Page 188 of Chalk Outline
The temperature drops.
Our steps grow heavier as we try to reach the sixth gate. I bring the key card to the tablet when a throaty scream tears through my ear.
“Reeve!” I scream back.
My stomach drops, and my heart races wildly. My breaths are barely audible; I don’t even know if I’m actually breathing as I dash through the gate and yank the doors open one after another.
I wince as something tears into my skin, blood rushing out of the gash in my hand. My eyes snap to the barbed wire on the door. I pull out my pocket knife, rip my sleeve, and wrap it tightly around the wound.
I don’t have time for this.
“Don’t move,” says a voice behind me. Soft. Tired. Womanly. “Or I will hurt your friend.” She sounds like the woman I talked to.
The cold feeling of metal against my nape freezes me.
“Mitch,” I murmur.
“He’s here, but one wrong move and I’ll shoot him.” She pauses. “Point blank. He will die instantly.” The cocking of a gun echoes.
“Fine. What do you want?”
“Start walking,” she commands, “both of you.”
We follow her instructions. Mitch walks beside me. We exchange glances as we go through a door with iron bars resembling a cell.
“I brought you something,” the woman proudly announces as we enter the room. Reeve’s head snaps toward me, eyes meeting mine. Blood drips down his face. His hands are shackled. He looks tired, angry, and in pain.
I keep a straight face for him. For me. For us.
“I love you,” I mouth.
“Kim, you finally joined us,” says the man in a suit and Oxford shoes as he turns around to face us.
James.
“Winona, what a pleasant surprise.” His grin widens. “You played the game very well, I must say. I get why my son adores you so much. He likes challenges, and you’re a challenging woman. A strong one indeed. He lives to protect the ones he loves fiercely. He is loyal, but loyalty can get you killed, right, Kim?”
The woman he calls Kim presses the knife against my throat.
“Mom.” Reeve’s face falls. “Mom, no!” He roars like an animal, and chunks of spit fly to the floor as he pulls at the chains around his wrists. “Mom, put the knife down.” His nostrils flare, the rage bleeding off him in waves. “If you try to hurt my wife, I will come for you, too.”
Mom?
Fidgeting, she drags the tip of the knife across my neck; the sting is brief as a bead of blood trickles down. “Reeve, shut up,” she says through clenched teeth, sounding tense and on edge.
I flex my fingers at my side. My injured hand is partially numb, thoroughly bloodstained, and pounding. The pain is nearly blinding, but I focus on Reeve.
I understand that seeing his mom alive must be shocking. He loved her deeply and always blamed himself for her death. I wonder what else grandma lied about or kept from us. He had the right to know, even if it was for our own good.
He tried so hard to bury them in the past because he knew they would surface in the present, and now they stand right in front of him.
“What a reunion.” James’s manic laugh makes my nostrils flare.
“Leave her alone,” Reeve snaps, “she’s not part of it.”
“On the contrary, she is the game. You did everything for her, and if you lose her, game over.”
“You think I will work with you?”
