Death by Denim (16 page)

We were running out of time.

S
eth turned to me, dark brows drawn low. “We’ve got to get out of here.” “You think?”

“Give me the pin so I can get those cuffs off you.”

The pin. It had been in my hand when I rushed to meet Seth at the door. My stomach tumbled right down to my knees. “I dropped it.”

Panic and irritation clouded his face, but he drew a deep breath, like he was sucking in calm. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I wasn’t sure if he was assuring me, or himself. “We’ll make another one.” He scanned the floor for more U pins.

“Seth,” I said, my voice small. “We have to stop them.”

He halted his search and stared at me as understanding dawned. If The Mole’s people were leaving, that meant that the endgame was near. It meant that my mom and his parents were getting closer. And when they came looking for us . . .

Seth must have been thinking the same thing. “But how would they find this place? We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

I shook my head at the irony. The Mole was using us as bait, which was exactly what my mom hadn’t allowed me to be. “I’m sure he left plenty of bread crumbs for them to follow. Besides”—I gave Ryan a sharp look—“I’m guessing we’re on GPS.”

Ryan raised his eyes to meet mine. He held my gaze for a long time before he nodded miserably.

“Wait.” Seth shook his head in confusion. “What?”

“I should have figured it out earlier,” I said. “The Agency does like its techno toys.” Back in Seattle, one of my mom’s old partners had boasted about putting tracking devices in everything.

Seth threw a sharp look at Ryan. “He’s got a tracker on him?”

“Either that, or I do,” I said.

Ryan closed his eyes. “How . . . did you know?”

I took a deep breath before speaking. Until that moment I hadn’t been sure, but all the pieces were fitting into place. “You wouldn’t believe the rules I had to follow with my mom,” I said. “No phones, no e-mails, no friends. Keep to yourself, watch your back, don’t draw attention to yourself. We should have been invisible. But somehow you knew exactly where to find us.”

“Lévêque . . . could have told us you . . . were meeting in the park,” Ryan countered.

“True. But you didn’t find me in the park. You were waiting in the train station. Lévêque couldn’t have told you I was going to go there. He was . . . dead.” My voice caught on that last word.

“My job is to protect you. I had . . . to know where you were. . . .”

I took a step closer and stared him down. “Where is it? My wristwatch? No, it would be too easy for me to leave behind. My earrings maybe?” And then my breath caught. “My shoes.”

Ryan hesitated and then he nodded.

I closed my eyes, shaking my head as I thought of how easily Lévêque had gotten us to take the shoes. How excited I had been to have them. “You embedded something in the shoes so you could follow me.”

“Your mom, too,” he said sheepishly. “We were afraid she would take you and go into hiding again and we wouldn’t know where you were to protect you.”

“You’re such an idiot.”

Seth stared at my Pumas, his fists tightening again. “They’re going to follow your
shoes
to find us?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Ironic, isn’t it? Caraday probably tipped off The Mole about the GPS and from that moment on, we were walking targets.”

Ryan just shook his head. Not like he was denying it, I don’t think, but like he couldn’t believe it had happened. He looked so bewildered that I almost felt sorry for him. Not Seth, though. He rounded on Ryan, injuries or no.

“What were you thinking? Did it never occur to you that The Mole could use your own technology to track her as well?”

“He shouldn’t have known. Shouldn’t have . . .” Ryan leaned his head back against the rags and closed his eyes.

“What I don’t get,” Seth said, “is why they left Anderson here alive.” He glanced at me. “I can see if he needed to follow you to find out where my family was, but what did they need him for? After he passed along the bugged shoes, why didn’t they take him out right there?”

My mouth dropped open. “Nice, Seth. Real nice.”

“No, he has a point,” Ryan said weakly. “This . . .” He let his gaze wander around the room. “The entire thing is a game. Remember what . . . Caraday told you. The Mole is a psychopath. We all . . . crossed him one way or another. He’s gathering us . . . together. To punish us.”

A metallic taste spread through my mouth. I felt like I was going to throw up. It was a game. A game! My mom, Seth’s parents . . . racing to save us, but running straight into a trap. So he could have his amusement. So he could have his revenge. He was so sick, watching us like rats in a cage. Arranging every little detail. Every little detail . . .

I groaned. “She must still be wearing her shoes.”

“She what?”

“Her shoes. Her shoes! The GPS things! They’re tracking my mom. That’s how they know where she is. And if they’re clearing out, it means she’s close. And when she gets here . . .”

Seth’s eyes met mine. “Boom.”

Seth was right about his not having the touch to pick locks. Even with Ryan patiently instructing him, he couldn’t get that first lock. “I’m sorry,” he kept saying. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I told him. “Really. I know how hard it is.”

But that didn’t make him feel any better. Especially when Ryan reached out to me weakly and said, “Come here. Let me try.”

I couldn’t see Seth’s face because he was behind me, but I heard the little disappointed huff as he dropped his hand. I caught Ryan’s eye and gave him a slight shake of my head. “No, Seth. You almost had it,” I said. “Give it one more shot.”

Ryan pressed his lips together, nodding as if he understood. I wasn’t sure I did. Understand what I was doing, I mean. Since we didn’t have a lot of time to mess around with, letting Ryan undo the handcuffs would have been the smart thing to do. But something told me that Seth needed to be the one to do it. I had to go with my gut on that one.

Finally, I heard a tiny
click
. He’d gotten the first lock. “The second one is easier,” I assured him. “Much—”

“Shhh!” Ryan hissed. “Seth, down! Put your hands behind your back.”

I could feel Seth’s hesitation, but only for a heartbeat. He dropped to the floor just as the door swung open. Labruzzo’s tall frame filled the doorway.

“Ah. You found him,” he said.

I followed his line of sight to where Ryan lay, eyes closed, on the pile of scraps. When neither Seth nor I responded, Labruzzo grunted and took a couple more steps into the room. “You,
signorina
,” he said, pointing to me. “You come with me.”

A rush of icy fear swept through my veins. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

“I’ll go,” Seth said. I twisted around to see him rising to his knees.

“It’s the girl I need,” Labruzzo said. His oily voice slid over my skin and made me want to retch.

“She’s not going,” Seth said.

Labruzzo just laughed. “I don’t remember asking your permission, Romeo.” He grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet. I bit my lip to keep from crying out from the pain.

“She’s not well,” Seth said, now standing.

I took his cue and feigned a cough. All that accomplished is that Labruzzo’s grip tightened, his fingers digging into my skin like talons. “I don’t really care.” He pulled me closer to him.

I thought I might puke all over his shiny black policeman’s shoes. One thing I knew; there was no way I was going to let him take me out of that room even if he dragged me. Which gave me an idea. I went limp. Because he had such a tight grip on my arm, my dead weight pulled him off balance.

That was all Seth needed. He jumped forward and swung his arm with the handcuffs still attached and caught Labruzzo right in the face. Unfortunately, handcuffs, even at a high rate of velocity, have only so much force. The impact didn’t take Labruzzo down as much as I wished it had. It did, however, catch him off guard and he dropped me like dirty laundry as his hand slapped to the welt on his face. He snarled in pain and anger.

I had fallen to my knees so that I was facing away from him, but I could feel him close behind me. And I knew that it was only a matter of nanoseconds before he recovered from the shock of the handcuff whip. And then he would go for his gun. I didn’t even think—because if I did, I might have hesitated, considering what I was aiming for. Like a slingshot, I swung forward and then threw all my weight into a back-of-the-head head butt to his groin.

The air whooshed out of him like a punctured tire. He doubled over and I rolled to the side so that he wouldn’t fall on me. But he didn’t fall at all. Stumble, yes. Curse a blue streak, yes, but hit the ground, no. All we’d succeeded in doing was to make him very angry. As I had feared, his hand immediately went for the gun at his waist.

Dead, cold fear swept over me. All I could think at that instant was that Labruzzo was going to kill Seth. I didn’t care what came after. A low growl escaped my lips, so feral that it surprised even me. Labruzzo’s head turned just as I kicked out at him. He danced away, leveling his gun at me.

The distraction was enough for Seth to swing his handcuff nunchuks again, this time clocking Labruzzo across the top of his head. Labruzzo roared and swung the gun toward Seth. I coiled my legs back again. I knew I had only one more shot at him and if I missed, Labruzzo would probably kill us both. I kicked out with every ounce of anger, pain, and fear I had bottled up inside and my foot connected with his knee with a sickening
thunk
.

Labruzzo fell to the ground, bellowing like a wounded bull. The gun tumbled from his fingertips and before he could reach for it, Seth snatched it from the ground.

“Down!” Seth yelled, brandishing the pistol with chilling disregard for someone who had not even been able to handle a gun just a few short months ago. But he didn’t have to worry; Labruzzo’s eyes rolled back and he passed out.

“Good work,” Ryan said.

Seth’s head shot up, as if he had forgotten Ryan was there.

“Get Aphra’s cuffs off. We have to . . . get out of here.”

Seth looked at me like he was in shock. Now that the action was over, the gun trembled in his hand. His fearlessness had been a bluff.

“The hard part’s over,” I assured him. “The second lock is easy.”

His face crumpled. “I lost the pick,” he said.

I could have laughed if he wasn’t so serious about it. “That isn’t the first one we’ve lost. Just make another one.”

“But hurry,” Ryan put in.

I shot Ryan a look to let him know he wasn’t helping. He shrugged as if to say “what?” but I didn’t miss the shadow of a smile on his lips.

Seth made his pick and to his credit, he was able to open up the cuff on the first try. I sighed with relief as I brought my arms forward, rolling my shoulders to relieve the tension. An angry red band circled my wrist where the cuff had been. I rubbed at the soreness with my other hand.

“Undo Mulo’s other one,” Ryan said.

I glanced down to where Labruzzo lay moaning on the floor. “Maybe we should just get out of here.”

“We don’t want . . . to leave him loose.”

He had a point. I eyed Labruzzo again, wondering if I should just check him for keys. That would be much easier than fiddling around with an improvised tool. But he wasn’t completely out and I wasn’t about to get close to him by myself until his hands were good and secured. “Seth, hand me that pick.”

It was much easier picking the lock when I could actually see what I was doing, but still it took several tries before I was able to pop that elusive first lock. By the time Seth was completely free of the handcuffs, Labruzzo was starting to stir.

Seth grabbed one of his arms. “Help me get him over by the pipes.”

I hesitated, but he gave me another one of his earnest looks. “I won’t let him touch you.”