebook! With Facebook you could check into places and post your location status with a built-in GPS application.

I flicked through Karl’s phone and found the Facebook app. I logged into my account and clicked Places. I let the app do its thing and selected the first location that popped up on the list of possibilities. I almost had to laugh at what showed. Number 22-23 Lansdowne Crescent. The Samarkand Hotel. I typed on my Facebook status, I’m here, Ethan, come get me. I tagged Karl Westman in “Who are you with?” and pressed Post, continuing my desperate search for the elevators, needing to gain distance from this place.

After what seemed like forever, I found the lifts and stabbed the down button, looking around for signs of Karl approaching, or of anyone for that matter. Why was this place so dead, and where were all the people? The doors opened for me and in I hopped. I pressed G for ground and didn’t take another breath until the doors shut me in and the lift began its lumbering descent.

Freedom was in my grasp. Almost out. Ethan would see my messages on my old phone and on Facebook and know where to come for me. I could call him as soon as I found a safe place like a restaurant or a shop.

The doors opened smoothly and I stepped out into a dim courtyard sort of service entrance. This was obviously the rear entry of the hotel, not the front as I had hoped. I went out anyway, and that is when I heard Ethan call out my name: “Brynne!” The sweetest sound my ears could ever know.

I went toward the sound, focusing only on him. I could hear the urgency in his call, felt such relief. Ethan had found me; I was alive and everything was going to be okay.

“Ethan!”

I ran toward Ethan, to my love, and my whole heart, when I was snatched from behind by arms that grappled first, and then secured me tightly, entangling me like a fly in a sticky web.

“Nooooo!” I screamed in devastation.

“You didn’t think you could get away from me, did you, Brynne?” Karl’s disgusting drawl panted in my ear.

My attempt at killing him had obviously failed, because he now had a sharp blade pressed up against my neck, shocking me with its coldness, forcing me to stop struggling. The disappointment I felt was a bitter pill to swallow, but even worse was the heartbreaking sight of Ethan’s face in the twilight. He stood not less than ten yards away from me. So close, but not close enough.

Ethan’s flat-out run had come to a screeching halt, his arms splayed out in surrender, his head shaking back and forth in a silent plea to Karl not to cut me.

This . . . would be Ethan’s undoing. His fear of the blade would propel him into any kind of negotiation to free me. I knew it. Ethan would sacrifice himself to keep me from having my throat slashed. Karl could not have chosen a better trigger for Ethan’s fear in all the world.

? Events and sequences had come together in near perfect harmony, but near was not enough for my needs right now and wouldn’t be until I had her safe in my hands again.

My dad had known exactly where to find the bell tower the second I showed him the photo from Brynne, as I knew he would. Nobody knew the city of London better than my father. St. John’s Notting Hill parish church held the tower she could see from the window. Dad said she had to have taken the photo from Lansdowne Crescent.

Elaina called Neil in the car as we raced through side streets, confirming Brynne’s location at Lansdowne Crescent in Notting Hill . . . and who had taken her. Karl Westman? I did not see that one coming, and had to fight the panic that rose up inside me. The only thing helping me to function at the moment was knowing that Westman had once felt an attraction to Brynne. If he wanted her for himself, then there was a better chance she would remain alive. At least that’s what I now prayed for with everything I had.

Elaina also relayed the message Brynne typed out on her Facebook post to me, and I had to dig deep in order to hold myself together. I’m coming to get you, baby. Again, Brynne’s brilliance in problem solving blew me away. Talk about grace under pressure. Maybe she’d missed her calling and should be working for MI6 instead of conserving art.

I even spotted her coming out of the building as we skidded up. She ran toward me and called out my name. My girl was alive and running into my arms. I was about to have her back where I could touch her again, and kiss her, and tell her how she was everything to me.

But that piece-of-shit cocksucker stepped in and put his hands on her. He snatched her up and stretched a blade across her beautiful, innocent neck. There was no worse horror for me than seeing the sight of my girl with a knife threatening her throat. Threatening her life.

Karl Westman was a walking corpse. My mission in life was to see that become a reality, even if I had to become a corpse along with him to accomplish it. As long as Brynne was spared I could live with my decision. Or die with it.

“You know you cannot hurt her, Westman. Whatever you want, you can have. Money? Safe passage out of Britain? Both of those things? I can make it happen for you, but you have to let Brynne go.” Too bad I’m lying and planning your death, motherfucker.

“I don’t have to do anything you say, Blackstone!” he screeched.