out of view in case it’s someone who came down from the second floor, but Corbin gives me a half-smile, pulling me back toward the doors and gesturing me in.
“Your chariot awaits,” Seth says through the earpiece, and I realize he must’ve brought it down. His skills never cease to amaze me.
As the doors shut us in for the quick ride, my skin feels like ants are crawling all over me. The anxiousness I feel, I know for a fact I’d never be able to do this or anything close to this as an actual job. When I look at Corbin in the reflection of the doors, he’s completely calm, looking like he’s on his way up to a spa appointment or something, not into battle with a fucking suspected murderer.
“We’ve got her, Doc. It’s going to be okay. The minute we lay eyes on her, you snatch her up and run. I’ll take care of the rest,” he says low, and while I agree nearly wholeheartedly with his plan, the idea of it lets in a sliver of regret, regret that it won’t be me to finally make this piece of shit pay. But Astrid is the most important thing. She’s my main focus, and everything else doesn’t matter. It’ll play out the way fate wants.
The elevator comes to a stop, my stomach dipping, and the doors open silently. I stay back as Corbin glances out, checking in all directions, and then follow his lead, hurrying to the back wall and ducking low as we cross to the other side of the staircases’ landing. A glimpse to the left shows the grand foyer, and we make it to the other side without anyone yelling in our direction.
We stride down the corridor, and over Corbin’s shoulder I see Brian squatted down in front of a door. His hands are up at eye level, and as we grow closer, I see he’s silently picking the lock on the door. There’s no surveillance in his own personal room, so we have no idea what we’re going to be bursting in on.
Or so I think.
When the lock is undone, Brian pulls out what looks like a clear tube and plugs it into his phone. He curves the end of it and slips it slowly beneath the bottom of the door. He touches an app, and suddenly the screen is filled with the image of someone’s feet not far from the camera.
He twists it a bit, and the image travels up a pair of legs, over a dress, and then up until I see my goddess, my Astrid standing there, her face paralyzed with fear, her arms up in surrender. Everything in me wants to bust through the wood the separates us, but Corbin latches onto my shoulder to keep me still. Brian maneuvers the camera again, and what I see on the screen of his phone makes the blood drain from my face.
Randy is on a bed, fucking a girl doggie-style, something like a leash around her neck, her face lifeless. And as bad as that is, it’s not what makes my world tilt on its axis. It’s the gun he has aimed directly at the love of my life. The cause of her position in front of the door, frozen in terror. My knees nearly buckle, but Corbin catches me.
“We got this,” he whispers, and I’m about to question him. How? How could this possibly go right when this motherfucker has a gun pointed at the woman I cherish more than life itself. But he cuts my thoughts off, “We’ve handled worse.”
Brian quickly pulls the camera back out and sets everything aside, rising before us like a giant about to wreak havoc on the ants beneath his shoe. “Stay behind me,” he whispers, pulling his gun from the holster at his ribs just as Corbin pulls his from beneath the back of his shirt, gripping the stock, his finger resting beside the trigger, not on it. But I know how fast that finger can move.
I stop breathing as Brian takes hold of the doorknob.
Everything comes to a complete standstill.
And as if someone pushes Play on a slo-mo reel, he twists the knob.
Fast-forwarding to the speed of light, he opens the door inward, and all I see in the span of that second is Astrid’s head turning toward us in the doorway.
Time slows down again, her long, blonde hair swinging out behind her, her eyes going even wider when she sees us there.