Page 28 of The Reaper

She awoke later, in a store cupboard. Jack was crouching in front of her, in those pyjamas still. The fire alarm had stopped. She came to quickly, realising and remembering. Her hands were tied behind her back. Taped up. Her mouth taped, too. She suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe. She strained, sucking breath in through her nose.

“Keep quiet,” Jack’s voice barked at her. Cold and unfamiliar. He pulled off the tape on her mouth.

“You bastard-”

“I didn’t hit you, gas pipe exploded, you fell, if that’s what you mean-”

She tried to process it all. The air was thick with gas and smoke. The prison was on fire. The once familiar, safe corridors, the place she had grown to love, in a morbid, sombre kind of way. It was all up in flames.

He grabbed her arms, hard. “Are you with the Bratva?” he asked.

She almost laughed. “What?”

“Who do you work for?” he demanded.

“No one… Eastward Prison…” she stammered.

“Who do you work for?” he repeated. He lurched forward and she felt something sharp and cold on her throat.

“I won’t ask again, Hannah.”

She tried to swallow, but her throat trembled against the cold, sharp implement against her neck. “I’m not working for the Bratva, Jack.”

“You expect me to believe you? After you made up this whole story of a relationship with me? Let me believe-” he hissed, his face, angry. “All of that stuff you said to me, about how you feel… you expect me to believe all of that?”

“Yes!” She felt her throat breaking. Or was it her heart? “Everything I told you Jack, that was true. I mean, about how I felt about you… I’m sorry, Jack, I had to-”

His hard, uncompromising glare slacked with puzzlement slightly.

“I know you’re playing me, Hannah.”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Come on, I’m not stupid, I don’t trust you, but you are my ticket out of here, so you are coming with me,” he said.

He didn’t trust her. It felt like her universe shattered.

She pulled away to look at the cold thing he had to her throat. A surgical scalpel. She frowned. He must have taken it from the ward earlier. He had suspected, he had prepared, he hadn’t hesitated to threaten to use it.

“You wouldn’t have,” she said, flicking her gaze to the sharp, cold metal, but her voice completely lacked all sense of certainty. She didn’t know anything anymore.

“Don’t test me, Hannah,” he ground out.

But a coldness crept up her spine, like damp. She opened her mouth to apologise, to try to reason with him.

“Keep quiet,” he warned her before she had said anything.

“Untie me,” she said, trying to sound defiant, failing pathetically.

“No chance,” he replied flatly. “Come on.” He nodded his head in the direction of the door.

He manhandled her out of the store cupboard, dragging her by her arm. With her hands tied behind her back, it was pulled along at an awkward angle. The corridors were silent. Eerily so. Of course, everyone had evacuated the building.

He stalked along the corridors like a tiger, pausing to listen occasionally, looking.

“You set off the fire alarm?” She asked with a frown.

He scoffed. “You set that.”

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