18
ORLANDO
The relief of having Cassie with me was like waves of cool air hitting my sweaty face. Not physically with me, although that was comforting too, but with me as in on the same team. She’d heard my crazy explanation, she’d nodded along, and she was on board.
Because that was one of the toughest parts of all of this so far: dealing with it alone. Sure, I had Ethan and Sam giving me guidance, but it wasn’t the same. For the past week I’d been fumbling around Chicago like a child who’d lost his parents, helpless and scared.
And now I had Cassie.
God, it was nice. Even now, just getting dressed in silence, the mere proximity to her filled me with confidence. The totem pulsed happily in my pocket, agreeing with my assessment. Everything was going to be okay, now.
Everything was going to get better.
Before we could figure out what to do next, there was a crackle of static in the hall. A walkie-talkie. Cassie and I looked at each other, then pressed our ears to the door. I was barely able to make out the hijacker’s muffled voice.
“…yes sir?”
“Unbelievable,” the voice on the other end snapped. Sebastian. The dragon. “None of them had it. None!”
“Are you sure it’s here?” the man in the hall asked. “I mean, maybe your intel was bogus…”
“Yes!” the dragon roared through the walkie-talkie. “I can smell its foul smell lingering on the air. It’s here, somewhere. We need to search everyone, not just the women. Every bag in every room.”
Cassie and I shared a fearful look.
“Alright,” the henchman said with obvious annoyance. “That’ll take a while…”
“You start up there in the sleeper rooms,” Sebastian ordered. “Work your way back, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
There was a long pause.
“What about the engine?”
“Forget it,” Sebastian drawled with his accent. “It’s locked, and guarding it won’t matter if we run out of time. Start searching—and be thorough!”
“This ain’t the smash-and-grab job you said it would be. I want double what we agreed to.”
“Fine, whatever. Just do it. We’ll talk about details later.”
“You got it, boss,” the hijacker said. Then, in a different tone, he added, “You guido asshole.”
There was a banging sound down the hall that vibrated through our door. “Open up! Postman’s here!”
We heard a crash, like someone kicking the door in, and then screams drifted down the hall.
I pulled my ear away from the door. Cassie was staring at the totem in her hand.
“What do we do?”
The sound of the henchman ransacking the room a few doors down was a slowly increasing panic. A stopwatch ticking in the back of my head.
The window didn’t open. There was only one door out. And the man with the gun was coming.
Above the door was a wire luggage rack about three feet wide. Underneath the sink was a cupboard, but it was empty. Aside from that was the bed. Those were our only options to hide the totem.
“Under the mattress?” Cassie whispered, lifting it up. “He might not search there.”
“I don’t like betting our lives on the incompetence of others,” I said.
“Then what? Do we wait for him to knock the door down and try to fight him?”
That idea was even worse. I could hear the hijacker moving to the next room, the sound of luggage and other things being thrown around. We were running out of time.
“While he’s in another room, we could slip away down the hall,” I said. “Go into another car. Buy some time.”
Cassie bobbed her head, but I could see the fear in her eyes.
I took a moment to collect myself and opened our door slowly so as not to make any noise. I stuck my head out: the henchman was tossing pillows and clothes out into the hall from two doors down. He was being thorough.
I looked at the ceiling. There were no hatches to the roof that I could see. Because why the hell would there be? Life was never that convenient.
The guard paused, then jerked his head back out into the hall. The eyes behind the ski mask locked onto me.
“Don’t fucking think about it! Stay right there until I say otherwise.”
“I have to use the restroom,” I said in a weak voice. A stupid excuse.
“I don’t give a fuck!” He pointed his Uzi in my direction. “If I see you in the hall again I’m gunna shoot you in the leg. Maybe then you’ll stay put, yeah?”
Obediently, I returned to the room and closed the door.
“Now what?” Cassie asked. “Do we jump him?”
I imagined attacking a man with a machine gun. The hollow sensation of bullets tearing through my body. Through Cassie’s body. I shivered at the thought.
I looked around the room again, then ducked under the sink. There was a pipe to carry the water away, and it was partially hidden behind the bowl. I felt around, then took the totem from Cassie, and wedged it between the pipe and the wall. It didn’t fit snuggly, and was precariously balanced on the pipe, but it was out of sight unless you crawled halfway into the cabinet.
“That’s gunna have to do,” I said as I closed the cabinet softly. I left out the fact that it might fall if someone banged into the sink too hard. If that happened, we were screwed.
The doorknob twisted, and then the whole thing flew inward to bang against the door. The hijacker motioned with his gun.
“Let’s go, buddy. Out into the hall.”
Having a gun pointed at me was a debilitating sensation. That description of your knees turning to jelly? That shit is real. Having this guy merely aim the gun in my general direction was enough for me to almost collapse onto the floor.
Somehow I managed to step into the hall. The hijacker pressed the barrel against my gut and demanded I keep my hands in the air, a demand which was easy to obey. He used his free hand to pat me down everywhere, and when he was done he looked annoyed at having to do it.
“Stand over there,” he said. “No. Farther. Keep going. Good. Stay there like a good boy.”
He turned back into the room. “Your turn, sweetheart.”
Cassie appeared in the hall. The masked man didn’t hide the fact that he was ogling her up and down, getting a good long view.
“I’m not gunna lie,” he sneered. “My boss is making me do this, but that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy it.”
My blood boiled as he took one hand and ran it into her hair and down her neck, more caressing than searching. Cassie stood very still as his hand went over one round breast, then the other. He made a grunt of approval as he went lower.
Rage returned tenfold as I watched my mate being groped by this asshole. Again I wanted to charge, to throw myself at him and tackle him to the ground in a flurry of fists. I wasn’t much of a fighter, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it.
Of course there was too much space between us; by the time I’d crossed the 20 feet he would have aimed the gun and emptied half the clip into my body. I’d be dead, and then he could really do whatever he wanted with her.
Play it cool, Orlando. Stay calm and this will all be over.
Not satisfied with one hand, the hijacker let go of his gun to let it hang from the strap around his shoulder, then used both hands to trace the curve of Cassie’s hips. He bent down to run along her legs, then went back up on the inside, and I held my breath as he neared her crotch, hoping I could hold myself back, knowing that I should close my eyes but unable to look away—
In a flash, Cassie kicked up with her knee and struck him directly in the jaw. The force knocked him back against the wall, and before he could recover Cassie was attacking. She snatched his wrist before he could grab the gun and twisted, drawing a scream from his mouth. She struck him in the nose with the base of her palm, smashing his head back against the window. She followed it up with a knee to his groin, which doubled him over, and then with his head exposed she repeated the blow to his temple.
He crumpled to the ground.
“Oh my God,” I said, finally moving now that it was over. “Cassie, that was…” I trailed off, words failing me.
She shrugged one shoulder. “In my line of work it’s recommended to learn some self defense. Help me with him?”
She took his legs and I grabbed his shoulders, and we carried him into our room and dumped him on the bed. His chest still rose and fell, but he was otherwise out cold.
“Stay here and tie him up,” I said, slipping back out into the hall. I picked up the gun from the ground, but it didn’t make me feel any safer. It just made me realize how out of my element I was. When all of this was done I was going to kiss my computer screen and vow to never leave my desk.
I went to the door he’d previously been guarding. The roar of the train engine was louder here, but the door was indeed locked, as Sebastian had said on the radio. I considered banging on it, but I didn’t know who was inside. It might be one of the hijackers driving it, in which case I’d need to point my gun and maybe even shoot him, and I wasn’t sure if I could do either of those things.
Back in our room, Cassie had removed the man’s mask and a gag was now tied around his mouth. She was checking his pockets now, and spoke without looking up.
“He’s got a walkie-talkie, a disposable flip-phone, $300 in cash, and a single Ford car key. Plus the gun in your hand. The phone doesn’t have signal either, obviously, but I’m thinking maybe we can use the walkie-talkie to…”
But I wasn’t paying attention what he had. I was examining him. He was African American, and based on his accent he was a Chicago local, unlike Sebastian and the others. He was roughly my build. Maybe a little heavier.
Cassie trailed off and looked up at me. “What is it? Why do you have that look in your eye?”
“Cassie,” I said. “This is going to sound crazy, but I have an idea.”