The Bride And The Mercenary. Harper Allen
outside had just been severed. “I was supposed to be getting married today, remember? You saw me going into the church.”
“Oh.” There was a note of uncertainty in his voice, and she wondered if he did remember. They reached the second floor, turned a corner, and continued upward. “Well, I guess the wedding’s off now,” he grunted dismissively, hauling her up the last few steps.
They were on the third floor, the flashlight wavering over a dusty, patterned carpet that ran down the hallway in front of them. As her abductor—of course, he thinks he’s my rescuer, she told herself grimly—dragged her swiftly along the seemingly endless hallway, on either side she saw numbered doors, forbiddingly dark rectangles set into the peeling walls.
He’d called her Lee. She was sure he’d called her by name, although at this point she realized she couldn’t be sure of anything. But she’d heard him, she knew she had, and the only way he could have known it was if—
If he’d read about the wedding in the papers, she told herself sharply. If he’d heard someone outside St. Margaret’s mention it. For God’s sake, the events board on the church lawn lists the names of the bride and groom when there’s a wedding being held. He could have seen that.
Except somehow those explanations didn’t seem very convincing. Whoever he was, he lived in his own world—the world of him and them. The danger he perceived all around him was imaginary, of course, but to him it was real and immediate. He focused on it exclusively. Nothing else existed for him.
Which was fine, if that was the way he wanted to live his life. Except now she’d been drawn into his paranoia.
Whatever excuse Sully was making for her right now, it couldn’t be more outlandish than the situation she was in, Ainslie thought. She couldn’t allow this to go any further. As he came to an abrupt halt in front of one of the doors, she found her voice.
“I’m not going in there with you.” She was shaking, she noted dispassionately. “I don’t know who you think is after you, but I know that if you don’t let me leave, people are going to start looking for me. As soon as they see that motorcycle outside, they’ll know I’m here. You don’t want to spend tonight in a jail cell, do you?”
With the hand that wasn’t holding hers, he fished for something inside the open collar of the ragged shirt he was wearing under the greatcoat. Ainslie saw it was a length of string with a number of keys attached to it.
“They’re here.”
She was close enough to him to feel the sudden rigidity in his muscles. In the act of unlocking the door, he froze in a listening position, his whole demeanor one of tense alertness. Despite herself, she froze, too.
“I don’t hear any—” she began in a whisper, but then stopped.
Had she heard something? Unconsciously holding her breath, and realizing that her unlikely companion was doing the same, she listened intently, straining her ears to catch the slightest sound. She heard it again, and this time she knew what it was.
Three floors below them, someone—or was it more than one person?—was coming up the stairs. The footfalls were muffled, as if the intruders were trying to approach as quietly as possible.
“Two. Three…” Counting out loud almost inaudibly, the big man was staring at something above his head. She followed his gaze and saw a tiny red pinprick of light appear just above the door. “Four.” He looked up for a second longer. Under the beard, his mouth was set in a tight line.
“Four of them.” He saw her confusion. “Something I rigged up under that fifth stair,” he said briefly, unlocking the door. “The light goes on inside the room, too, so I know if someone’s coming. Hold on, I’ve got to disable something.”
Cautiously pushing the door open an inch or so, he squatted and felt along its bottom edge, finally releasing her hand to do so. This was her chance to run, Ainslie thought. She didn’t move.
“Okay, we can go in.” He straightened and opened the door completely. “I guess this is the last time I’ll have to reset it. This place is blown now.”
“‘Blown’?” she repeated, moving like an automaton ahead of him into the room. The wavering beam of his flashlight seemed to be growing fainter, and she felt a sudden sharp panic overlay the nebulous fear gripping her. His solid bulk brushed against her in the dark, and her panic eased a notch.
Which was stupid, she admitted to herself. He was the reason she was creeping around in the dark in the first place, jumping at the slightest sound. That flashing light over the door was a perfect illustration of just how unbalanced the man was—and how off balance he’d made her feel, since for a moment there, watching the red pinprick, she’d actually believed it meant something.
“Blown. Finished.” His elaboration was perfunctory. “I won’t be able to come back here again.”
At his last words Ainslie heard a small clicking sound, and the next moment she was squinting her eyes against the harsh brightness that suddenly illuminated the room. Still blinking, she peered at him suspiciously.
“How did you do that? Is that another gadget you rigged up?”
He looked at her as if she were crazy. “Yeah. It’s called a light switch.”
“But…but the power to this place must have been cut off years ago.”
She looked around her. The hotel room that this must have originally been was no longer recognizable as such. It was obvious that he’d been living here long enough to put his own stamp on the place. His own wacky stamp, Ainslie thought, not knowing whether to laugh or to be appalled.
Whatever the booby trap was that he’d jury-rigged at the entrance, it was hardly necessary. On either side of them were towering walls of bundled newspapers, and even as she turned she felt the wall nearest her sway ominously. He grabbed her arm.
“Watch out, they’re balanced pretty delicately. Walk behind me and try not to touch the sides. It opens out just past the curve.” Setting off down his insane hallway, he kept talking, no longer making an effort to keep his voice low. “I ran a line in. What the power company doesn’t know won’t hurt them. I needed the electricity to make the modifications, anyway.”
“What modifications?” she asked faintly, following him. They reached the curve in the newspapers, and he stopped so suddenly that she almost ran into him.
“The door, for one. I replaced it with a steel one, and then painted it to match the rest of them again. And of course all the interior walls had to be sheeted with quarter-inch steel, in case they tried to get in from one of the adjoining rooms.”
“Good thinking.” Ainslie pressed her fingers to her forehead, hardly able to absorb what she was hearing—and seeing. The man was a full-blown paranoiac. That was a given. But there was no denying he was also quite a handy renovator, in his own unique way.
Somewhere in the real world Sullivan would be attempting to apologize for her actions to an incredulous Pearson, she supposed. Somewhere in the real world the man whose wife she should have been by now would be wondering how he’d managed to read her character so inaccurately.
In that real world was a man she’d behaved unforgivably toward, Ainslie thought. She owed it to him to deliver her apology in person, and as soon as possible. Except that she first had to find a way out of this fantasy world she’d stumbled into.
She had no idea what the Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions around her were supposed to do. In one corner of the room was what looked to be the back half of a bicycle. Attached to it was a circular leather strap, and nearby were neatly lined-up rows of car batteries, each with alligator clips and wires snaking from each terminal. Out of the corner of her eye she could see similarly strange juxtapositions of junk, but she purposely didn’t look at them. Instead she looked at their creator. Even as she did, though, he turned from her and headed toward the truncated bicycle.
“Thank God, I finished this yesterday,”