Page 12 of Mace

Please don’t hate me for tricking you into staying behind. I locked you inside the bunker. You can’t get out and no one can get in. Even though it may not feel like it, this is the safest you will ever be in your life.

I can’t risk running across your father and his men with you in tow. It’s too dangerous. We both know what would happen if they got a hold of you. I’m going to scout out to the nearest road while trying to get a signal on my cell phone. I don’t know what went wrong, but we can’t survive here without provisions. I’ll be back as soon as possible. If I fall, my club brothers will come for you. Don’t worry, you won’t be forgotten, they know you’re here.

He signed off his name with a heavy hand at the end and drew a big paw print. At the bottom of the page he wrote a note.

Nine says to stay safe and we’ll be back soon.

My hand holding the note dropped to my side as I slowly wrinkled it up in my fist. “Asshole!”

I couldn’t believe that I trusted him, and he left me behind. I scrambled up the ladder and tried to open the hatch. It didn’t budge. Knowing he took Nine and must have used the other entrance I ran to the other end of the bunker and tried that. It was locked tight as well.

I headed back to the living area and read the note again. He didn’t write how long he’d be, only that he’d be back soon. But what the hell did that mean? Soon could be an hour or a day. Allowing the paper to drop to the floor I sat down on the sofa and rubbed my hands up and down my face in exasperation. This was just great.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Mace was probably right about me being safer here. He also nailed my fears when he talked about me not feeling safe all by myself and my fear of being locked in and forgotten. The part of his letter that softened my heart towards him was the part that mentioned if he fell. He meant if he was caught by my father and incapacitated or killed.

Rather than eating, I started pacing again. It was a useless waste of energy, so I forced myself to eat an energy bar while I paced, which made me thirsty, so I drank some of the water. It quickly occurred to me that Mace was pretty freaking good at getting me to do what he wanted without yelling and screaming or being rude. He had a quiet dignity about him that I really liked.

Though he’d locked me in a fucking underground bunker.

I tried to control my breathing, remembering to take a breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. And eventually I managed to convince myself I was just in a room without windows.

I finally parked my ass and pulled out my cell phone, intent upon trying to get a signal. I wasn’t sure how much metal there was down here, I knew that you couldn’t get a signal in elevators, but maybe the closer I was to the surface, the better chance of getting some reception. So up the ladder once more I went. I almost did a happy dance when I got one bar to flicker and immediately called my handler. He answered but the call kept glitching out and we never had a conversation. I typed out a text letting them know I was safe and would call when I could, but never got enough of a bar for the text to go through.

Damn it!

This was my one and only chance to get immunity and federal protection for my mom and myself, to keep us from getting arrested along with my father. They’d been trying to get their hands on Juan Ramirez for years. Deals like this only came once in a lifetime and I was blowing it.

***

I didn’t know how much time passed—because realizing my phone was nigh on useless down here, I’d switched it off to conserve power and stuffed it back in my neck pouch—but I heard a commotion at the door at the far end of the bunker. At first, I was worried that my father had found me but then I heard a soft growl that ended in a whining noise and realized it was Nine.

I rushed to the door in time to see it open and Mace stumble through it, one hand clutching his side. Nine had grabbed the cuff of his shirt in his mouth and was pulling Mace forward. I rushed towards him and helped him sit down. He was sweaty and grimacing.

“What happened, Mace? Talk to me!” I demanded in a panic.

“First aid kit under the sink. Get it for me.”

His halting speech made me do a double take. I lifted the hand he had clutched against his side and saw what he was covering. It looked like a bullet wound.

“You’ve been shot!” I exclaimed.

“Hurry, Alicia. Been bleeding a long time,” he mumbled.

I jumped to my feet and flew to the kitchen and pulled open the cabinet doors directly under the sink. Sure enough, there was a huge first aid kit. I tugged it out and rushed back to Mace.

Only when I got there, he had passed out. I’d watched my mother handle bullet wounds on my father more than once, so I had some vague idea what to do. I gently rolled him onto the floor so I could check for an exit wound and give him CPR if it came to that.

Thank God there was an exit wound, and the bullet looked like it had gone clean through his side. That meant the bullet wasn’t still inside his body. He’d not taken a bullet to the abdomen which I knew was dangerous, nor had it hit his lungs or heart as he was breathing okay. I didn’t know about internal bleeding or blood loss, but it wasn’t bleeding heavily. Likely he just passed out from the exertion of getting back here. I put a compression on the wound to help slow the bleeding and taped it down. Then I rolled him onto his back and saw to the front of the wound. I hoped that he would be okay until his club brothers arrived. That’s if he’d managed to speak to them. The thought that we were trapped down here had my heart racing again, but I pushed down that fear and focused on Mace.

I rolled him into the recovery position and put a cool compress on his forehead. He came around within a few minutes and tried to sit up. Even though I tried to get him to lay back down, he refused.

“What happened out there? Did you meet up with my father?”

He nodded. “Yeah, and they were none too happy to see me without you. We traded gunfire and I managed to lose them in the undergrowth.”

“Were you able to find out what happened to your friends? I hope my father and his men didn’t harm them.”

“I don’t think it was anything like that. I made it to the road, and it was flooded out. It’s been raining a lot lately and there’s a small dam about two miles from the road. I think it broke. There was no way to cross it.”

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