25. Locked

Sarah clenched her fists. Her arms were tied behind her back, and if she pumped her hands enough, she might hulk up and shatter the pinching plastic.

The plastic bands bit her skin harder.

Blaze's ankles were bound together once again as he sat beside her in the back seat of a Mercedes driven by Nemesis and one of the other Russian mercenary goons.

The car drove through the grid of city blocks, turning sharp angles as they crawled through the bottoms of steel trenches.

"I need to talk to you," she whispered to Blaze, barely breathing because the Mercedes' engine purred like a quiet cat. The thick windows clamped into the car's frame, muting the city's horns and bustle outside. "When we were on the plane, I heard—"

"Not now," Blaze muttered.

"But they're planning—"

His voice lowered, dropping into his throat. "Not now, kitten."

The casual use of his nickname for her rankled, but her mouth snapped shut.

Whispering more to him seemed like a really bad idea, which was odd.

The restraint felt like Blaze was holding his finger to her lips and unbuckling his belt, but he was gazing out the window as they drove through the skyscraper valley of New York City.

But she knew she shouldn't keep talking to him.

If Blaze had Pavlov's-dogged her, they were going to have words.

Outside the car, tall buildings rolled backward like they were on conveyor belts, and the car pivoted around a corner.

The skyscrapers on the right side of the car ended.

Trees bursting with full summer green replaced the gray slabs like the land had rewilded, seizing the soil back from the invading humans.

On the car's left, the other side of the street was still Manhattan, like they were driving a boundary between worlds. A mirrored building was strewn with yellow tape.

And a dark gray polished-granite edifice.

And then a white tower like a stretched Aztec stepped pyramid pierced the sky.

Oh, no. That was—

The car turned, diving into a garage carved out under it.

"Oh heck no," Sarah yelled, putting all her anger into the heck. "I am not going back to Logan's apartment."

Nemesis said from the driver's seat, "You could come with me instead."

When she didn't answer, his dark chuckle filling the steel car was as suffocating as his meaty hand sealed over her face.

In the gas-fumed tomb of the garage, the mercenaries hustled them out of the car, popping the zip ties around Blaze's feet so he could walk.

They rode up the same elevator as just a few days ago, right before Logan and those other two guys had pulled guns on them and called her traitorous aunt on the video chat.

Sarah's fists filled with crawling bugs from the plastic zip ties cutting off her circulation as the elevator ascended and the floor pressed up on her feet.

She should have turned around and left that night.

Blaze had wanted to.

Maybe he had been picking up vibes instead of being contrary like she'd thought.

If they hadn't walked out of the elevator and into Logan's apartment, if they'd just kept going, maybe to Florida or somewhere exotic like Louisiana, Aunt Mary and Logan wouldn't have found them.

They'd be safe.

Instead, here they were again.

Full circle.

Total disaster.

The elevator bobbled to a stop, and the doors slid back like lips baring a snarl.

"Out," Nemesis said from behind them.

A cold metal rod pressed on Sarah's spine between her shoulder blades.

She stepped out of the elevator into the hallway carpeted in beige and lighter beige below white walls, as boring as those Instagram city folks who painted everything in their houses shades of washed-out mud.

Even the Amish decorated their houses with pretty pops of color amidst the natural tones.

A plain wood-and-metal plaque beside the door read 24B.

Nemesis hesitated and scowled at the two before lifting his fist in front of the door, hesitated, and knocked.

A couple of seconds later, Logan Bell opened the door and frowned at all of them. "What took you so long? Did you hit traffic?"

"Red lights," Nemesis said as he shoved her.

Sarah tripped over her toes and stumbled forward, fall-running before she steadied herself because she couldn't use her hands for balance.

Logan saw her trip, his gaze flicking down to her feet and then back to Nemesis as he flipped the locks on the door. "Get those zip ties off them and take them to the bedroom at the end of the hall to the left. It locks from the outside."

Interesting that Logan had a bedroom with a door that locked from the outside. The only people Sarah knew who had a room like that in their house were the O'Reillys, and they had a kid with autism so profound that he was nonverbal and attacked people in a desperate attempt to escape the flashing-crashing harshness of the world around him.

Nemesis held out his hand to Logan, their phones captured in his fist. "Tristan King put the spy app on them. We will hear everything, see everything they do. Blaze Robinson will need his phone to make arrangements for weapons that Dr. Bell wants."

Logan's eyebrows pinched as he looked at the phones like they were hog manure. "If she wanted them to have the phones, why didn't she give them back?"

Nemesis shrugged. "I would not ask."

Logan grabbed the phones from Nemesis's fingers. "I said to get those zip ties off of them."

Nemesis unfolded a wicked pocketknife and walked around behind Blaze.

Sarah held her breath for a minute until Blaze's shoulders flipped forward, his hands released, and he rubbed his wrists.

Nemesis moved behind Sarah, and she could hear him fiddling around back there with his knife.

Would he also like the way she wiggled if he impaled her with his curved blade?

Cold metal slid along her left wrist, and her wrists flipped free from the zip ties.

Hot zaps replaced the crawling in her hands as her blood flow returned, and she couldn't help but rub her wrists the same way Blaze was.

Logan's deep green eyes narrowed, and he glared at Blaze. Without shifting his stare, he said to Nemesis and the other Russian guy, "Get them in that other bedroom and lock it, and then you can leave."

Hope flared in Sarah's heart. Maybe, as soon as the mercenaries were gone, Logan would release them from the other bedroom, and together they would plan how to defeat Mary Varvara Bell.

Maybe that's why Blaze was so calm, because he knew this was all an act.

Nemesis pointed a thumb at Blaze and said to Logan, "This one was Navy SEAL."

Logan narrowed his eyes at him. "Yeah. I know."

"You have gun?"

Logan reached behind his back and pulled a black semiautomatic from the back of his pants. "Of fucking course."

Sarah hoped he had a tailbone holster back there. She'd heard about some people shoving a gun in the back of their waistband and the fabric pulling the trigger. The bullet shot them in the backside or burned a line all the way down their leg to the ground.

On second thought, she hoped he didn't have a holster. She hoped Logan shot himself right in the fleshy part if he wasn't on their side.

Logan said to Nemesis, "I said, put them in that other bedroom and lock the damn door."

Nemesis grabbed Sarah's arm with his sweaty hand, his fingers wrapping around her biceps. "Move."

The other Russian guy jabbed a gun at Blaze. "Go."

Blaze raised his hands and walked ahead of her through the unrelieved white hallway toward the door at the far end.

Sarah followed but didn't have to raise her hands because Nemesis had a tight grip around her biceps and didn't let her go. He was squeezing her arm, bruising her. His gait stuttered as he walked, tipping her off-balance.

Blaze walked into the bedroom first and kept walking toward the wide window overlooking the gray cityscape of New York, his hands raised.

Nemesis shoved Sarah's arm, throwing her in after him, and tossed their phones on the bed before slamming the door.

The ratchet and rattle of locks stripped away the outside world, leaving them sealed in the four white walls with only the tinny city noise leaking through the thick window.

The door was in a little alcove off the main room, like the builders had sheet-rocked the door six feet into the hallway from where the room started.

Which meant they couldn't see if the door began to open unless they were directly in front of it.

The whole room felt like a trap.

Blaze grabbed his phone off the bed. "Oh, fuck this."

"What are you doing? That twisty guy put spyware on our phones. They'll know!" Sarah said, trying to reach him to grab his phone before he did anything wrong.

He held his finger to his lips to shush her and swiped and tapped his phone screen. When he found whatever he was looking for, he held the phone in both hands and text-typed with his thumbs.

"The phones are bugged," Sarah said, trying to say something that wasn't a dead giveaway of what Blaze was doing because she assumed their phones were also listening to them, like how advertising for toilet hardware follows you around the Internet if your phone is near when you so much as grouse that your toilet is running, except that the listeners were her aunt's criminal organization.

He glanced up at her again and shook his head with a minuscule vibration so she would stop talking.

Okay, Blaze was the one with a military background. She was just a farmer who got advertisements on social media for everything she talked or even thought about, so she assumed her phone could read her mind.

He finished texting, stuck his phone in his back pocket, and then he rifled through the bedstand drawers until he came up with a small pad of paper and a pen. He wrote in squared-off block capitals, Txtd Rogue Security.

Sarah looked up with a gasp.

He wrote, Need help to secure the weapons.

Sarah held out her hands, flapping them to signify, Give me the goldarned paper, you lug.

Blaze held out the notepad and pen.

She wrote, No, you can't. She'll know you talked to them! She spp said Rogue S!

Blaze shrugged and took the paper pad back. I need them to make contacts for weapons purchase. They can't come. Op in Europe.

She snatched the stupid paper out of his hand. You can't. When I was on the plane…

He grabbed the paper away from her.

"What are you doing?" she said and covered her mouth with both hands.

Blaze grabbed both her phone and his from his pocket and stuffed them under a pillow, mashing it down before striding over and taking her hand to drag her into the bathroom. He cranked the shower to its max before wrapping his arms around her.

Leaning against his chest, safety surrounded her, and just for a second, the screams resounding in her skull faded away.

She whispered, "Does the shower thing really work?"

"Somewhat, at least. Don't say anything important," he whispered from above her ear.

Dagnabbit,that meant she couldn't tell him about the coup problem.

He needed to know.

The government needed to know.

Blaze said, "You'll be safe back on your farm. I'll give Bell the weapons she wants, and then she'll leave you alone."

"You can't. There's a reason. They can't have those weapons. The guys on the plane said—"

He covered her mouth with his hand and slouched, resting his chin on her head. "No. The shower isn't enough. If I deliver the weapons to her, she won't have any reason to go after you. You'll be free to live your life."

"After she has the weapons from you, she won't need you anymore."

"Yes," he sighed.

"My dude, I have read enough dark mafia romance online to know what will happen to you!"

"Yes," he said, his voice lower. "But you will be free."

Sarah tightened her arms around his broad chest. "I don't want to live my life without you."

"Don't.This is how it's going to work. It's the only way it'll work."

"You made the deal, that horrible deal with my aunt, that devil. She won't be around forever. We can do something to wait her out."

"Your grandfather ruled with an iron fist for decades."

"My dad told us stories about his father. My grandfather, your Mal—Maleff—"

"Malefactor. Like a benefactor, but mal like in malignant."

"Right. My grandfather only survived in the position for so long because people owed him, not because people feared him. People fear her. She doesn't inspire loyalty or mutual respect. She'll be gone soon. Fear and violence never win."

Blaze chuckled. "The history of the world might beg to differ."

"I don't believe it. History exists because people worked together, and they did it in larger and larger groups that became cities and then civilization. Fear and violence are always overthrown."

His arms firmed around her. "Dictators use fear. Fear of others, fear of people with different ideas."

"Fear only works for a while. Hitler led Germany for twelve years before he destroyed it from the inside and committed suicide. Mary Varvara Bell is corralling a herd of resentful bulls. The minute the gate is open, they'll bolt and trample her."

Blaze leaned back and studied her, his pale blue eyes searching and looking straight into hers. "Interesting."

What, that a farm girl understood bovine psychology? "What's interesting?"

He looked out the wide window over the field of gray needles as if he didn't want her to read what was written in his eyes.

"Nothing," he said. "Just an idea."

* * *

The breakneck speedat which terror turned to anger, and then anger turned to boredom in the closed white room was embarrassing.

Within twenty minutes, Sarah was lying on her back on the bed, tossing the useless ingot of unresponsive metal that was her phone into the air and catching it before it smashed her face.

Blaze stood over by the window, watching the traffic and city as if he were divining tea leaves in the bottom of a cup. He'd taken off his shoes and was barefoot, his toes buried in the white shag rug that took up most of the floor.

A thick bulge looped around his thigh under his blood-stained pants where he'd tied a towel to stop the bleeding from where he'd been shot. He'd assured her that it was just a little gunshot, pretty much a flesh wound, but worry consumed her.

For a while.

He was walking on it all right.

And the three white walls and one window overlooking Manhattan didn't change.

The walls were white, the bed was white, and the rug was white like a psychiatric ward.

Sarah just kept tossing and snatching her stupid phone out of the air.

After that Twist dude had put his evil malware on it, most of her apps didn't work.

Basically, all the good ones.

The texting utility and all the social media and direct-message apps were dead.

Hundreds of DMs had probably come in from people who needed their tarot cards read and a little encouragement from Madam Belova, and she couldn't even text them back. All those people who needed help were just hanging in the wind out there, helpless, and Sarah couldn't even offer them a hand.

When she looked at her notifications, her friends in Kalona had been desperately trying to tell her about black SUVs rolling down I-80 toward Kalona. She'd just ignored the texts and voicemail pings in the storm of DMs wanting tarot card readings.

Dang. Her Kalona community had tried to protect her, but their signal had been too weak in the SnipSnap noise.

She also couldn't play Candy Smush or online cards with anybody, and her app to read naughty stories on her favorite serial fiction site was darkened and didn't respond to her frantic taps on the screen.

Even her attempt to download a free novel from the Big River store didn't work.

They might as well have not given it back to her.

So she laid on the bed, tossing it into the air. If it couldn't be a phone, it could be a stupid-looking ball.

She was catching it lower on its fall each time, seeing how late she could catch it without smashing into her face and breaking her nose.

A knock banged the door, and she rolled off the other side of the bed onto the floor like Blaze had instructed.

The shag rug came up at her fast, and she barely got her hands out in front of her to keep from breaking her nose on the floor.

She was getting better at this. Maybe she should endanger her nose more often.

She turned and looked over her shoulder at where Blaze was standing.

He barely turned his head to glance at the door. "Come in."

Silence, no jingling of the doorknob.

Instead, a man's voice from outside the room said, "I'm leaving. Twist and Micah are in the living room if anything happens."

That was Logan, his Russian accent lighter than any of the Koch Group's evil mercenaries, and his voice sounded so much like their dad.

Blaze said back at Logan, "We haven't had lunch. It's after two o'clock."

A pause drew out before Sarah heard her brother's voice. "I'll have Micah and Twist order you something. What does she like?"

For a second, Sarah was confused about why Logan had only asked what she would want for lunch, but Logan and Blaze had been best friends for fifteen years. Logan knew what Blaze liked to eat for lunch.

Blaze answered, "Mild, and Sarah needs coffee, too."

And now she understood why Blaze had no addictions, not even coffee, because she was starting to get a caffeine headache.

"Mild,yeah figures. I had a baby mouth when I moved out of Iowa, too," Logan said.

No more talking came through the door.

Sarah sat up. "Is that it? You just ordered lunch?"

Blaze said, "We've got to eat. I don't know how long we'll be stuck in this hotel room. I need to start making phone calls about those weapons, though."

As he said the part about getting weapons, he rolled his eyes as if saying there was no way he was getting any.

"Is there anything I can do to help you get the weapons for Dr. Bell?" Sarah made air quotes with her fingers above the get-the-weapons part.

"Don't worry about it. I'll get the weapons."

But he also made air quotes around getting the weapons.

He was definitely planning something.

"But where are you getting the weapons from?" she asked, twirling her finger downward as if she were stirring a cup of coffee with it, valiantly trying to ask him where he was going to execute this unnamed plan of his.

Blaze shook his head, pointed to the far side of the bed where she was sitting on the floor, and pressed his hand down. "I have to contact these guys and arrange to liquidate enough of my assets to pay for the weapons. And then I have to make arrangements with certain friends of mine for weapons that can't be purchased legally in the States."

Great, he just wanted her to lay low while he did the fighting part. "But is there anything I can do?"

"Just stay out of the way." He blinked and seemed to think about it for a minute. "While I'm on the phone."

An hour later, a knock sounded at the door, and a different man's voice spoke. "We have your lunch. Stand back from the door, Blaze. Micah is armed. If you make any sort of a move, he'll shoot you or something."

Sarah rolled off the bed again and flattened herself on the floor between the bed and the wall because this had to be an opportunity. She flipped around so she could watch from where she lay on the white shag carpet under the bed.

Blaze stood by the window, talking to those guys like they were UltraEats restaurant delivery. "I'm on the other side of the room. I won't make a move on you."

The guy outside said, "So you're not near the door, right?"

Blaze's gaze swung upward in a micro-eye roll, but he stepped backward and raised his hands. "Like I said, I'm over by the window. We just want lunch."

His bored tone chided them for being afraid of him.

But as soon as the last word had left his mouth, Blaze sprinted several steps on his toes toward the door in its alcove.

He leaped into the air and twisted, catching himself horizontally between the two walls of the hallway, bracing himself and walking upward with his hands and feet while the lock on the door rattled.