Cooper answered by leaning in and cuffing her wrists and ankles with plastic ties.
“You can’t leave me in here! What do you think—”
Before she could protest further, Deuce slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth. She tried to scream but it only came out muffled and incomprehensible.
“Scoot over,” Cooper told her.
Her brow furrowed.
“Scoot. Over.” He reached in and pushed her to the back of the trunk. He looked at Alex and motioned to the open space that had been created. “All yours.”
“Can’t wait,” Alex said.
As soon as she was in the trunk next to El-Hashim, the lid closed. She listened as Deuce and Cooper climbed into the car. With a quick rev of the engine, they were underway.
Alex knew this was the last time she and El-Hashim would be alone together, so her last opportunity to learn what the woman knew about her father.
She shifted onto her side. Not able to see El-Hashim in the near total darkness, she felt for the woman’s face and pulled the duct tape from her mouth.
“My father,” she said. “How do I reach him?”
El-Hashim spit, drops of her saliva splattering Alex’s neck and shirt.
Alex resisted the urge to jam the heel of her hand into the woman’s nose. “Just tell me. He’s my father.”
“I don’t care who he is to you.”
“You owe me.”
“What?” She let out a quick, surprised laugh. “Owe you? Thank you very much for taking me from one prison to another.”
“I saved your life. If I hadn’t gotten you out, Frida would have killed you. You know that. I know that. How do I get ahold of my father?”
The car began to slow, forcing Alex to reapply the duct tape, just in case El-Hashim tried to call out in hopes of getting someone’s attention.
The stop was brief, a traffic sign of some sort, most likely. Once they were moving again, Alex pulled the tape free.
“Please,” she said. “I just want to talk to him.”
“Why?”
Why?
What kind of question was that?
“I need to know why he left,” Alex said.
“I should think that’s obvious. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
That was an easy answer, one that Alex had dismissed so many years ago it made her angry to hear El-Hashim say it now. It didn’t apply to the man who had raised her.
Nor would it ever.
She counted to ten and got her feelings back in check before she spoke again.
“You said you have a way of contacting him. It’s all I ask. There’s a very good chance he won’t respond to me, but I need to try. I have to try. This will mean nothing to you one way or the other.”
A beat. Then El-Hashim said, “You’re right. It will mean nothing to me one way or the other.”
Chapter Forty-One
Frida followed Powell, El-Hashim, and their new boyfriend all the way to the end of the tunnel, staying just far enough back to not be noticed.
She knew taking El-Hashim’s life in the tunnel was no longer an option, but she had never aborted a job before, and wasn’t about to now.
Once they had all exited out of the hole in the roof of the tunnel, she stood below it and listened to their conversation. When the man expressed the need to get out of there as soon as possible, Frida knew it could only mean that guards had begun searching for the missing prisoners. They had probably discovered the body of the nurse. Not really unexpected.
She waited until she was sure they gone before climbing up. She found herself in a small room in what turned out to be a stone-sided building. She hadn’t made it very far from the room when she heard the motor. To get a better view, she headed up to the rickety second floor, and moved over to one of the holes where a window had once been. Staying out of view, she peered outside. There were two vehicles, heading toward the building she was in. The first was about two minutes ahead of the other.
More than enough time, she thought.
She was in position well before the first vehicle arrived. As she had guessed, the four guards who had been inside split up so they could cover more ground. She targeted one at random, and moved in behind him.
It was so simple, it made her brain hurt from inactivity. She came at him from behind, and swung to the side, grabbing his gun hand and pointing the barrel of the weapon at his chest before he even knew what had happened.
“Bye-bye,” she whispered as she forced her finger over his and pressed the trigger.
As he fell to the ground, she ripped the gun from his hand, and moved around the corner of the building.
His buddies came quickly, first one, then the other two.
Bam. Bam-bam.
It wasn’t even a fight.
She took off in their vehicle a full minute before the second group of guards arrived.
No matter how Alex asked the question, El-Hashim kept her mouth shut.
There had always been the possibility that this mission would end without Alex learning any more about her dad, but she never truly thought that would happen. This was why she had come here. This was why she had said yes.
But short of jamming a gun down El-Hashim’s throat — a tactic that probably wouldn’t work, either — Alex now knew she would come up empty. She should have followed Deuce’s advice and stayed home, taken Danny to the ballgame, and not had her hopes raised.
Knowing she’d receive the same nonresponse again, she decided to ask one more time, for her brother’s sake.
No, for her own, too.
“My father left us when we were teenagers. My mother was already dead. He’s the only parent we have. I’m not asking because—”
She heard the revving of a motor. A second later, the car leaped forward with a loud crunch as something smashed into the back of their sedan. Alex flew into El-Hashim, her knees slamming against the bottom of the trunk.
Before they had a chance to recover, there was another crash.
Wind suddenly whistled through the trunk as the lid buckled upward an inch on both sides. Alex could hear Cooper and Deuce shouting in the front of the car, but there was too much other noise to understand them.
Without warning, their sedan swerved to the side, as if dodging an obstacle in the road. At the same time, Alex heard the sound of the second motor again, racing back toward them, but instead of once more smashing into their rear end, it passed alongside them.
Metal crunched again as the other car swerved sideways into the sedan’s back panel. Alex could feel Cooper fighting for control of the vehicle, the tires skidding sideways before finally biting the road again.
Another side slam, but while the car didn’t fishtail as much this time, the trunk popped open. Alex grabbed the lid to keep it from flying all the way up. As she did, the vehicle that had been ramming them swung back and behind again.
It was one of the prison jeeps. The sedan’s taillights illuminated enough that Alex could see it wasn’t a guard behind the wheel, but Frida.
The jeep came forward again. Alex tried to hook the trunk lid down, but the latch was bent and wouldn’t catch. Something pierced the lid only a foot away from her, punching a hole in the metal.
“Are you kidding me?” Alex said under her breath.
Frida was armed.
The jeep started rushing forward again.
“Hold on!” Alex yelled as she let go of the lid and ducked down.
Frida smacked into their rear bumper again, sending the lid of the trunk flying all the way up.
As the jeep fell back a few feet, Frida stuck a gun out her window and let off another shot. This one went into the trunk itself, puncturing the floor right where Alex had been lying moments before.