Page 67 of Love on the Run

“Ok.” Jake nodded to his friend. “Take a left when you get in. Quinn went right.”

“See you,” Ty grinned, and soon vanished as well.

Jake waited ten seconds, then followed through the door with Bruiser. The dog began to sniff around immediately. Jake peered through the gloom. He saw concrete stairs going up a flight, and made for it. He paused every few seconds, listening for any sign of someone coming down. Nothing.

Jake soon reached the first floor, checked the sightlines, and cautiously stepped into a deserted lobby, now grimy from leakage through a broken window. There was still no one to be seen, but it was a big place. Jake hoped Ty and Quinn were all right. Bruiser, who had moved forward with his nose to the ground, suddenly yelped once, raising his head to look at Jake. He’d found a familiar scent, and he was begging for permission to follow it. Jake joined him, and slipped a hand through his collar. He let Bruiser go forward, but kept him from running. He held his gun in his other hand, wishing he’d had more time to plan.

Bruiser made it to another stairway when Jake heard something nearby. He spun around, catching the shape of a person dash through a doorway. Signing for Bruiser to sit and stay, Jake followed the shape.

He just stepped through the door when he felt the air change next to him. Without thinking, Jake simply ducked and rolled. Whoever was attacking him missed completely, and Jake now knew where he was. Shifting his grip, he got up and swung with the hand holding the gun. The butt of the gun connected solidly with his opponent’s head. He dropped without a sound.

It only took a moment to use the guy’s belt to secure his hands and legs. Jake then pulled the guy’s shoe off. The man began to stir, moaning slightly. Jake yanked on the exposed sock and balled it up, shoving it into the man’s mouth. “Stay there,” he advised the man. “We’ll be coming back for you.” Jake found the man’s gun and took it with him.

Bruiser hadn’t moved, although he was happy to see Jake again. Once more on Callie’s trail, man and dog wound their way through the ever-darker halls of the old hotel. Third floor, and then the fourth. Still, Bruiser followed a trail only he could sense. “Callie,” Jake murmured. “I’ll find you.”

* * * *

Questions. Endless questions. Malcolm asked her so much, and it was all about how much she knew about his activities. She knew quite a lot, as it turned out. Callie was surprised, in a dazed kind of way, at what she had picked up from being with Malcolm so much. She didn’t try to lie, she was too tired. But with every answer she gave, it became more obvious Malcolm would never let her leave this place alive, no matter what he said.

Why hadn’t Malcolm killed her already?Callie tried to puzzle it out, but it was getting hard to think. She was tired, she was hungry, she was thirsty. Her face burned from the stinging blow Skinner had given her. Her leg was bleeding again. She desperately wanted Jake to find her—and she knew he would, if Malcolm let her live that long.

But now, there was no reason for Malcolm to keep her alive. Unless…Callie racked her brain. Did she know something important? Had she seen something else? What could Malcolm still want to know? He was asking so many questions, but she knew most of them were pointless. He was trying to trick her into answering one question. Which one?

And then she got it. He wanted to know how much she had talked. And with who? Malcolm needed to know who else could threaten him. He would still kill her in the end. But if she told Malcolm she’d given a statement to the Feds already, or even to Jake…her heart almost stopped. Malcolm would undoubtedly try to kill Jake when he found out what she’d told him. Jake knew everything.

* * * *

Jake stopped when he heard a thumping sound coming from the floor above. It wasn’t a gunshot, so he hoped it was one of his men dealing with another of Malcolm’s thugs.

Suddenly, Jake heard a very low whistle. “Here!” a voice called, almost too low to be heard. It was Ty. Jake squinted, barely making out the shape of his friend, crouching in a doorway across the hall. “It’s clear.” Ty moved to let Jake in the doorway.

Jake and Bruiser dashed across the hall and into the room. “What took you so long?” Ty asked cheerfully, though he kept his voice barely above a whisper.

“Met someone on second. He’s sleeping now.”

“Lucky him.” Ty jerked his head toward the far wall. “I heard voices through the wall over there. I think Callie’s in the room on the other side, with Foster.”

“There’s no door,” Jake said.

“No, it doesn’t connect. We have to go out into the hall and around this block of rooms.”

“Okay,” Jake said.“Have you seen Quinn?”

“Nope. But I haven’t heard anything, so I guess no one else has either.”

“Right.Let’s get moving.”

Jake checked the hallway once more. Seeing it was clear, the two men moved silently down the hall to the corner, where it intersected another long hallway. He looked down at Bruiser, who was aiming to go to the left, toward the room Ty had heard sounds in. Still, he saw nobody, and that made him suspicious. Then Ty, who had been looking the other way, gave him a hand signal. He’d seen something.

Jake looked over more closely, but couldn’t tell what Ty had seen. Was it a person? The light in the building was very faint now, with only the evening sky visible through the windows. The general disrepair of the hotel made it even harder to tell what things were.Broken furniture and open doorways all stood as dark, blocky shapes in the twilight, and the floors were littered with debris.Bruiser had flushed out a few rats and squirrels already, and Jake knew more would be in the walls.Ty was still peering into the darkness, his expression almost invisible.After a moment of silence, he held up his hand and signaled again. False alarm. Jake nodded in acknowledgement, and signaled that they should go on, taking a left down the new hallway.

They proceeded down the hall. Jake caught the sound of a man’s voice. Bruiser’s increasing excitement reassured him they were on the right track, but he now had a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach, an indefinable sense that something was wrong.

They had just reached the outside of the room. The voices came more clearly through the closed door. They both felt some movement.Jake whirled around, only to see a vague flash across the hall, and then the sound of a gun.Ty grunted, hunching over. Suddenly furious, Jake aimed where he’d seen the flash, and fired.He was rewarded by the sound of a man’s scream of pain. Following the sound, Jake found the gunman kneeling on the ground in the room across the hall, gripping his arm with one hand. The gun he’d been holding had fallen at his feet. Jake kicked it out of the way, into a dark corner of the room.Then he looked at the man. “If I cuff you, you’ll probably bleed to death.So sit down, shut up, and don’t move. Or else you meet the dog. Got it?” The man nodded.

Jake turned back to Ty, who had slid down to the floor. “You okay?”he asked.

Before Ty could answer, they heard a shout from the closed room. Footsteps pounded toward them, and Jake gave one short, sharp order to Bruiser.

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