Chapter 50

50

Aubree

Bullets rained above me, and their shells clanged to the floor, as I kept low, shuffling across the open factory toward the staircase. I planned to go after Michael—he’d broken away from the other two men, heading for the door of a stairwell. Had I hinted at the plan, Nick probably would’ve shot me himself, because when he’d told me to run, I was pretty sure he meant the opposite direction.

Toward safety—not straight into the mouth of hell.

Then again, he’d have probably advised me not to have Cox drive a patrol car straight into the building, either, but that’d turned out just fine.

I dashed toward the staircase, and a hot jolt of pain struck my calf.

“Fuck!” Grabbing my leg, I fell forward and lifted my pant leg, where a bullet had hit my calf. A quick examination showed a long path of the bullet at the surface of my skin. A grazing. I ignored the pain and pushed to stand up.

“Aubree!” Nick’s voice thundered from behind me, just before a shot struck one of the bikers.

I glanced back, to see the second biker had already descended the staircase at the opposite side of the room. About fifty yards behind, he made a dead run toward me, but Nick slammed his rifle into the guy’s face, knocking him back.

I kept on, after Michael, not willing to let the bastard get away. Up the staircase, I hobbled after a flash of his black suit, as he entered the stairwell.

Shooting twice had bullets bouncing off the closing door, not even close to hitting their target. Legs burning, I pushed through the door.

Michael appeared one level below me, and I forced speed from my muscles, leaping three stairs at a time. I fired another shot into the black abyss below, and missed, as he rounded another landing. Bullets pinged as I blindly shot into the dark spiraling staircase.

The desperation to catch him kept me from caring that we headed straight for the basement of the building, until he disappeared and a cold chill swept across my skin.

Gun aimed, I twisted left to right, all the way around, looking for him.

The sudden stillness raised the hair on the back of my neck, and before I could spin to what had given me that eerie feeling, a blade lifted my chin at the same time arms enveloped me.

“Drop the gun.” That bone-chilling voice I’d heard in nightmares chimed inside my ear.

“Fuck you.”

Flames licked the thin skin of my neck, where he sliced the blade, and I flinched. “In case I haven’t made it clear to you before, I am perfectly capable of ending your life.” He licked the side of my throat. “Almost as easy as I ended your father’s.”

Anger snaked through my gut, and I balled my hand into a fist. “I knew you killed him, you psychotic piece of shit.”

“Why … that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said, darling. Walk.” He wrenched the gun from my hand and held it level, jerking it to the side for me to take the lead. “Into the tunnel.”

A long, dark tunnel stood before me, lit only by the opening at the end, about two hundred yards away, that appeared to lead outside the building. The shine of metal piping lined both sides of the brick walls. Sludge squished beneath my boot, and the scent of mold and stale air overwhelmed my nose, as I trudged along, in front of Michael.

“Steam tunnels. All over Detroit. It’s a shame to see someone’s brilliant ideas overrun by filth, destruction, graffiti.” His words arrived on a sour tone. “Bunch of fucking animals in a zoo.”

Something knocked into my arm, and I stumbled. My head jerked back with the tug of Michael’s hand, yanking me back to a stand.

At the mouth of the tunnel, we reached a small staircase that opened to dirt and machinery at ground level, like a construction site, closed off by a tall fence that’d been lined at the top with barbed wire. Hardhat signs had been plastered on all corners of the site, along with Do Not Enter.

The only way out appeared to be back through the building, from where we’d just come.

“Up those stairs.” Michael nudged me forward.

A short distance from us, another staircase stood alongside a square concrete structure, only about eight or ten feet in the air—a vault, of some sort. Reluctantly, I climbed each step, eyeing a white square hatch at the top—large enough to squeeze a body through.

“Why?” I asked, as my shoulders violently twisted around to face him. “Why did you kill him?” Mouth set in a hard line, I clenched my jaw to hold back the furious words itching to escape, and took two deep breaths. “You swore that if I married you, he’d be safe. Left alone. So long as I stayed away from him. And I did,” I gritted out.

His cheeks puffed before he blew out a sharp breath and reached for the handle on the oversized hatch. “About a year ago, your father came to me, begged me to see you. He’d grown lonely. On the streets. A drunk. Said he couldn’t live without you in his life.” A smile skated across Michael’s face, and my heart sank at his words.

The last time I’d talked to my father, we’d met for coffee one week before Michael swiped me away to elope. He was well, working a lot, but healthy. I had no idea he’d sunk into such a low place.

“He threatened to … expose my business interests. So, I sent him to a watery grave. Thought the irony was appropriate—drowning in debt.”

Michael’s chuckle grated on my spine. I clenched my teeth as the anger rushed through my body, coaxing me to nail the bastard square in the face.

“And, of course, with your mother … it was kind of poetic.”

I knocked the gun and drilled my fist into his nose, then kicked my knee up and struck his balls. Air pinched inside my throat, as his fingers dug into my neck. The solid force behind me smashed into my spine, and the air blasted from my lungs.

Squeezing his bloody nose, Michael pushed me upward until my body covered the hole of the large hatch on top of the vault. Clawing the edges offered no purchase, and I grabbed to his arm with one hand, his belt loop with the other, my fingertips grazing the hilt of his blade in the holster.

Through clenched teeth, he growled, his grip at my throat tightening. “I should’ve killed you five years ago when I found you. I was going to. I’d planned to. If you hadn’t spread your legs like a fucking whore that night, taunting me with your pathetic apology, you’d be dead, and we’d all be in a better place.”

Michael had enrolled in my class, surprising me. For years, I’d thought he was dead, and there he was, standing before me, a successful lawyer, mourning the loss of his foster father. He was charming, at first. And I was foolish. “I knew you … came back … to kill me. You never … forgave me.”

He leaned in, pupils dilated and crazed, like a shark before the attack. “It was because of you that he tied me up and tortured me. Because of you, no one came for days.”

“Because of … my father … that anyone came for you … at all! I … told him of … monsters outside! He found you! And you … killed him! Bastard!”

In a battle of wills, our bodies trembled, his pushing into mine, and mine pushing into his.

His nose scrunched with the effort. “I have no use for you after another man’s dick’s been in your filthy cunt. You’re nothing but trash. And I can do better.”

“Burn … in … hell.” I popped the knife from its holster, sliced the blade across his neck, though not deep enough, and felt weightless as my body slipped from his grasp.

A cold hard slam smashed into my spine, and I cried out, my voice echoing inside the dark room where I’d been thrown.

My legs numbed.

My muscles burned.

A long pole slid down through the hatch and a squeal bounced off the enclosed walls. The sound of running water washed me in panic, as an ice-cold seeped into my clothes.

Michael peered down at me from the hatch above. “It seems the Levesque name will come full circle and die with you, Aubree. This is an oil retention vault. Your very own watery tomb.”

Fear climbed my spine with the icy wetness soaking my coat.

Against the paralyzing pain shooting through my back, I rolled over to my stomach, and pushed myself to my knees. Water flowed from the open pipe quickly. No valve. No shut-off nozzle that I could discern in the faint light. Whatever pole he’d shoved down into the vault must’ve been a key.

In the haze of panic, my mind searched for a solution. Like the dread seeping into my thoughts, light slid into complete blackness, and I looked up to see the hatch had been closed. The air turned frigid, penetrating me down to my bones, crushing my lungs, as I sucked in a breath.

“No!” My voice bounced around the vault.

Water had climbed to my shins, and I patted around for the pipe. Bitter cold steel met my fingertips, and I followed it to the angry pulse of water pouring from the mouth of the pipe. Nothing. No way to stop it. Placing my hands over the mouth of it only succeeded in kicking me backward onto my ass.

My heart raced. Pulse pounded. My head felt light, and I struggled to suck in air between rapid, panicked breaths.

“Help me!” I stood from the water suddenly at my knees, and pounded at the walls. “Somebody! Help me!”

In a matter of minutes, the vault would be filled. Concrete scratched my fingertips as I patted the walls, and I whimpered a sound of relief on finding a bolted ladder.

Taking each step easy, in spite of my trembling limbs, I climbed to the top and pushed on the hatch. It wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t budge.

I thumped my fist against it. “Somebody help me!”

Screwing my eyes shut brought flashes of my past, the light at the surface, the struggle for breath, the pressure at the top of my head.

I pounded with both fists against the hatch. “Help me! Open the door! Open the door!”

Frantic thrashing of my limbs knocked me backward, and I slid down the ladder, my foot catching between the wall and the ladder. Reaching for the rungs above me, I pushed up on my good foot, but my leg merely twisted in painful contortion, as water splashed around my chest.

“Oh, God! Help me!” Branches of terror shot through my veins, threatened to pull me into blackness

Using every ounce of energy I had, I pushed upward and yanked on the rungs. As the water reached my chin, I reached out to the darkness above me, the echo of my scream falling into silence.