It was the first time she’d felt it, the hard muzzle of a gun digging into her back as Laurel walked down the hall toward her room.

“Nice and slow,” Caitlyn kept saying. “That’s it, nice and slow.” But there was hardly anything nice or slow about her voice. She’d taken on a tense, shrill staccato. Something Laurel had never heard from her back at the office. Everything about her, including the gun being shoved in her back, had been quite unlike the usually bright, cheery, non-psychopathic security analyst.

“I’m reaching for my room card,” Laurel said.

“Yeah, do it.”

At first, Laurel’s shaky hand had trouble finding and diving into her pocket, her fingers feeling numb and bloodless. She could barely feel the thin piece of plastic that was her room key. She could barely move it out of her pocket and toward the door.

“Come on, come on. Open it.”

Something wasn’t working right with the lock. She swiped her card and waited for the anticipated a green light, but after three swipes they had all come up red.

“Come on,” Caitlyn urged. “Do it!”

So much for nice and slow. But at least now her words matched her frantic tone, her true identity revealing itself with each despicable action—beginning from her setting up Laurel back at Sentry. And who knows how far back before that, what other deeds she’d been up to.

Laurel held the card into the reader.

“What are you doing? Don’t stop.”

Laurel swallowed hard, and then said, “If you get that gun off my back, and if you turn around and just get the hell out of here, then you’ll still have time.”

“Time for what?”

“To get away.”

Caitlin chortled at Laurel’s shoulder.

“I’m serious. I won’t follow you. You can just go.”

“Laurel, you should just open that door before I get upset with you. Okay, Hon?” She pushed the gun harder into her back and Laurel swayed into the door, the handle digging into her stomach. “Open that fucking door,” Caitlyn said.

The card swipe worked this time, a blinking green light making Laurel instantly regret not trying to sabotage the attempt.

Once the door opened, Laurel was shoved into the darkness, a stiff push that almost made her trip over a wastebasket, the plastic thing thudding and bouncing off her stumbling feet. The lights turned on, and Laurel got her balance enough to turn to face her coworker. Her kidnapper.

“Yeah,” Caitlyn said. “That’s it.” It was like she could read her mind, the hateful, vengeful thoughts that had been building since the elevator ride, with each floor, each passing level adding a new layer of anger and fear, each electronic chime closer to her floor, signaling a situation growing more and more out of her control.

“I can tell you hate me,” Caitlyn said, letting the door swing to a heavy close behind her. “I know. It’s understandable.”

“Can you just tell me why?”

“It’s a long story. And it really doesn’t have much to do with you.”

“But why!?”

“I already told you about it. About you being too nosy. That’s the problem. You think I want to do this? You forced me into it, the whole thing. You brought it upon yourself.”

“What did I bring? You killing me?”

“No,” Caitlyn said, walking into the room, gun still pointed. “Well, not me.”

“Fuck you.”

“I know,” she said. “I know. But if your family was in as much trouble as mine, you would be doing the same thing.”

“Tracking down my friend and then holding her down at gunpoint? Yeah, I’m going to say no.”

“Laurel, we were never friends. We just worked together.”

Laurel crossed her arms. Why the hell did that hurt? Caitlyn was clearly fucking insane. “So what do you need?”

“I need you to take a seat. On the bed there.”

“For what? What do you need?” Laurel could feel the hysterics coming on again. She fought back a rage of tears and spoke through a choked voice, “What do ya’ll want from me?”

“First thing, is you sittin’ down there and calmin’ down. Kay?

Laurel sniffled and sat on the bed.

“What we want, is to make sure you don’t do any further damage.”

“So you’re gonna kill me.”

“No.” Caitlyn said it like it was the craziest thing she’d ever heard. She held the gun out, saying, “What? Because of the gun? This is just in case I can’t convince you to go along with the plan. But I think I can, I really do.”

“It’s still not too late.”

“Yes it is.”

“You can turn around and walk out, and I swear . . .”

“No.”

“I won’t . . . I swear I won’t say anything.”

“You won’t say anything regardless. Trust me. Some of these fellas . . . they’re not very nice, even to a lady. They have ways of getting you to keep quiet.”

“Okay, then. I’ll keep quiet.”

“There’s more to it than that.” Caitlyn walked over to the table and sat. She sighed. “The main reason, for coming this way, is to get Matthias Wade’s laptop.”

Laurel knew what that meant. By giving away the laptop, it would be handing over all the evidence that would have cleared Laurel. They would have definitely wiped the servers back at the office by now. And she knew what that would mean.

But what was worse? Jail or death?

“Can you tell me where it is?” Caitlyn asked.

Jail or death.

But maybe Matthias and his friends could still find a way to prove her innocence without the laptop. Maybe Matthias himself would be able to convince the investigators, maybe he’d passed the information onto Jackson. At the end of the day, she was fucking innocent. She could look the FBI right in their eyes and tell them the same. She could take a lie-detector test that wasn’t just a trap to isolate and kill her. She had options. It was okay.

“Fine,” Laurel said. “It’s in that bag over there.”

Caitlyn slowly, cautiously, made her way to the bag that was slung over a luggage rack. “This one?” She picked it up, the bag sagging heavily. She unbuckled the top, reached in, and pulled out a laptop from its storage sleeve.

Watching her, Laurel instantly felt a pang of guilt. Guilt for so much. For not going out with Matthias tonight where she would’ve been safer, for getting this crazy and compulsive urge to flee New Orleans without even talking to him, for being alone at a bar again. Guilt for allowing herself to be tracked and trapped by Caitlyn, and now, for coughing up their best piece of evidence. It was work that Matthias had put his life on the line for. Work that he’d lost a friend over. And right now, because of Laurel’s bad decisions, they might be losing everything with her voluntarily pointing to that damned bag.

A sick feeling of dread washed over her as Caitlyn open the laptop, as the glow came on to light up her face in the dim hotel room. She had it in her hands, but now she set it down on the table, pulling back a chair, settling in for some work like she was just up to her regular business in her cubicle at Sentry. Only there was a gun sitting on her lap.

“So what exactly you looking for?” Laurel asked.

“You know what’s on here,” Caitlyn said coldly.

“He never showed me.” It was the truth. Laurel was so sick of it all, she was hardly interested to see the actual evidence. She just believed him.

Laurel stayed quiet as she watched Caitlyn search through the computer. There was really nothing she could to about it. Nothing worth doing. She knew that Matthias and his guys could take care of it—if they hadn’t already been ambushed by whomever Caitlyn rode to New Orleans with. But he wouldn’t go as easily as Laurel. He was trained. He’d been through war, missions, ambushes. He’d been through the worst of it and he knew what to expect. No, there could be no way that he’d let himself get ensnared like this.

Caitlyn darted her head to Laurel when she tried stretching out on the bed, leaning back onto a few pillows. She didn’t know how long this would take and it was beginning to get more than a little awkward just sitting there at the foot of the bed while she watched someone ransack Matthias’ laptop.

Maybe she wouldn’t even be able to get in. Surely Matt had some wicked encryption routines set up?

“I’m just leaning back,” she said.

“Just getting comfy?”

“Yeah,” Laurel said, waiting for Caitlyn to look away before she started checking to see if anything useful was on the nightstand. There was that bottle of wine from Montgomery. Unopened. Heavy. Laurel wondered how it would fare against a gun. Could she get close enough, and swing it hard enough to render the gun useless? She might not have been that strong, but the bottle though . . . Still, it was a big risk.

Laurel checked back at Caitlyn, and then back to her nightstand, where she inspected the only other object. A small black box. A gift Matthias had gotten for her from Pensacola Beach.

Caitlyn was still engrossed in whatever files Matthias had on his laptop, her finger moving and clicking at the keypad, fingers typing, muttering to herself, “You little nosy fucks . . .”

Laurel reached for the box, sliding off the lid as quietly as she could. Inside was a black plastic cover for her smart-phone. It was large and unusually heavy. She peeled it out of its packaging, the Styrofoam making a quiet squeaking sound.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Laurel froze. Her phone, and her new phone cover in her hands.

“Think you’re calling someone?”

“No. No, I’m just changing phone covers.”

“Why?”

“Because . . . I dunno. I’m fucking nervous, okay!?”

Caitlyn smiled. “Well, I know what you can do. You can call Matthias for me.”

Laurel initially liked the idea. She’d wanted to talk to him so badly. She wanted any contact from the outside, safe world. But she also didn’t want to rope him into Caitlyn’s scheme.

“I’m just gonna change the cover,” Laurel said, removing the old cover and sliding on the new one.

“You’re gonna call him,” Caitlyn said, putting the gun back into her hand.

“Or what? You’ll shoot me in the hotel room for everyone to hear?”

“Bitch, what do you think a silencer is for?” She held the gun out, displaying it for her. There was this little box thing attached at the front of the barrel. “So are you gonna call yer man? I’d love to talk to him. You know, I never met him. You were too rude to introduce us.”

Laurel held the phone, thinking it over. She wanted to continue being rude, to keep Caitlyn and Matthias separate at all costs.

“Come on, Laurel.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m tellin’ you.”

“What do you want from him?”

Caitlyn spun around in her chair, leaving the laptop, holding the gun. “I just want to talk. Can you call him?”

“Now?” Laurel asked, stalling for time for her brain to process the request and the implications. How would it affect things? Would it even make a difference at all? Matthias might have possibly been tipped off already. Maybe he was already formulating a plan. This call might help him; if nothing else, he might be able to track down the call. Track her down. Find her. Rescue her.

But they were in their hotel room. Why hadn’t he checked up on her?

“Call him, and tell him that everything’s fine.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. Just say you’re fine and safe and everything’s totally fine.”

But that wasn’t the case. She knew that by the way Caitlyn was holding the gun. She was patting it nervously against her thigh. She wanted to use it.

Laurel asked, “Is everything fine? I mean what the fuck?”

“Calm down.”

“You’ve got a fucking gun pointed at me.”

“I know I do.”

Laurel looked at her phone, checking out her latest phone case. It looked just like her old one, but it was a lot heavier. Heavy-duty. Not at all like something a regular person would be carrying around.

“Call him right now,” Caitlyn said. “Just say hi, and then hand it over to me and I’ll take care of the rest.”

As with her old phone case, there were holes in the sides that allowed access for the side buttons. This one had those, plus a button of its own.

“Laurel! Fucking do it!”