That EMP was looking more and more likely. Either that or we were in a house where they didn’t believe in electricity. Which seemed highly unlikely, given the level of decorating they’d done.
But that didn’t answer my more immediate question. Where was Angie? And was she okay?
“Angie!” I hissed out, trying to make my voice carry, but keep it quiet at the same time. I wanted her to hear me. I didn’t want our host to get involved until I knew she was okay.
And I needed her brain. Needed to know what she remembered about whoever had rescued us. Needed to know whether she knew anything more about them than I’d already deduced. And I wanted to start building a plan. Because if this person turned out to be as dangerous as Randall and his crew had been, then we were going to have to make a run for it again, out into the snow and ice and freezing, deadly cold.
I needed to know whether she was going to be able to make that run. Or whether I’d be strapping her across my back and depending on my own body to get her to safety.
9
“Angie!” I hissed again into the dead quiet of the hallway.
I paused and listened with everything I had, my body absolutely still with the hope that I’d hear her—and the fear that I would have attracted the attention of whoever else was in this colorful house. I took one creeping step forward, then another, feeling the absolute lack of any weapon, and then saw a table sitting across from me in the hallway.
A table with a lamp on it.
I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen it before—it was sloppy, really, to have missed it—but I was willing to blame my absolute focus on trying to figure out what had happened and where we were for my lapse of concentration.
Dammit. If Special Ops had taught me one thing—one thing!—it was to always be observant of what was around us. You just never knew what could be important, or what could be hiding a potential enemy. You needed to look around, figure out what you could use as a potential weapon.
As a potential shield.
And I’d completely flaked on that. Now, when I needed it so badly, when I was unarmed and in unfamiliar territory. Now, when I had to find and potentially save my wife. I’d forgotten all of my training.
What kind of soldier was I if I couldn’t keep it together for ten minutes when I was in a non-lethal situation without anyone doing anything like pointing a gun at my head? I’d been in far, far worse situations in Afghanistan—too many times to count—and I’d been able to keep my focus laser-sharp then.
I was losing a step. And this was definitely not the right time to do it.
I narrowed my eyes, forcing my brain to take on that soldier’s perspective again, and looked up and down the hallway, considering. Still too many doors for my liking. Too many doors for anyone to be hiding behind. But the hallway itself was empty, and I needed a weapon. After another moment of waiting, I dashed the step across the hallway and grabbed the lamp up from the table, yanking the cord out of the wall.
There. Weapon in hand, check. It wouldn’t do much against someone with a gun, but if I managed to come up behind whoever was holding us here, I’d at least be able to slow them down.
Then I heard something. A whisper of sound so faint that I almost missed it the first time.
“John? Are you out there?”
My heart stopped for a moment, then started pounding at five times its normal speed.
“Angie!” I whispered back. “Where are you?”
“John!”
I could almost feel the relief in her voice, and that alone had me moving forward, my instincts trying to figure out where the sound had come from. There were two more doorways in front of me, both of those doors open, and I thought she had to be in one of those rooms. There were no other options.
I moved on silent feet, still aware that I didn’t know who else was in this house, and when I got to the first doorway, I turned sharply into it, my eyes moving as quickly as I could make them to go through the room and catalog its holdings. Bed, check. Dresser, check. Window with a curtain, check.
Lights off, check.
Interesting, but no Angie. And that meant this room was unimportant.
I turned on a heel and darted diagonally across the hall toward the other room, my heart hammering against my ribs. She had to be in here—she had to. I wasn’t willing to venture into the rest of the house without her. Without knowing that she was safe, and whole.
A quick glance across the room, though, told me that she wasn’t, and I whirled around on my toes, legs already tensed to take me out into the hall again. But then I paused and tried to get my mind to work. She wasn’t in either of the open rooms, and I’d come from the other side of the hallway. I’d heard her on this end, though—and I didn’t think I would have been able to hear her through any of the closed doors that had been behind me.
Where the hell was she? Where had the bastard who’d found us stashed my wife?
I crept into the hallway again, gaze going left and right and then left again as I tried to figure out whether I’d missed anything. Another door. A nook where she was sitting. Anything. But there was nothing there; just the hallway I’d already come down—complete with doors I’d passed and rooms I’d checked—and these two rooms at the end of the hall. Where else could she—
“John!” I heard again, and this time I heard what direction it was coming from.
I turned sharply to my left, my eyes on the spot where I thought her voice had come from, and started walking. I didn’t bother to get up against the wall or try to hide. I didn’t bother to creep.
I wanted to know where my wife was. And I wanted to know now. If that meant I came face-to-face with whoever had brought us here before I was ready or in any way armed, well, that was a risk I was willing to take.
Three steps had me at the end of the hall, and that was when I saw the thing I’d been missing up to that point. Though this hall did indeed end in a window, it turned out that it also turned, in a corner that was so abrupt and tight, the next hall almost doubling back on this one, that it had been impossible to see from where I’d been standing.
I went around it and jerked to a stop, barely breathing.
There was an entirely different hall in front of me. It looked exactly the same—and it had at least ten doors ranging down the left-hand side. This hall must have run almost parallel to the one I’d been in, with only enough space for the set of rooms between them.
At the other end of the hall, another window. All the doors were closed.
“How big is this place?” I whispered to myself, shocked. I’d known that there were some large houses in the backwoods near Ellis Woods, but this place now had, by my count, at least twenty rooms in it. That seemed extensive, even for a big house. Had we somehow found our way into some sort of hotel? A bed and breakfast?
In the middle of a wild and largely unpopulated forest in Michigan?
It seemed highly unlikely.
But that also wasn’t my problem. I didn’t care what kind of place this was. I just cared that I found Angie and got the hell out of here.
“Angie!” I hissed. “Where the hell are you?”
“She’s in here,” a person who definitely wasn’t Angie answered from directly to my left.
10
I jerked and turned, trying desperately to get my heart to go back into its correct position, and cursing myself once again for having been caught unprepared. And what I saw surprised me. I’d expected someone that measured up to Randall. Well, perhaps not. We were in far too nice of a house—with decorating that was at least civilized—for that to be the case.