Deep (Chicago Underground #8)(18)

Philip pressed the button to go down, and there was a tense silence while we waited for the elevator, in a stalemate with the cops.

The door opened, revealing Sloan inside.

His eyes widened when he saw me. “Ella. Oh God.”

“Move,” Philip said, his voice like granite.

Sloan scrambled out of the elevator, and before I could even think of what to tell him—help or please don’t help, you’ll only get yourself hurt—Philip had moved us into the elevator and the doors were sliding shut.

And then it was only Philip and me, alone in the elevator, heading down.

My room was on floor twenty-four. The display flickered to twenty-three. Twenty-two.

He still held the gun, but at least it wasn’t pointed at my head anymore. I jammed my elbow into his stomach, and he grunted. I moved to the other side of the elevator, clinging to the cold metal bar.

“I hope that opens up your injury,” I said.

His expression was taut with pain—but a faint smile flickered over his lips. “That’s right, kitten. Give me hell.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, confused and upset. Why did he have to change the game?

I had known he was a dangerous man, but I had always sort of trusted him. After all, he had saved me when I was at my weakest. But then, maybe he had only done it for Shelly. They were having sex at the time—f*cking was the word she would have used—and I had suspected he was in love with her.

She had ended up marrying someone else—a cop, no less. So maybe being nice to me, or at least not killing me, was off the table now. Maybe it didn’t matter what happened to me with Shelly out of the picture. Something cold settled into my stomach. My breath came a little faster, the air thin and stale in this elevator.

“What the hell?” I asked, my voice small. I hated how hurt I sounded.

I hated that I let him hurt me. Floor fifteen. Fourteen.

He didn’t even look at me, his gaze on the gun as he flicked some small lever. Then he held it up for me to see, sideways. “Turning the safety back off.”

Realization flooded through me. The safety had been on while it had been pointed at my head. At least, if I believed him. I didn’t know enough about guns to know if he was telling the truth. “It was still dangerous,” I said. “The cops could have shot me.”

“They wouldn’t have done that,” he scoffed.

Horribly, tears sprang to my eyes. I fought them. “That’s not the point. Anything could have happened. There were guns everywhere, and you put me in the middle of it.”

He sobered. “I’ll always protect you, Ella. That’s a promise.”

The words filled a space inside me that had been hollow for too long. And I couldn’t regret that he had held a gun to my head, if that meant surviving. Couldn’t regret that he had come to me in a moment of weakness. He’d been in a vulnerable state—a rare moment for a man like him. And he’d trusted me with it. There was a kind of power in that.

A dark kind of hope.

We were on floor five now. Almost to the bottom.

“So what’s next?” I asked, a hitch in my chest. “Am I still your hostage?”

“I thought I’d told you, kitten. You’re with me now, for better or for worse.”

With those disturbing words, the elevator dinged its arrival. The doors slid open.





Chapter Fifteen

WE MADE IT through the lobby without any threats at gunpoint.

We did earn a lot of stares, however.

The lobby of the dorm had seen many wild things, drunken antics and one notorious whipped-cream dunking booth. There had never been a man like Philip Murphy, clearly dangerous, clearly powerful—shirtless and bloody as he strode to the exit. He nodded once, politely, at an openmouthed student clutching a pile of textbooks. And the entire time he kept a firm grip on my arm, propelling me forward.

I didn’t bother to fight him. It would only have slowed us down, maybe get him caught by the cops, who must have been on their way down after us. And definitely none of the soft, slender boys watching us in shock could have rescued me. Only Sloan would have tried, but even his determination was no match for the barrel of a gun.

The sunlight burned my eyes, blinded me. The campus where I had lived and gone to school looked the same as ever, but different too—a fun-house mirror version of the place I knew. In a flash of glinting chrome and shiny paint, a black SUV screeched to a halt at the curb.

Instinctively I took a step back.

The men who took me, the car waiting behind the club that night to take me way—they’d come in a black unmarked car too. It was the kind of car designed to look anonymous, even though it was anything but. Ordinary people may not have known who was in the car, what horrible crime they had committed today, but they knew bad people were inside. Dangerous people.

Nothing good ever came in black cars. Except for now, apparently. Because instead of evading the car, Philip went and opened the door.

“Get in,” he said, but he didn’t wait for my compliance. He used his grip on my arm to bodily push me inside, lifting me from the ground. I toppled onto soft leather seats as he climbed in behind me.

I scrambled upright in time to see the door to the building burst open with Barnes in the lead, gun in both hands as he bolted toward us, surprisingly fast for a man who looked like he was pushing fifty.