Article 5 (Article 5 #1)(52)

Hot water. The hot water heater was working.

I looked out the door for Chase again, worried. What if the carrier came while he was gone? What if he didn’t intend to come back at all?

He needs to be alone, I told myself. Reluctantly, I left him to his mood and went to check the shower. I’d clean up quickly, just in case we didn’t have a chance when it was time to go.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before starting the water. I’d grown thin in the last month—not starving thin, but lean, and more muscular. All traces of the girl I’d been at home had vanished. I wondered if Chase had noticed. Not that it mattered or anything.

Maybe Rebecca had been right. Maybe the MM had made him break up with me, but that didn’t mean he’d been chaste. Had he been with other girls? Sean had found a way, so surely Chase could. I found I detested this thought, and then I detested that I detested it. It was none of my business. In fact, Chase’s love life was the least of my concerns.

What was wrong with me? Even if some of his actions made a little more sense after an explanation, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still insufferable. And besides that, who knew if he was even telling the truth. His whole story had been under the guise of Tucker’s misadventures, after all. Even if he had seemed genuinely affected back there, it didn’t mean he was the same person he’d been a year ago.

I turned on the water and was just about to disrobe when a slam in the kitchen interrupted my thoughts.

Chase was back. And, I soon found, frantic.

He bolted into the room, nearly knocking the door off its hinges, and slammed off the valve. His eyes darted wildly behind me.

“What—”

Without a word of explanation he jammed us both inside the closet and jerked the door closed behind him. I became acutely aware of the sound of his breathing, of the feel of his chest pumping in and out and pulling me with it. Of the truth: We were in imminent danger.

It was a tiny space, barely large enough for us to stand. The shelves holding the towels cut into my knees and hips, but he’d still managed to wrap himself around my body. One hand was firmly latched over my mouth. When I automatically bit down, I could taste the salt from the sweat on his fingers.

The adrenaline was pouring off of him. My own heartbeat accelerated to meet his.

“Hello?” a man’s voice called from the kitchen. I went stiff in Chase’s grasp. He held me tightly against him, angling his side and back toward our exit.

“Don’t answer,” he breathed into my ear.

“Hello? Is someone here?”

An instant later I heard a loud clang and splatter, likely our soup pot being knocked off the counter. Then the scrambling of footsteps across the wooden floor.

I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Desperately, I pried off Chase’s hand. He relaxed his grip slightly, only to press my face into his shoulder.

“Got him?” shouted a second male voice.

“Where you gonna go?” said another. There was a loud crash. Maybe the kitchen table.

“You going to arrest me?” the first man called. He sounded willing to bargain.

One of the others laughed. “You know we’re past that, old man.”

There was another struggle, then the sliding of something heavy across the wooden floor.

“No!” he begged. “Please! I’ve got a family!”

“Should have thought about that before.”

The other snickered. “Think they’re compliant?”

At the mention of compliance my body began to quake. These were soldiers.

We couldn’t run. We had no escape.

Click. The metallic sound that only a gun could make.

I jerked instinctively. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t die in this closet.

“No one is going to touch you,” Chase murmured into my hair.

I wanted to believe him, but as I turned my head, I saw in the crack of light from the doorframe that Chase had raised his own gun and was aiming it at chest height straight out into the bathroom.

I gasped. He continued whispering things I couldn’t make out. I wrapped my trembling fists in his shirt and bit down in the fabric covering his chest.

Someone walked into the bedroom down the hall.

“Clear,” he reported after a moment.

Don’t come in here. Not in here.

The bathroom door creaked open.

Footsteps moved across the tile floor, with just a little squeak. New boots.

With the door open, I could hear the carrier sobbing in the other room. He was begging for his life. He was crying for his little boy. Andrew.

“You try to take a shower, old man?” the soldier yelled from the bathroom. I pinched my eyes closed and tried to be absolutely still. Why had I turned on the water? What was I thinking? That we were at home? That mistake was about to get us killed.

The carrier continued bawling, and then grunted when he was struck with something. I smothered a sob into Chase’s shoulder.

“I was going to but … but t-the water heater … it’s broken … I forgot,” the carrier answered.

My stomach twisted.

Chase slowly eased back the slide on his pistol. It made a nearly unperceivable click. I prepared myself for the blast. I was ready to run.

The soldier abandoned the bathroom.

A second later, the deafening sound of gunfire split my eardrums.