the field house by a janitor.”
“Son of a bitch.”
Chapter 19
Carpe that fucking diem.
-Coffee Cup
Ares
“Go in there and lock the back door,” Bailey ordered. “And don’t think about doing anything stupid like leaving out of it. I can’t afford to be distracted right now. I’ve never done one of these before.”
I looked at him in confusion, and he wiggled a wire and a battery at me.
“It’s a homemade bomb,” he said. “I learned how to make it at the library.”
At the library.
He learned how to make a bomb at the library.
Holy. Shit.
He was making a bomb!
“Not to mention, if you try to run, I’ll make it back inside the school before you can, and I’ll do some damage before anyone can stop me.”
He wasn’t lying.
I saw the truth in his eyes.
I closed mine very briefly, then went to do what he asked of me.
Walking to the door, I twisted the lock and then checked the door handle just to be sure.
Locked.
I was locked in the field house with a fucking serial killer.
And he was making a bomb.
I raised my hand and pressed it against the glass, saddened that I couldn’t see out due to all of the shoe polish that the cheerleaders used to decorate for the football team.
My finger scratched it slightly, knocking the shoe polish off of the glass where my finger brushed it.
My heart started to race, and I did it again, this time on purpose.
Very slowly as not to draw Bailey’s attention, I scratched a few words into the shoe polish, hoping that it was big enough that someone could read it when they came in, but small enough that Bailey wouldn’t be able to see what I’d written.
Then I turned my back on the door and prayed that nobody accidentally walked in and got caught in the crossfire.
***
Hayes
“You’re not going.”
I wasn’t going.
I knew it.
Luke knew it.
Downy knew it.
My fucking father, who was for some reason there as well, knew it.
Everybody knew it.
That didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
“I won’t go in,” I promised.
Unless I was needed.
Then I would go in and fuck the consequences.
“Good,” Foster grumbled and walked over to where Saint was standing. Saint had taken over Downy’s job, which was a good thing in this case. There was no way Downy would be able to negotiate with Bailey right now since his daughter was the one being held hostage.
“I got a sign on the door,” Louis murmured through the microphone that I wore in my right ear. “At first I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but now that I’ve been staring at it long enough through my scope, I’m seeing that something is scratched out in the chalk covering the door. It says ‘Bomb. Inside.’”
I felt the bottom drop out from underneath me.
Hell, even my fucking knees went weak.
Downy muttered a harsh curse under his breath, and I knew without asking that he was feeling the exact same thing I was at that moment.
“I knew I shouldn’t have let her come,” I said, pressing my fingertips hard into my temple in a vain attempt to try to stop the throb.
It didn’t help.
In fact, it only made it worse.
“Agreed,” Downy murmured. “I had a bad feeling.”
Me, too.
But I didn’t want to come off as overprotective and domineering, telling Ares what she could and couldn’t do. I couldn’t tell her how to do her job, just like she couldn’t tell me how to do mine.
Now, I wish I had come off as an asshole.
I wish I had refused.
“I want to marry your daughter.”
Downy looked at me, his pissed off eyes meeting mine, and said, “Memphis and I talked about this last night.”
My brows went up.
“We discussed what I’d say if you ever asked,” he continued. “I said that I’d say ‘over my dead body.’ Now, all I’m thinking is that, if she comes out of this alive, you can have her. I’ll drive y’all to the courthouse myself.”
I nodded once, then went back to being silent.
My eyes on the fucking metal building that looked so boring.
The school around us was quiet.
The teachers were actually evacuating on the other side of the school.
It’d been seventeen minutes