The Bride And The Mercenary

Chapter Three

Ainslie stared at the man in front of her.

For a long moment his eyes, narrowed in suspicion, remained locked on hers. Then his shoulders stiffened under the tattered coat and he darted a quick glance down the alleyway before turning back to her.

“Did you lead them here?” His question was more of an accusation. It was so unexpected that she was jolted into a reply.

“Of course not.” She caught herself. “Lead who here?”

“Them,” he said impatiently, as if she were being deliberately obtuse. He looked down at the other end of the alleyway and then seemed to come to a decision. “Maybe you didn’t, but they’re coming anyway. They must have seen you. We’d better get going.”

He moved quickly for such a big man. Before she realized his intention, his hand had wrapped around hers and he was pulling her toward the door to the abandoned hotel, and at that, her numbness dissipated.

“No.” She tried to disengage her hand, but his grip was too strong.

It was true, then, she thought with dull clarity. He wasn’t Malone, despite the shock of recognition she’d felt when she’d first seen him, despite her certainty of a few minutes ago. He was exactly what he appeared to be: a derelict, a man of the streets with more than a few problems of his own, although of the two of them, she wasn’t sure who was the crazier. Suddenly the full import of what she’d done slammed into her.

What had she been thinking?

If she hurried, she could be back at St. Margaret’s before Sully told the assembled guests the bride had gone AWOL.

She tugged at her hand again. “No,” she said gently. “Whoever they are, they’re not after me. I should get back to my own world now.”

She didn’t know why she’d phrased it like that, only that it seemed right. She looked up into the tanned, heavily bearded face, seeing him for the first time as the man he was, not as the man she’d so desperately and illogically wanted him to be. A pang of sadness stirred in her. She’d been right about one thing. The expression she’d thought she’d seen in those eyes was anguish. He was looking at her as if the very sight of her caused him immeasurable pain, and maybe it did. Maybe she reminded him of someone, too—a woman he’d known, a girl he’d loved, the life he’d lived before everything had spiralled out of control for him.

“I’ll decoy them away from you.” She kept her voice soft. “A bride on a motorcycle would be enough to distract anyone, and that’ll give you a chance to get to safety.”

Her attempt at reassurance didn’t have the effect she’d intended.

“No!”

The explosiveness of his answer was shockingly loud in the quiet alleyway, his voice amplified by the narrow brick walls of the buildings. Ainslie felt a twinge of nervousness, but almost immediately she realized that her unease wasn’t a result of his unexpected reaction.

The alleyway was quiet. They were in the middle of a busy city—surely it wasn’t natural not to hear any signs of life. Now that she thought about it, she realized she hadn’t seen so much as a stray cat since she’d driven in here.

She gave herself a mental shake. The man’s fear was contagious. This time when she tried to pull away from him, she put more force into it.

Still he wouldn’t let go.

“It’s too late. They have to know you’re with me, and they won’t allow you to leave now. Come on. Maybe if we hide, they’ll keep on going.”

He was more than just troubled. He was paranoid. Whoever they were, he’d credited them with almost supernatural powers. Now her uneasiness was because of him.

Don’t upset him any more than he is already, for God’s sake, she told herself sharply. Keep everything calm and low key, and just walk out of here.

“Even if they do come after me, they can’t catch me on that.” She nodded at Bobby’s motorcycle, garishly yellow against the crumbling wall. “It’ll be better if we split up and—”

“Dammit, they’ll kill you!” For a moment reality faded again. He even sounded like Malone, Ainslie thought faintly—except Malone had never spoken to her with such fearful urgency. “Don’t you get it? These people are ruthless, Lee! We can’t let them find us!”

Jerking her roughly toward the door, he shoved her inside and then pulled it shut. Ainslie heard him fumbling in the dark for something, and then the blackness was suddenly illuminated by the beam of a flashlight.

“Up those stairs,” he whispered hoarsely. “Hurry!”

She didn’t move. “What did you just call me?” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. He looked impatiently at her, his beard and the tangle of hair falling across his eyes shadowing his face.

“I said take the stairs. Come on, we have to get to the third floor!”

“You called me Lee. How did you know my name?”

“Dammit, we’re wasting time! They’re coming for us!”

Grabbing her roughly by the arm again, he started up the stairs. The faint beam of the flashlight bobbing eerily ahead of them, Ainslie found herself stumbling up the first few steps. She felt her shoe catch on the trailing hem of her gown and heard it rip slightly before she could release it.

“Watch the fifth step. It’s loose.” Frowning, he looked over his shoulder at her, not slowing his pace or loosening his grip. “What the hell are you wearing, anyway?”

“It’s a wedding dress.” At the Alice in Wonderland turn to the conversation, she felt as if her final connection with the sane world on the outside had just been severed. “I was supposed to be getting married today, remember? You saw me going into the church.”

“Oh.” There was a note of uncertainty in his voice, and she wondered if he did remember. They reached the second floor, turned a corner, and continued upward. “Well, I guess the wedding’s off now,” he grunted dismissively, hauling her up the last few steps.

They were on the third floor, the flashlight wavering over a dusty, patterned carpet that ran down the hallway in front of them. As her abductor—of course, he thinks he’s my rescuer, she told herself grimly—dragged her swiftly along the seemingly endless hallway, on either side she saw numbered doors, forbiddingly dark rectangles set into the peeling walls.

He’d called her Lee. She was sure he’d called her by name, although at this point she realized she couldn’t be sure of anything. But she’d heard him, she knew she had, and the only way he could have known it was if—

If he’d read about the wedding in the papers, she told herself sharply. If he’d heard someone outside St. Margaret’s mention it. For God’s sake, the events board on the church lawn lists the names of the bride and groom when there’s a wedding being held. He could have seen that.

Except somehow those explanations didn’t seem very convincing. Whoever he was, he lived in his own world—the world of him and them. The danger he perceived all around him was imaginary, of course, but to him it was real and immediate. He focused on it exclusively. Nothing else existed for him.

Which was fine, if that was the way he wanted to live his life. Except now she’d been drawn into his paranoia.

Whatever excuse Sully was making for her right now, it couldn’t be more outlandish than the situation she was in, Ainslie thought. She couldn’t allow this to go any further. As he came to an abrupt halt in front of one of the doors, she found her voice.

“I’m not going in there with you.” She was shaking, she noted dispassionately. “I don’t know who you think is after you, but I know that if you don’t let me leave, people are going to start looking for me. As soon as they see that motorcycle outside, they’ll know I’m here. You don’t want to spend tonight in a jail cell, do you?”

With the hand that wasn’t holding hers, he fished for something inside the open collar of the ragged shirt he was wearing under the greatcoat. Ainslie saw it was a length of string with a number of keys attached to it.

“They’re here.”

She was close enough to him to feel the sudden rigidity in his muscles. In the act of unlocking the door, he froze in a listening position, his whole demeanor one of tense alertness. Despite herself, she froze, too.

“I don’t hear any—” she began in a whisper, but then stopped.

Had she heard something? Unconsciously holding her breath, and realizing that her unlikely companion was doing the same, she listened intently, straining her ears to catch the slightest sound. She heard it again, and this time she knew what it was.

Three floors below them, someone—or was it more than one person?—was coming up the stairs. The footfalls were muffled, as if the intruders were trying to approach as quietly as possible.

“Two. Three…” Counting out loud almost inaudibly, the big man was staring at something above his head. She followed his gaze and saw a tiny red pinprick of light appear just above the door. “Four.” He looked up for a second longer. Under the beard, his mouth was set in a tight line.

“Four of them.” He saw her confusion. “Something I rigged up under that fifth stair,” he said briefly, unlocking the door. “The light goes on inside the room, too, so I know if someone’s coming. Hold on, I’ve got to disable something.”

Cautiously pushing the door open an inch or so, he squatted and felt along its bottom edge, finally releasing her hand to do so. This was her chance to run, Ainslie thought. She didn’t move.

“Okay, we can go in.” He straightened and opened the door completely. “I guess this is the last time I’ll have to reset it. This place is blown now.”

“‘Blown’?” she repeated, moving like an automaton ahead of him into the room. The wavering beam of his flashlight seemed to be growing fainter, and she felt a sudden sharp panic overlay the nebulous fear gripping her. His solid bulk brushed against her in the dark, and her panic eased a notch.

Which was stupid, she admitted to herself. He was the reason she was creeping around in the dark in the first place, jumping at the slightest sound. That flashing light over the door was a perfect illustration of just how unbalanced the man was—and how off balance he’d made her feel, since for a moment there, watching the red pinprick, she’d actually believed it meant something.

“Blown. Finished.” His elaboration was perfunctory. “I won’t be able to come back here again.”

At his last words Ainslie heard a small clicking sound, and the next moment she was squinting her eyes against the harsh brightness that suddenly illuminated the room. Still blinking, she peered at him suspiciously.

“How did you do that? Is that another gadget you rigged up?”

He looked at her as if she were crazy. “Yeah. It’s called a light switch.”

“But…but the power to this place must have been cut off years ago.”

She looked around her. The hotel room that this must have originally been was no longer recognizable as such. It was obvious that he’d been living here long enough to put his own stamp on the place. His own wacky stamp, Ainslie thought, not knowing whether to laugh or to be appalled.

Whatever the booby trap was that he’d jury-rigged at the entrance, it was hardly necessary. On either side of them were towering walls of bundled newspapers, and even as she turned she felt the wall nearest her sway ominously. He grabbed her arm.

“Watch out, they’re balanced pretty delicately. Walk behind me and try not to touch the sides. It opens out just past the curve.” Setting off down his insane hallway, he kept talking, no longer making an effort to keep his voice low. “I ran a line in. What the power company doesn’t know won’t hurt them. I needed the electricity to make the modifications, anyway.”

“What modifications?” she asked faintly, following him. They reached the curve in the newspapers, and he stopped so suddenly that she almost ran into him.

“The door, for one. I replaced it with a steel one, and then painted it to match the rest of them again. And of course all the interior walls had to be sheeted with quarter-inch steel, in case they tried to get in from one of the adjoining rooms.”

“Good thinking.” Ainslie pressed her fingers to her forehead, hardly able to absorb what she was hearing—and seeing. The man was a full-blown paranoiac. That was a given. But there was no denying he was also quite a handy renovator, in his own unique way.

Somewhere in the real world Sullivan would be attempting to apologize for her actions to an incredulous Pearson, she supposed. Somewhere in the real world the man whose wife she should have been by now would be wondering how he’d managed to read her character so inaccurately.

In that real world was a man she’d behaved unforgivably toward, Ainslie thought. She owed it to him to deliver her apology in person, and as soon as possible. Except that she first had to find a way out of this fantasy world she’d stumbled into.

She had no idea what the Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions around her were supposed to do. In one corner of the room was what looked to be the back half of a bicycle. Attached to it was a circular leather strap, and nearby were neatly lined-up rows of car batteries, each with alligator clips and wires snaking from each terminal. Out of the corner of her eye she could see similarly strange juxtapositions of junk, but she purposely didn’t look at them. Instead she looked at their creator. Even as she did, though, he turned from her and headed toward the truncated bicycle.

“Thank God, I finished this yesterday,” he said with a touch of satisfaction. “I figure the first thing they’ll do is get the outside team to cut the power.”

“The outside team? I thought you said they were coming up the stairs.” She kept her tone carefully neutral. “Shouldn’t they have been here by now?”

Hunched over his invention, he didn’t look up, but she could hear the amusement in his voice. “That was the first wave. I’ve already taken care of them. If everything went the way I planned it, the four of them are in the basement right now, probably with a broken bone or two among them. Trap door on the first landing,” he added, toggling a switch on one of the batteries. “I activated it at the same time I turned the lights on.”

This time she couldn’t hide her horrified reaction. “A trap door? For God’s sake, it was probably a group of street kids on those stairs! Are you out of your mind?”

“The mechanism is weight sensitive. It can’t even be tripped by a good-size teenager, only by a full-grown male who’s packing a lot of muscle—and equipment.” Setting a lever at the side of the bicycle wheel, he stood, turning to face her. “And no, I’m not crazy. But you’re just going to have to trust me on that for a few more—”

The room was suddenly plunged into darkness once more, and Ainslie heard him draw in a sharp breath. “Tell me you did that,” she said, fighting her sudden desire to reach out and touch him. “Another one of your gadgets, right?”

“No, that was them. They’re moving faster than I thought.” She heard him bend down again. “Here, put this on.”

Something was pressed into her hands, and she started. Whatever it was it felt clammy and rubbery. Even as she opened her mouth to ask him what it was, a low humming sound started, gaining in volume and speed. A moment later the room was dimly illuminated with the weak yellow glow of a bare bulb in the ceiling. In front of her the bicycle wheel was spinning madly, the leather strap attaching it to the smaller flywheel near the batteries a brown blur.

“It’s a gas mask. They used gas the last time, and I almost didn’t get away. I wasn’t expecting to need two of these, but I thought I’d better keep a spare handy.” In the half light she saw him smile lopsidedly at her. “This must be our lucky day.”

Malone’s grin had been one-sided, she thought distractedly, fumbling at the rubber-and-metal mask with no real idea of what she was supposed to do with it. He put his on, the cylindrical snout of the mask giving him a distinctly alien appearance. Taking hers, he slipped it into place over her face and adjusted it at the back of her head.

Ainslie forced back the bubble of inappropriate laughter that suddenly threatened to escape her. The Bride Wore Army Surplus, she imagined the headline, feeling dangerously near hysteria.

She had no doubt that someone had attempted to enter the abandoned building a few minutes ago. She even accepted his assurance that whoever it was must have been big enough and heavy enough to set the trap door into action. But that was as far as she was prepared to go. He’d said himself that he had run an illegal electrical line here—why hadn’t it occurred to him the power company might have sent someone out to investigate? Her theory made a whole lot more sense than his assumption that he was under siege.

He was gesturing for her to follow him, and when she didn’t he took her by the arm as he’d done earlier. It was the final straw. Wrenching away, Ainslie started to take the gas mask off, her fingers clumsy and trembling. She heard a dull, explosive thump from where the newspaper wall led to the door, saw him look past her and then lunge for her, his eyes wide in alarm behind the protective lenses. She felt him jam the mask back onto her face. Instinctively she looked back over her shoulder. In the split second it took for her to comprehend what she was seeing, she became a believer.

He wasn’t paranoid. He’d been right all along—they were after him, and they meant business.

Even in the dim light she could discern the thick yellow fog surging toward them from the open metal canister on the floor. The newspaper wall no longer existed, and incredibly, the metal door to the third-floor hallway now had a gaping hole punched through it. She thought she could see movement in the hall beyond, and her limbs turned suddenly to water.

This time when he grabbed her wrist, she needed no urging to go with him.

The bicycle contraption didn’t appear to have been affected by the explosion. It spun at top speed, the lightbulb still glowing dimly above them, although in the spreading fog it was harder to see. Releasing her wrist and shrugging out of his heavy coat, the dark-haired man kicked at the solid wall in front of him.

It broke easily, and for a moment she didn’t understand. Surely he’d told her he’d lined the room with—

She saw him pull the thin wood away, revealing a neat opening about half the size of a door. Around the edges of the square she could see the thick steel that comprised the rest of the wall.

Was it a way into the adjoining hotel room? As he gestured for her to duck into the opening, she crouched swiftly and crawled forward. A moment later she felt him at her heels; she kept moving until the filter of her gas mask bumped solidly against something.

A faint red glow—enough to see by—came from somewhere above her and, looking around, Ainslie saw her companion push a button on what seemed to be some kind of primitive control panel. Just beyond she could see the yellow tendrils of gas drifting across the floor of the room they’d exited; she looked apprehensively at him.

He gave her a thumbs-up sign. Relief flooded through her, and a heartbeat later she realized that she trusted him totally.

An hour ago she hadn’t known him. Half an hour ago she’d been convinced he was crazy, and maybe he was, a little. But he’d been right about everything so far, and his off-beat inventions, as unconventional as they were, had all worked.

She remembered the time she and Malone had taken a drive out into the country and her car had broken down. He’d twisted a piece of barbed wire off a nearby fence, asked her for a copper penny and had fished a stick of chewing gum out of his pocket. Then, whistling “Danny Boy” between his teeth, he’d stuck his head under the hood for a minute or so. When he’d called out to her to try to start the car, she’d turned the key and the engine had purred to life—

She felt a jarring jolt. From beside her, he put his hand reassuringly on her arm as she realized they were moving upward.

He’d built a homemade elevator in the air shaft between the walls. Already the opening to the room had slid out of sight below them. In the dim red glow she saw him reach up and pull off his gas mask, and then motion for her to do the same.

At this point if he’d told her it would be safe to jump off a roof she would have followed his lead, Ainslie thought wryly.

“This goes right up to the roof.” As she gratefully stripped the rubber-and-metal mask from her face he leaned close, his mouth only inches from her ear. Despite his appearance, she realized disconcertedly, she could discern the clean scent of soap on his skin. “I’ve got a cable running over to the next building’s fire escape. All we have to do is slide down it and we’re home free.”

They were going to jump off the roof. She flinched as the sound of a muffled explosion boomed hollowly up the shaft from below. Under the tangle of hair that obscured his brow she saw him frown.

“They just blew the door open. Any second now they’ll find the generator and turn it off, but they’ve left it too late.” He shrugged, and leaned back against the wall. “They’ll get me one of these days, I guess. But today I survived.”

With the heavy growth of beard it was hard to tell his expression, but as he closed his eyes Ainslie thought she saw a corner of his mouth lift briefly. As the echo of the explosion faded, another less ominous sound filled the small elevator. For a minute she didn’t know what it was.

Then she realized what she was hearing. Oblivious to the mayhem, the man beside her was whistling, so quietly that at first it was hard to make out the tune. He couldn’t be comfortable in such a small space, she thought. His knees were drawn up awkwardly in front of him, his battered work boots braced against the opposite wall. But for the first time since she’d first laid eyes on him, some of his tenseness had dissipated. Without the woolen coat, the heavily defined sheath of muscle on his arms was apparent. His wrists, large-boned and tanned, rested easily on his propped-up knees, and he seemed, for the moment at least, to be at peace.

His eyes still closed, he continued whistling softly between his teeth, and now she recognized the song.

The tune was “Danny Boy.” And the elevator was filled with the scent of red roses.

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