Page 96 of Protecting Bianca

“A lever or a switch. There’s a secret room somewhere behind this wall.”

Will and Christian crouched down beside me.

My heart sped up at the thought of finding Bianca behind this wall alive. I didn’t want to picture it too clearly, as I would surely lose control here and now.

“I found something,” said Will.

There was a button, mid-way across the bookshelf. “Go on, press it,” I said, almost afraid to do it myself.

Will pressed the button, and the bookshelf started to move forward. It slid across the floor and stopped about three feet from the wall. It was dark inside, so I used the flashlight on my phone.

The light was narrow, but it caught something deep inside the dark room… a man’s foot. Raising the flashlight, I could see Mr. Towers’ slumped body propped up in one corner of the room, his head lobbed to the side, and his eyes closed.

Christian moved past me when I stood there, frozen. He crouched next to Towers and placed two fingers on his neck. “He’s alive.”

His words should have revived me, but I wasn’t in shock at finding Towers inside the secret room. I was scared stiff that Bianca wasn’t here beside him.

I swallowed the emotions rising in my throat and my hands shook at my sides.

“Jager, are you okay?” asked Will. He was beside me, but I barely heard him.

I shook my head. No. I wasn’t okay. Bianca wasn’t here. And if she wasn’t here with Towers, was she inside that storage container? Was her burned body lying there now while I was running around the city looking for her?

I fell to my knees in the dark room and dropped my head into my hands. Despair crept up my legs, numbing my limbs as it traveled up my body, leaving a feeling of emptiness in its place.

How would I get through this? How could I go on? I didn’t think I could lose her a second time, and definitely not like this.

I couldn’t lose her. Not. Like. This.

Will wrapped his arm across my shoulder and I wanted to sink into that floor and never get up again.

“Why?” I asked.

“Nobody knows why people do sick things.”

I shook my head. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Why kill her?”

Will shrugged. “I don’t know, brother.”

I felt myself slipping into darkness. I’d done it before when we lost Jordan, and it took months to crawl myself out of it. I fought to hold on to the light. I knew if I let myself go, I would not come back from this. “Why kill Bianca and not Towers?”

I couldn’t make sense of her death. It wasn’t an accident. Someone had set a bomb in that container. They wanted to deliver a message. But to whom?

None of it made any sense. Why kill her? Why set up a bomb halfway across the city from Towers? Why her?

Oh my God.

“What if it wasn’t a message?”

“What?” asked Will. “What are you talking about?”

“What if the bomb wasn’t a message at all?”

“I’m not following.”

“There was no note. No explanation. No reason to set up this elaborate killing… unless…”

“Unless?”

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