Otherwise Unharmed (Evan Arden 3)
“You gonna kill me?”
“Maybe,” I responded. “If you don’t answer my fucking question in the next three seconds, yes.”
“She’s in the corner room,” he told me. “She’s tied up, but she ain’t hurt or anything, I don’t think. I didn’t touch her.”
My hands trembled a little. I didn’t know what to feel first—relief that she was still alive or rage that he had obviously considered hurting her or he never would have mentioned it.
I backed out of the room slowly.
“Don’t move a fucking muscle,” I said. “You hear?”
He nodded quickly.
I didn’t see anyone else as I raced to the far end of the building. I paused only briefly when I caught the exterior back door of the building in my vision. I kept the rifle pointed at it as I moved past and found a locked room in the hallway nearby.
The door was metal and not one I could just kick in. I took out my Beretta so I could easily aim downward at the lock without endangering anyone who might be close to the door—like Lia. Once the lock was out of the way, I kicked the door open and pointed the gun around the room.
It was one of the larger single areas of the warehouse—one that usually held a lot of crates and packages of heroin or guns. At the moment, there were no crates or skids—just a single wooden chair in the middle of the room. On the chair was Lia.
She was tied down, blindfolded, and gagged. Her arms were behind her, and her wrists were bound with plastic zip ties. She sat, slumped forward with her head lolled to one side, and for a moment, my vision went red and I couldn’t move.
The air in my lungs seemed to freeze along with my legs. I widened my eyes to watch her body carefully for any signs of movement and tightened my grip on the Beretta.
If she was dead, I’d just go ahead and turn it on myself.
No, I couldn’t. First I’d have to find the fucker who did it.
Her chest rose sharply with a
deep breath, and I nearly lost my ability to stand. A moment later, I ran forward, and her head turned toward the sound of my footsteps. As I dropped down and grabbed for her, she began to struggle and scream behind the gag.
“It’s me!” I said as I pulled the blindfold and gag from her. “It’s just me, baby. You’re all right. Jesus Christ, you’re all right.”
I cut the plastic ties from her wrists with my knife, and her arms came up around my neck. I wanted to do the same—just pull her close to me and promise her I’d never let anything happen to her again—but I knew I couldn’t. I needed to get her out of here as quickly as possible. Whoever had been shooting was more than likely still out there.
Hell, Davies could have come back in the building, assuming he was the one who took her.
“Where is he?” I asked. “Where is that fucker who took you?”
“He knew you were coming,” Lia said. “He ran off.”
Lia grabbed my shoulders tightly and looked up at me as tears began to fall.
“Oh, Evan! Odin…he tried to…he tried to save me.”
I gripped my left hand into a fist briefly, closed my eyes for a moment, and looked back at her. The actual circumstances of what happened to Odin hadn’t really entered my thoughts, but I couldn’t hear any of that now.
“Let me get you out of here and somewhere safe,” I said. “Then you can tell me what happened.”
I got the rest of the ties off of her and then helped her to her feet. She continued to cling to me, and I was perfectly fine with that. We moved swiftly down the wall at the far side of the warehouse interior and to the back door.
“Stay close,” I said.
As soon as I opened the back door, a bullet ricocheted off of it, and I found myself thankful that at least this guy was a shitty shot. I aimed my Beretta in the general direction of the trees and shot twice before I peeked around the edge.
I could see whoever it was—or the shape of him at least—hiding in the brush near the edge of the river. He was down low behind the same pile of concrete where I’d dumped Lenny’s body. It gave him lots of cover but also a bad angle to hit anything.
“We’re gonna run, baby,” I told Lia. “Keep to my left side, keep low, and keep up.”