Page 43 of Strangers in Love

Then he awkwardly patted me on the back, and I remembered that I was hugging a complete stranger, and I had no idea if we were safe. I jumped back, something he’d said just registering.

Us.

Your sister sent us…

“Are the others okay?”

He gave me a look that I couldn’t figure out. “Follow me.”

At the doorway, he stopped and looked both ways, raising his gun. That answered one of my unasked questions. We weren’t safe. Not entirely, at least. Whoever the “us”was, they hadn’t come in with a definitive show of force that had completely taken over the building before looking for me.

“Keep your eyes on my back,” he ordered, his voice low. “Don’t look around.”

The moment we stepped out into the hallway, I understood the reason for his instruction. The man who’d thrown me into the cell was on the ground, a neat hole in his forehead and blood on his chest. I stopped and stared, unable to tear my gaze away from those open eyes. I’d never seen a dead body before.

“Aline!”

My head jerked up at the sharp sound of my name, and the man glared at me for a moment before his gaze flicked over my head.

“I said to keep your eyes on my back.” His tone was firm but not mean. “We can’t afford for you to freeze up because you saw something like this.”

I nodded. He was right. But we’d only gone a few steps when I realized something important.

“We’re going the wrong way.”

He didn’t look back at me, and he didn’t stop. A couple loud bangs that I assumed were gunfire made me jump, and I wanted to run right up behind him, hold on tight.

Be safe.

But I couldn’t.

“We’re going the wrong way,” I said again. When I didn’t get a response, I reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt. “We have to go back.”

He stopped and straightened, revealing that he was even taller than I’d first thought. Easily six and a half feet. When he turned toward me, I could see that he was used to his height intimidating people.

Too bad it didn’t work on me.

“We aren’t safe,” he said, his voice tight. “Don’t you hear what’s happening?”

“I do,” I said. “But there are four more people being held prisoner, maybe more.”

“We don’t have the time to go room to room,” he argued. “But I looked in all the ones I passed. They were empty.”

“Because they’re up there.” I pointed the opposite way. “We need to get them.”

He opened his mouth, and I was sure he was going to yell at me, but instead, he grabbed my arm and yanked me back, putting me behind him. For a second, I couldn’t figure out what he was doing, but then I heard shouting that was too close for comfort.

Gunshots. I clapped my hands over my mouth to hold in a scream. A bullet hit the wall next to me, and I did scream, but my hands muffled the sound. Then he grunted, stumbling backward, and I threw up my hands in time to keep him from falling into me. He was a lot bigger than me, but he didn’t need me to catch him, just give him a little push back to keep his balance.

He fired again, and then it was quiet. It felt like a million years passed, but I knew, in reality, it’d only been a minute, if that.

I was shaking as he turned to me, and I caught a glimpse of three more bodies. My stomach lurched, and I was suddenly thankful that I hadn’t eaten recently.

“Ann Sullivan on the move to Bravo station.”

Ann Sullivan?

It hit me in a flash. My code name was one of the most famous teachers in the world. Helen Keller’s instructor. And we were heading to a certain point the team – god, I hoped it was a big team – had determined ahead of time.

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