There was no way in hell I was getting out through the basement.

Skinny twelve year old boy with zero hips, yes. Woman with hips and no upper body strength to speak of, no. I tried several times, hoping I was wrong but after the third attempt I knew I was screwed. The only thing I managed to do on my second try was get my arms and my head partially through the window for a minute before my feet slipped on the wall.

I scooted off the table and started pacing. How long would it take him to get down the block? How long would it be until the police arrived? Would anyone let him in their house at this hour? It had to be late.

Please, please, please I repeated. He was a nice kid. Someone please let him in their house.

I knew this was likely to happen. It was the reason why I sent him through the window first. At least he would be safe and out of this horrible house when they came back down to the basement.

I wondered if they would kill me immediately when they found him missing or whether they would wait and try to go after him. Either way I was screwed. Drew at least had a chance.

I looked around the basement for what must have been the thousandth time. Still nothing other than the desk.

As quietly as I could, I inspected the stairs. A plan came to me as I was looking at them. They had four bolts in each step with a small nut anchoring the screw on the bottom of the planks. They looked like they were prefabricated stairs rather than hand built which would have likely been screwed into a different frame.

I didn’t know much about construction, about architecture, building or for that matter stairs. But looking at those bolts, I sent the biggest thank you out to whomever decided to build them the way that they did.

Looking at them from the underside I started testing each bolt and loosening the ones that I could in the middle of the structure.

If they came down the stairs to that point and lost their footing I might have a chance to overpower them. The thought that one of them might slip and crack their head against the concrete really didn’t bother me at all. They were evil and I was going to die here if I didn’t at least try something.

I heard them moving around upstairs from time to time as I worked at the bolts. Two of them came completely off and the rest were so rusty they were only partially off.

Whatever.

I blew some hair out of my face and tried to tug the duct tape out of my hair but only ended up pulling some of the hair out of the top of my head. If my head wasn’t throbbing as much as it still was from earlier I might not have minded but as it stood right now, it hurt like a bitch.

I stood back from the stairs and tried to think of anything else I could do. I could try going for the window again but I knew it was a lost cause at this point.

I wondered if they would shoot me. It didn’t seem like such a bad way to go if this plan didn’t work. Better than any other scenario I could think of. Drowning would be top on my list of things I didn’t want to experience anytime soon.

A shiver ran up my body. It was hard to tell how much time had passed in this place. Two minutes, five minutes. Maybe at a stretch ten. Where was Drew?

Brock was probably going out of his mind. I loved him. If I got out of this mess I would tell him six hundred times a day until he got tired of hearing it then I would tell him while he slept.

He was the strangest most irritating person I knew and yet I loved the idiot. He was mine and I was his. He had told me things that he felt embarrassed about, told me things that scared him and despite the fact that he had nearly screwed this entire thing up, I still loved him.

I saw that the table was in view of the stairs and walked over to move it back to where it had been. It wasn’t terribly heavy but I still had to slide it carefully across the floor in order to keep it quiet.

When I had it back in place a thought popped in my head. Going down to my knees I looked under the table and saw that it was also built with nuts and bolts. I tried unscrewing a couple but they wouldn’t budge. On the last try I managed to get it loose and unscrew the entire thing.

Getting the leg off was another story. I wrenched at it several times and it moved but didn’t slip free. Finally, I leveraged it with my bare feet and it let out a large CRACK as it dislodged from the top. There was a split in the top but it might do as a weapon.

I heard loud voices upstairs and picked up my makeshift club ready to use it on one of them if I had to.

That’s when I heard the sirens. I nearly dropped the table leg in relief.

I heard the basement door open right at that moment and brandished my weapon like baseball player. I was ready for them.

“Well it looks like the cavalry is here,” Elaine sneered at me from the top stair.

Just a few more steps bitch. Walk down them.

She came down three steps but not to the point where I wanted her to be. She had a gun pointed at me and laughed.

“Think that little piece of wood will stop a bullet?”

“Where’s Angela?”

“She’s leaving right now. She doesn’t have the stomach for killing someone. Where’s the kid? Hiding under the stairs? It won’t matter because both of you will be dead in a minute and this place is already on fire. They’ll find your bodies in the rubble. Boohoo.”

I glanced up for a moment at the ceiling. Fire, that wasn’t something I expected. If I didn’t get out of the basement I would burn to death if she didn’t kill me outright.

There was a loud banging upstairs and Elaine moved down another stair. I could see smoke now coming into the basement a little and could smell the acrid bitterness of it.

I walked forward another step, trying to stay far enough away that a bullet might not kill me if she was a bad shot but one to the head and it was going to be lights out.

“Elaine, we could both leave right now and still live. If you do this, you might not escape.”

There was pounding upstairs and I could hear a window breaking.

“It’s too late for you anyway,” she said and waved the gun at me.

A shot rang out as she fired at me and it hit the wall behind me. I flinched and ran to the side as she took aim again.

I could hear voices upstairs yelling as I tried to keep her guessing on where I would move. Shuffling to the other side of the room she shot at me again and the makeshift wooden club I had been carrying split into a thousand shards. The wooden bits and pieces stung my face and I flung what remained of it at her.

She had a surprised look on her face as and took another step down trying to regain her balance from moving out of the way.

She stepped down again and took aim. This time when she shot at me it grazed my arm and I could feel the sharp sting of it. My arm jerked back slightly and I rushed the stairs.

She took another step down and the wooden stair underneath her slipped just as I heard someone yelling at the top of the stairs.

“ANDI!” I heard Brock bellow.

Elaine lost her footing as she fired another round. The bullet pierced the ceiling above me as I rushed forward and watched her tumbled down the last dozen stairs to the bottom.

Her hand flew out to the side as she landed on her back and the gun she was holding slid across the floor.

“Brock! I’m here! The stairs aren’t safe!”

“Hold on baby, I’m coming to get you,” he said. “We need to get out of here, now!”

He gingerly came down the stairs and my eyes swung back to Elaine. She was groaning and trying to sit up. One of her legs was bent under her at a bad angle and blood was seeping through the pants that she wore.

I heard two soft pops and a hole appeared in her head and eye. She slumped back down in an unmoving and lifeless pose. Brock reached me before I looked away and tucked a gun into the back of his jeans.

“Don’t look, baby. It’s over.”

He picked me up in his arms and started carrying me up the stairs as carefully as he could. I was too speechless to respond. We moved through the basement door into a smoke filled room that was partially ablaze.

We passed by another body with blonde hair. Angela.

He killed them both.

I started coughing as we moved through the room. The front door was closed and we were making our way toward it. Fire suddenly leapt from the curtains to a chair in front of us and flared.

Brock turned away from the blaze and tucked me closer into his chest.

“Back door?!” I screamed.

I could feel him grunt then he started coughing as the smoke started billowing through the room even heavier than before.

He stumbled through two more rooms that were quickly going up in flames before he set me down and started coughing harder. I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward a light source that I assumed was a window.

The black smoke was gagging me and tears started to roll down my face.

He yanked me back for a second and started lifting the window.

“Andi, climb out!”

The last time I had followed his orders I had gotten kidnapped with no guarantee of whether he would live or die. The smoke started clearing out through the open window and I yanked on his arm.

I stepped outside onto a manicured lawn and saw half a dozen people rushing toward me.

Turning back to the window I yanked his arm through and pulled with every bit of energy that I had until he was partially clear of the burning room.

He sucked in a breath and slumped to the ground but he was out of the house. His face was gray with smoke and soot as he lay there for a moment.

Someone was picking me up but I struggled against them, trying to keep Brock within view. My lungs felt heavy and still full of the smoke inside the house.

I recognized Jake bending down beside him and talking. Brock shook his head and turned toward me as I was carried further away from him.

My hand reached out to him but I was unable to see him respond as two paramedics came rushing toward him, blocking my view. Jake walked away holstering a gun and glanced over at me with a grim look.

I didn’t know what that meant but I was worried for Brock. He had sucked in a lot more smoke then I had while he was in the house.

I was loaded into an ambulance and finally looked at the person who had carried me away from the house. I saw Holden leaning over me as he looked at my arm.

“You’re a tough one, Andi. Just a graze though, you’ll live.”

I coughed as a paramedic hooked me up to something and put an oxygen mask over my face. I pulled at it until my mouth was free.

“Brock,” I croaked.

“He’ll be fine. They’re going to load him up for a little trip to the hospital, I’m sure. He can deal with those vampires up there. I hate hospitals.”

“They said—framed Blackwell.”

“No worries we know,” he said as he put the oxygen back on me. “Noah figured it out. Someone at his company put two and two together on a financial investment done between a Ms. Elaine Vosceles and Angela Parker. The investment was going to launch a chain of designer clothing for Angela but Elaine’s background was sketchy. Colton Blackwell’s name came up on several bank transfers from years ago, making her a very rich woman.”

I pulled the mask down again. “Don’t think Angela knew.”

He shrugged. “Maybe, not my area of expertise to figure out though. Put all of those coincidences in a room, the recipe Brock was obsessing over, Colton Blackwell, Angela’s background, her mom with Colton and it becomes a little less coincidental. Brock is going to have a million questions for you I’m sure. Just get better champ.”

I tried to frown at him and he laughed as he exited the doors.

Owen hopped in and nodded at the medic just as he was giving me a shot.

“Hey sis, just going to ride along with you. Brock got loaded into his own truck and they’re going to be headed there soon. Drew is good, he’s headed back to Aiden’s house. Speaking of, I’ve never seen anyone that pissed off before. Blew his top until Olivia started yelling at him, then he called Holden. That woman can be a ball buster and I’ve never heard someone cuss so much in my damn life. Jesus.”

I nodded at him and felt drowsy suddenly.

He leaned in and gave me a serious look. “I wasn’t there when that old bat took him out. I was on the phone with Noah and by the time I got back they had already left. I had no idea. Bet you’re rethinking that whole chip thing now, aren’t you?”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

He chuckled. “All it took was one fraction of a second where your device showed up on Brock’s tracking system and we had you. The kid calling 911 was fast thinking though. We heard it about the time that one of Holden’s helicopters got into the air.”

My eyelids drooped and I tried to shake it off but I felt a hand on my head smoothing down my hair as I lay there struggling.

“Sleep, Andi, he’ll be there when you wake up. Let me take care of him for a couple of days. I promise no more paintball lessons for at least a week. Brock will be too. He really does love you. Just between you and me, he’s bought a very expensive looking engagement ring. He texted me a picture earlier before you met up for dinner. It’s ridiculous. Act surprised when he pops the question. Did I not say you were a Fleming?”

I coughed when I chuckled, then drifted to sleep. The last thought I had was of Brock and his brothers. A family I was willing to join.