Living with the Dead - By Kelley Armstrong Page 0,144
and the demon shouted at her to get the hell out of there.
She got on all fours, shut her eyes and crawled as fast as she could, ignoring the blows and kicks of people tripping over her. When she finally tasted a current of fresh air on the breeze, she opened her eyes. The chaos-laced smoke still eddied around them, but she could make out the shapes of buildings and people. One person in particular—Adele Morrissey racing across the field.
Hope scrambled to her feet and shot after Adele.
Hope started along a house, darting from bush to bush. But she quickly realized it wasn’t necessary. Adele never glanced back, which told Hope she’d already been spotted. Adele must have caught a glimpse when Hope first started after her, and now she watched Hope’s progress remotely, letting her think she hadn’t noticed. Hope played the game, and kept her gun holstered, out of sight.
When Hope rounded the barn, she saw Adele’s destination—a small outbuilding in the middle of a field. For an ambush or hiding place, she’d have chosen the barn, but Adele’s trajectory put her on target for the shed and, sure enough, a moment later, she was inside it.
Hope darted to the door, then waited, ears and chaos sensors on full. A key clicked in a lock. Then a rhythmic clang-clang, growing distant until it faded. Hope slipped inside. One section of the hay-covered floor had been hastily cleared. Beneath it was a hatch, conveniently left open, should Hope not be clever enough to figure out where Adele had gone.
Beneath the hatch, a metal ladder descended into darkness. With a distant click, a dim light filled the bottom. The sound of one lock opening. Footsteps. The scrape of a key. The creak of a door. A blast of manic voices. Cartoons? The noise faded, and Hope dismissed it as shrieks from outside.
She climbed down the ladder, closing the hatch behind her so no one would follow her down. As she neared the bottom, she hunched down to get a better look at what she was descending into, but all she could see from her vantage point was an empty room with a door. She called on the demon to pick up any tremors of chaos. It reported negative. Hope still lowered herself as slowly as she could, knowing Adele could be waiting at the bottom.
She wasn’t. She’d even left the door ajar for Hope.
Hope crept up to it, taking out her gun now, keeping it hidden under her jacket in case Adele was watching. Hope eased open the door. It led to a dimly lit tunnel and another door at the end, a sliver of light telling Hope it too was cracked open. She did a chaos check, then crept down the hall and pulled open the second door.
Adele stood right there, looking into the room, her back to Hope.
“Come in, Hope,” she said. “It is Hope, isn’t it?”
She spun, gun flying up . . . only to see Hope pointing at her. She looked at it. Blinked. And laughed, a high girlish laugh.
“The element of surprise is lost with us, isn’t it?” She lowered her gun. “I’m not going to shoot you. Read my mind or whatever it is you do. You need to take me out of here alive. I want to leave alive, and the only way I’m doing that is in your custody.”
She turned her back to Hope, a mind-blowing act of trust. Or, Hope suspected, arrogance. But she was right. Right now, their goals coincided. Still, Hope wasn’t lowering her gun.
“Close the door,” Adele said.
Hope did—she didn’t want anyone sneaking up behind her.
“Might as well get comfortable. I have a plan to get us out, but until someone shows up to negotiate with, we’re stuck.”
Again, Hope had to agree. The property was swarming with armed men—cops or Cabal, she wasn’t sure. Add the rifle-toting kumpania members, and she wasn’t setting foot outside this bunker until someone granted her safe passage.
As for what they were in, bunker was the word that came to mind, but as she passed through the entryway into the main room, she had a vision . . . of a playground, the one she and Karl had been standing outside only hours ago. That’s what this looked like: a day care, all bright colors and plush furniture. A TV flashed now—silent cartoons. There was even a crib pushed against the wall. Why would there be—?