Chapter 264 Go After Him
ADRIANA
My arm was shaking.
After seven months of silence, hearing his voice in that doorway, rough and real and present, and every cell in my body wanted to drop everything and turn around and go to him and I couldn’t, because the man in the chair still had a hand that was moving toward something and Rita still had a gun at the back of my neck.
Elijah was speaking to Rita now, low and direct, the way he spoke when he needed someone to understand that he was the most serious person in the room.
Rita’s breathing behind me was unsteady. I could hear her processing it — the man she’d married standing in front of her telling her the woman she’d been brought here to threaten was the one he actually wanted. The pressure of the gun barrel against my neck wavered slightly.
“Rita.” Thomas’s voice, sharp. “Don’t listen to him.”
“Don’t tell her what to do,” Elijah said. “She can make her own decision.”
After a long heavy pause, the cold metal left my neck and I heard the sound of Rita lowering her arm, and something in my chest released by a degree.
The guards came through the door behind Elijah immediately, four of them moved to flank Thomas from both sides.
He watched them come and then he smiled, which was the wrong reaction, and my stomach dropped before he even spoke.
“I knew there was something wrong,” he said, not to the guards but to me, “when I checked the monitors and the brain activity had changed. If Stella had just kept her mouth shut, we wouldn’t be here.” He reached into his coat pocket. “But here we are.”
His hand came out holding a small remote.
“This is the remote,” he smirked. “I think you can work out what it connects to. If your guards take one more step—” He held it up. “Everything goes away. The whole floor. All at once.”
The room went absolutely still.
“My children are on that floor,” I said. My voice came out steady, which surprised me.
“Yes they are.” He said it without the smile dropping. “I’ve had a lot of time in this house. Planting something in a room I visited frequently wasn’t difficult.” He looked at Elijah. “Your knife is impressive. But my thumb moves faster.”
“You built a bomb,” Elijah said.
“I’m a doctor. I understand chemistry.” He kept his eyes on both of us. “I was hoping not to use it. I’d rather walk out of here and let you live with the fact that you’ll never catch me. But if you force my hand—”
“I’ve dropped it,” I said, and I lowered my gun and set it on the floor and stood up straight. “You can see I’ve dropped it. Tell me where the bomb is.”
“Adriana—” Elijah’s voice, tight.
“He’s not bluffing,” I said, without turning around. “I’ve been dealing with him for months. He’s not bluffing.” I looked at Thomas directly. “You can go. Walk out of here. But you give me the remote first.”
Thomas looked at me for a long moment. Something moved across his face, barely any satisfaction, more like the expression of a man who had run a calculation and arrived at the result he was willing to accept.
“I’ll drop it at the gate,” he said. “Not before.”
“Stand down,” I said to the guards. “Let him through.”
“What are you doing?” Elijah’s voice was sharp behind me.
“I’m getting our children out of a building with a bomb in it.” I stepped aside. “Thomas. Walk.”
Thomas moved through the room with the unhurried pace of a man who had won something, and I watched him go and said nothing, and the moment he was through the door I turned and finally looked at my husband.
Seven months. He was thinner, the beard strange on his face, his movements were careful, like he was relearning what their body could do. But his eyes were the same — sharp and present and looking at me with an expression I recognized all the way down.
“Go after him,” I said. “Get the remote. I’m getting the kids out.”
I ran down the corridor, down the stairs, throwing open the door to Elijah’s room where Leo was already on his feet the moment he heard my footsteps.
“We need to move,” I said. “Right now. Everyone out of this room and off this floor. Now, Leo, go! Take them, don’t stop moving.”
He didn’t ask questions. He had Lana in his arms and Lorain by the hand before I finished the sentence, and the twins were off the bed and moving, and I shepherded them all through the door and down the corridor and down the stairs and out to the garden, counting heads every few seconds until we were outside in the cold air and I could account for all of them.
“Stay here,” I said to Leo. “Don’t move. Don’t come back inside until I come for you.”
He looked at me with Lana against his chest and Lorain pressed to his side and nodded once.
I went back in.
Hazel was already on the floor above, moving through the rooms with three guards. I found her in the corridor.
“I can’t hear anything,” she said. “No beeping, no signal. I don’t know where it is.”
I went to Elijah’s room and moved straight to the monitors.
There were Seven of them, various sizes, and various functions. I looked at each one once, then twice. Trying to take note of anything that could be out of place. On the fourth check, I noticed the third from the left had a seam that didn’t match the others. A section at the base that sat slightly differently.
I stepped back.
“Hazel,” my voice cracked.
She was beside me in seconds and she looked at what I was looking at and neither of us said anything for a moment.
“How much time—”
Elijah came through the door at a run with the remote in his hand and pressed the button and the readout on the device went dark.
The three of us stood in complete silence for five full seconds.
Then I sat down on the floor against the wall and put my head in my hands and let myself exist in that position for a while without trying to do anything about it.
“It stopped,” Hazel said, very quietly.
“Yes,” I said. “It stopped.”
I heard Elijah crouch down beside me and then I felt his hand on my back, and I pressed my lips together hard and breathed through my nose and waited for the shaking in my hands to subside.
“Damien,” I said finally, without lifting my head. “Is he here?”
“On his way,” Hazel said.
I reached for my phone with shaky hands. I called his number. He picked up immediately.
“My Queen—”
“Change of plans,” I said. “Don’t come to the house. Go after Thomas Gray. He just left through the main gate heading toward the border. Take whatever guards you need and find him.” A pause. “Don’t let him cross.”
I ended the call and finally looked up and felt my heart race.
Elijah was right there, crouched in front of me, watching my face with an expression that I hadn’t seen for months and had missed in a way I hadn’t let myself fully register until this moment.
“Hey,” he said quietly, the sides of his lips curving into an almost smile.
Something collapsed in my chest. I made a sound that was between a sob and a laugh.