Page 92 of Bravo

I remain where I am, frozen in place, staring at the door, and knowing I can’t even look out the window to see how bad things are. Though even as the employee cabins are a good distance from here, I can see orange flickering in the small window at the top of the door.

A phone rings.

I turn and scan the room for it, but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. Rushing down the hall, I check all the bedrooms then come to a stop outside the back door. It sounds louder here.

It stops.

Seconds later, the ringing begins again. Even knowing I shouldn’t, I unlock the back door and peer outside. A small phone has been dropped on the mat just outside. Reaching down, I pick it up and bring it inside.

The pit in my stomach tells me I should leave it, but when it starts ringing for a third time, I give in and answer it. “Hello?”

“Kennedy, I have to say, it’s good to hear your voice.”

My blood goes cold, my body rigid. I’m frozen in place, trapped in fear.

“Nothing to say? That’s okay, I have enough to say for the both of us,” Alexander Brown says into the phone. “There will be deaths that came from that. At least one, maybe more.”

The explosion.

It was him.

“Tell me, Kennedy, how many people are going to have to die before you give me back what belongs to me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He chuckles into the phone. “You know, I never particularly thought much of you before, Kennedy. But you’ve impressed me these past couple of years.”

“Glad to hear it.” I rush into my bedroom and retrieve my gun then take a seat in the corner of the room where I have a vantage point of the door. “What do you want?”

“You’re not even a little curious as to how I managed to get a phone on the back door of your boyfriend’s house without any of his cameras picking it up?”

“I imagine you’re going to tell me.”

“A drone. Rather clever contraptions, really. They can even deliver—say—bombs, without so much as a single boot on the ground.”

My stomach lurches as I think of the innocent men staying in those cabins. How many died because of me?

“Now, I have a really great view of your boyfriend at the moment. Big guy. But they fall too, you know. And all it would take is the press of a butto?—”

“No! Please no. What do you want? Just tell me what you want.”

“Don’t play stupid with me. I want what was stolen from me.”

“If it’s Olivia back, I can’t give you that. You know, since you had her killed.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “I want the thumb drive, and I want you to bring it to me.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“You don’t want a war, do you, Kennedy?” When I don’t immediately answer, Alexander clicks his tongue. “What a shame it would be to see that ranch leveled to nothing but ash. To die knowing that this family who took you in would be buried just as your parents were. With no funeral. Just their once-warm bodies lowered in the cold, hard ground.”

I swallow thickly, trying desperately to keep the panic out of my voice.

“What a sad outcome that would be for everyone,” he adds.

I don’t want to die, but I will not sacrifice a single inch of this ranch to save my own life. Not when my death could save them all.

“I want you to bring me the thumb drive. So I can deal with it and you appropriately and end this thing once and for all.”

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