The Gender War (The Gender Game #4)(2)

Still, the handcuffs were off, which moved the escape plan to stage two: defeating the cell door. The lock on this was bigger, and I stared at my belt prong dubiously, convinced it wasn’t up for the task. Even in my anger, I’d been watching my captors’ patterns. A guard patrolled the corridor here like clockwork—every fifteen minutes one would walk by to check on me. I doubted I could pick the lock in fifteen minutes. Not from the inside, reaching around the bars to the front of the door, with such a complicated lock and such a flimsy piece of metal.

And yet... it gave me an idea. I knew I only had a short time before the guard showed up again. I waited. I breathed, brushing the crust of blood from where I’d been kicked off my aching forehead, using each minute to nail down a lid on the rage that was still boiling in my stomach.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, I heard the guard’s repetitive footsteps echoing down the hall, growing louder as she approached. Quickly, I reached out around the cell bars and slid the thin piece of metal into the lock.

As the guard rounded the corner, I froze, as if I had been so absorbed in the task that I hadn’t heard her approach. She locked eyes with me, her blue ones narrowing in irritation. I slowly stood up and backed away, the belt in one hand.

If the guard noticed I wasn’t cuffed anymore, she seemed to be putting more thought to the problem at hand. “Give it to me,” she ordered.

I stared at her, a challenge in my eyes. I was banking on a lot of things going right, but I was desperate. If she were experienced, she’d pull the gun, especially since I was holding a prospective weapon in my hand.

She reached for her gun, and I cursed internally. “Bring it to me,” she said as her gun slid out of her holster.

I kept my mouth closed and slowly walked to the bars. She hadn’t stepped back, save to draw on me.

“Throw it through the bars,” she commanded, her eyes reflecting her burgeoning desire to shoot me.

“My pants will fall down,” I whined, and the guard blew out an irritated stream of air through her nose. She took a step forward and thrust her free hand through the bars.

“Give it to me now,” she started to say, and by the tone of her voice, I knew there was an ‘or else’ attached to it.

It didn’t matter, because I never gave her the chance to finish. My hands snapped out and I grabbed her arm, giving it a hard yank. The breath in her chest huffed out, and her gun clattered to the floor when her head slammed into the bars. Her body followed, and her feet flew out from under her as I yanked her shoulder down to the ground like we were wrestling.

Adrenaline rushing in my veins, I whipped my hand through the bars, grabbed her hair, and banged her head against the metal as hard as I could. Once. Twice. Thankfully, that was all it took. Her body thrashed, and her gun hand tried to reach me, but eventually she slumped to the floor.

It took me a harrowing few moments of yanking and tugging through the bars before I managed to reach the set of keys on her belt. Turning the key in the door felt like it took years.

The lock clicked, and I stepped out into the corridor, taking a moment to drag the guard’s stirring form into the cell and lock it behind me. I’d searched her for a handheld, but no luck. With her gun in one hand and my belt in the other, I moved toward the area she had come from. I remembered a small office that they had brought me through at the end of the hall. There had only been two guards when I came in, and now one of them was taking an involuntary nap in my cell.

I was hoping the lack of any alarms meant the other guard was not paying close attention to the video cameras I had seen here and there as they brought me through the prison area. But I didn’t want to rely on just luck. I paused just outside the door and tested the handle as quietly as possible. It was locked, but I still had the guard’s key set.

Only four keys. Thankfully. It took less than a minute to figure out which one I needed. Still, as I inserted the third key into the lock and turned it, I was fortified by the continued quiet. I slowly pushed open the door and stepped through.

All my caution had been wasted. The guard was fast asleep at her desk. I felt a little pang of pity for her as I pulled her head back and wrapped her in a chokehold, ensuring through her struggles that her nap would last a little longer.

A bank of screens lined the wall of the office, the rows of grainy video feeds showing… I paused as I used my belt to cinch the unconscious guard’s hands tightly behind her back. Static pulsed and flickered on all the screens. Could that be normal?

I had no way of knowing. Cautiously, I punched a few common buttons on the keyboard in front of the computer. Nothing happened. Disappointment flared in me—a part of me had been hoping that I’d be able to use these cameras to find Violet’s cell… if that’s where she was.

There was no time to be disappointed. I went out into the prison again, determined to make a thorough search if I had to.

The halls of the prison were eerily quiet and the cells mostly empty. I assumed a stance of calm indifference, padding down the corridors before the other prisoners as though I belonged there. I couldn’t stop to wonder about their stories.

I was tense as a coiled spring, prepared to face reinforcements for the two unconscious guards, so when I heard footsteps around the corner and Owen appeared, I barely avoided shooting him.

Still, I kept my gun trained on him as he slowly held his hands up. The man was younger than me by a few years, and he had a kind face, with blue eyes and blond hair. I didn’t know him well, but considering I’d just wrestled a bomb meant to kill the queen away from him, I wasn’t letting my guard down.