Then she starts muttering about who to text—Jace won’t be back from his honeymoon for another two days. Ledger and Miles are both out of town. Her mom is at a meeting in Virginia or something. She murmurs, “I’ll text Emerson and Blake.”
I’m standing next to her, looking down at her phone as she attaches the two pictures to a text. She has typed in the words,We are at, when we hear a menacing voice behind us say, “Put the phone down and turn around slowly.”
Charlie slides the phone into her pocket, and as we turn around, I do it in a way to put my body between the man and Charlie. Then I pull back in surprise to see it’s Giovanni standing there, a gun in his hand, aimed right at us. There are two other guys with him, too. They’re all standing near the tunnel, so either they heard us when we opened the hatch—or saw the light of our flashlights shining down—and came up, or they were already inside The Shadowridge and snuck into the room quietly.
Giovanni shakes his head. “You weren’t supposed to find this entrance. I liked you, Owen.”
I don’t know exactly what he means by using “liked” in the past tense. I’m having trouble focusing on anything with that gun aimed at us. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been face-to-face with one, and honestly, I didn’t know it’d make me freeze in terror like this. Especially when it’s held by someone that, until very recently, I really respected.
Giovanni says that he can’t have us up here, thwarting things, so he takes both of us down into the tunnel with him.
CHAPTER 33
NOT MY FIRST KIDNAPPING
CHARLIE
Iam a highly trained technical operations officer in an intelligence agency. I can’t believe that when we first saw the opening to the tunnel, I didn’t immediately call Emerson and request backup. Nope. Instead, I have us shine our flashlights down it! And then just take pictures to attach to a text!
Okay, granted, we thought that Giovanni was on a different continent. I guess we should’ve realized that a smuggler as skilled at evading detection as Giovanni is would’ve figured out how to smuggle himself. And we’ve seen so little movement with this building that it didn’t occur to me that anyone might be around.
But still. Had Jace, or Miles, or Ledger done exactly what I did, I would’ve given them so much grief for it! And they are highly trained in the field and could hold their own in a situation like this. I am not.
What I am is someone who is currently getting every childhood fear of hers triggered as we walk down a tunnel that has probably been around since Prohibition. (And I’m not just basing that off the number of spider webs in the corners. The floor is packed dirt, and the walls are brick. Not that I’m a brick expert, but they do look like they’ve been around since at least the 1920s. I bet Owen could probably tell exactly what year they were made. Maybe evenwherethey were made. That’s probably one of those random historical facts he has memorized.)
As far as tunnels go, they’re decently-sized. Nearly three-foot-wide hallways, tall enough that no one has to crouch, not even Giovanni’s taller stooge, and there are several spaces that are much wider. They were probably used for alcohol storage. Now, at least one of them is being used as a smuggler’s compartment and one as a sort of command center, where a third stooge is standing at a table with some papers and a lamp on it.
So we have enough space, but we’re still trapped. This place is nothing like the warehouse where I was kept as a kidnapped preschooler, but I immediately recognize the fear I’m feeling that my family won’t know where I am as the same. My hands are clammy, and I am simultaneously uncomfortably hot and freezing cold. I shiver, and Owen puts his arm around me.
It seems that Giovanni and his guys are in the middle of trying to get the items they have down here moved elsewhere, especially because they know they have government agencies watching them, and preferably moved to buyers that they already have lined up. He seems too busy to deal with us yet, and maybe also like he doesn’t have the spare brainpower to figure outwhatto do with us. So, they stick us in one of the wider spaces that they haven’t filled with something else. A space that is right in their line of sight, so there’s no sneaking out.
Owen and I are sitting on the ground, our backs against a brick wall (that I definitely checked for spiders before leaning against). I can’t keep my eyes off the gun at Giovanni’s waist. The silent threat.
“Are you okay?” Owen asks.
I nod without taking my eyes off the gun.
“Charlie,” he says, and waits until I look at him. “We need to get out of here.”
I look back at our captors. “We can’t. We’re trapped.” My mind just keeps swirling around that one fact. We’re stuck down here. They’re watching us. They have a gun. This is the guy that my whole department has been trying to find for weeks. And they have us. I’m supposed to be safe behind a computer! Not in the field. Not captured. Not where no one knows where I am.
The hair is lifting on my arms, my heartis racing, and I’m struggling to keep the shaking in my hands from being noticeable and my breathing from being too fast. Every part of my body is telling me to hide, yet there is nowhere to hide. There’s only out here, in the open, where I can most easily be seen.
“Charlie, look at me.” I manage to tear my eyes off the men and look at Owen. He puts his hands on the sides of my face, holding my focus on him. “We’re going to be okay.”
I nod a bit. I like the words. I don’t believe the words.We’re trapped. We’re trapped. We’re trapped.
“Breathe with me.”
I know I need to listen. I try to focus on the rise and fall of Owen’s chest. Feel his hands on the sides of my head, the brick wall at my back, the dirt on the ground, the way his bent leg is pressed up against mine. And I breathe. Slower. Deeper. More sure.
After a few minutes, the swirling fog in my mind begins to subside, and I can think a bit more. When my heart rate feels like it’s not racing quite as fast, I glance back at the men. They seem to be focused on their own issues, so Owen drops his hands from cradling my head and straightens his leg as I slowly slide my cell phone from my pocket and unlock the screen. It still has the text open that I was getting ready to send to Emerson and Blake. “No bars,” I breathe. There’s not even a hint of a bar.
Owen’s eyes go wide.
I sneakily type the wordsCAPTUREDandHELP. I don’t even bother to say that we are at The Shadowridge—they’re smart enough to figure that one out. Then I tap send, even though I know it won’t go through until we are out of this tunnel, which will be kind of pointless then, and slip it back into my pocket.
I can tell that Owen’s mind is spinning, so I pull myself together. I am almost never in any actual danger, but I have proximity to danger all the time. I experience it vicariously every time I guide Jace through a mission. Owen doesn’t. I need to be calm for him. I know how Jace thinks from watching him in situations similar to this, so I can handle this.
