A/N: Sorry about the incredibly short chapter - this week has been insane! AP French and AP Bio midterms :)))))
Review, s'il vous plait! (:
Enjoy!
The door swung open on silent hinges, barely touching the marble tiles inside. Danielle forced herself not to look over her shoulder as she stepped forward into the foyer and waited.
Her heart thundered in her chest. The noise seemed to echo around the cavernous space, all the way up to the domed ceiling inlaid with swirls of brass.
"Anything yet?" ALex's voice crackled in her ear.
She shook her head, then remembered he couldn't see her. "No."
"Ten more minutes, then we're leaving."
Danielle ran her thumb across the face of her watch. She wasn't sure if she wanted time to pass faster or slower. If August appeared, she could get her revenge and get his arse hauled in. If he didn't, she wouldn't have to see him.
Waves of nausea swept through her stomach and she took a deep breath of the stale air, scented with the barest hints of almond, to try calming the unsteadiness that seemed rooted in her very bones.
She tried not to remember the dozens of other times she'd stepped into this space with wads of cash rubber banded together and shoved deep down inside her pockets somewhere beside her self-respect.
"Five minutes," Alex said.
Just then, footsteps echoed from the hallway directly across the door.
The shadow appeared first in a lengthy ripple across the coral tiles.
Then shoes, shined, followed by August himself. He wore an expensive suit like the boys from the Academy did to performances- Armani, maybe, or some other Italian brand. His hair, brown streaked with rust, was slicked back and combed.
Only his eyes betrayed his elegant appearance, frigid and dead like a shark's.
Now something in his gaze sparked in interest as a lecherous smile curled across his lips and he stalked towards Danielle, drawing himself up to full height.
"What do we have here?" he asked.
Cliche, Danielle thought, and it was that thought that cut through the fog of impending terror that threatened to descend on her. August was nothing new, just a sadsack playing in an ancient game. She had to remember that.
She was in control.
She had come to him.
She stayed silent. Alex was speaking but all she heard was a faint drone buzzing in her ear.
August circled her slowly. Her spine crawled; she could feel his gaze raking over every inch of her body.
"Why are you here?" he asked at last.
She leveled her gaze at him. "You know why."
"I'd much rather hear you say it."
Alex hated this.
He hated being stuck inside a metal van while other people did his job - people who weren't even *supposed* to be involved in anything like this.
He should be the one out there.
He promised himself that if - no, not if, when - this operation ended, he would give Danielle anything she asked for.
"When are you planning on stopping this?" Tom asked through gritted teeth.
Alex glanced over at him and pitched his voice low enough that Wolf and Snake, who stared at the floorplans and audio spikes on the monitor with unnerving intensity, couldn't hear. "You really like her, don't you?"
Tom didn't reply.
Gathering his thoughts, Alex observed the grainy camera feeds and focused on the objective at hand. He couldn't afford to get distracted - and usually, he never did.
This is why I quit, he thought. I can't do this.
He thought back to the previous evening and the long-ranging debate between Ben and Wolf over whether he should be allotted a gun for the strapped holster on his back. To save everyone the trouble, Alex took Snake's car back to the old flat building and retrieved one of the pistols he kept around his apartment - the same one that he had almost shot Wolf with on the very first day this all began.
It wasn't a good weapon, not by SAS standards and the rounds they carried, but Alex felt more confidant in his hand-to-hand combat abilities. Those didn't seem to trigger the same amount of flashbacks that a gun did.
Alex took the headphones from the table, putting them back on, and leaned towards the laptop plugged in to the wire system that was running a trace on Danielle's earpiece to help them find her in the labyrinthine house.
His hands curled into fists as he heard her crackled words.
He should end it now.
Danielle briefly wondered if she should try to cling to any semblance of pride or dignity, or if playing August's came would get her farther. She drew her shoulders back.
"I owe you."
August leered. "Your mother owes me. I own you. There's quite the distinction there."
Her chest clenched, but she lowered her head in deference. "As you wish."
Stalking over to the doorway, August nudged the door shut with his foot and input a sequence of numbers into a small black box on the wall with a keypad beneath.
Just before the door slid shut, Danielle saw the black gates begin to swing shut.
"Danielle!" Alex's voice blared into her ear. She flinched, but August didn't notice. "Get him to open the gates! They were supposed to stay open - Snake-" his voice cut off into a burst of static, and Danielle watched, trying not to panic, as her one sliver of the outside world disappeared and the deadbolt slid home.
"Now," August said. "You're eighteen, right?"
"Yes," she lied.
"Good. Don't want to go breaking the law-"
"Which you never cared about," she said before she could stop herself. "When you sold drugs to my mother, assaulted me in London and tried to kidnap one of my friends!"
He lazily shrugged, lifting his palms towards the ceilings. "Statutory rape carries a heavier sentence than any of those."
God above, was he selfish.
Danielle bit her lip as he moved closer to her and took her arm in a grip just firm enough to be threatening, but would appear gentle to anyone looking.
"I'm surprised you came on your own," August said conversationally. "What happened? Pretty boy dump you?"
"Alex? He's my brother."
His eyes widened. "Really."
"Yes."
"Your mother never mentioned a brother."
"She never mentioned you until she couldn't stand on her own feet."
He smiled again, insufferably calm.
She was angry now, one sentence away from punching August as hard as she could.
"Some rules," he said with the air of one beginning a grand announcement. "The upstairs is yours. Don't mind the others, they'll leave you alone. Never come down here. If by some shocking failure of modern medicinal technologies you get pregnant-" his grip tightened on her arm and her stomach pitched nauseatingly as she realized that this was where she would have ended up if not for the Academy and Alex. Here, in this hellhole, learning about all that awaited her - she wasn't the only one who could get hurt by this, she realized. Dear God - pregnant - which meant - no, she couldn't think about that. Confession. She just needed a confession, then she would be free.
"You will get a termination."
"Can I leave?" she asked, her voice dry. "For the store?"
"Of course not. You're my slave, remember? I own you." He pushed her away with a sudden thrust and she stumbled towards the stairs. "Now, get out of my sight."
Danielle pretended to trip, frantically trying to think of something she could say, anything, that would get a confession out of him so she could leave- she wasn't expecting this, to be left alone. Somehow, her envisioned scenario of this event was quite different.
"Why?" she called at August's retreating back. "Why do all this, the dealing? You never needed the money."
He paused. Turned around. The light cast half his face into shadows. "Power is enthralling."
Confused, Danielle fumbled for a reply but he walked away farther into the belly of the mansion. She didn't know what else to do but turn to the stairs and, slowly, begin walking up.
"What was that about?" Alex asked through the earpiece.
"I don't know. I think something's wrong." She slid her hand over the mahogany banister as she reached the top of the stairs and turned left. A long corridor stretched out before her riddled with doors and plush carpeting. She found one of the doors slightly ajar and, pushing it open, saw the thick bars covering the wide window, attached to the outside brick.
Her heart lodged itself somewhere between her stomach and her throat and she choked down on a scream because this, all of it, was what she feared most of all.
"He knows," she said to Alex. "He know something's not right. There are bars on my window, the gate's closed.
"What's the passcode for it?" he asked.
She could have recited it in her sleep."Six-two-nine-three."
"Hold on. I'm coming."
Alex ripped off his headphones and tossed them aside. They landed on the floor of the van with a clatter as he leapt to his feet and lunged to the door in one smooth motion.
"Cub!" Wolf barked. "Where are you -"
Alex didn't answer as he unbarred the door, jumping out, and ran towards the black gates. Quickly punching in the code, he slipped through the gates as soon as they opened enough and kept his back against one of the walls surrounding the front yard as he ducked low, moving sideways towards the right side of the house. The floorplans had showed a staircase immediately in the foyer to the right leading up to the second floor, the only level with barred windows. Danielle had to be there somewhere.
He paused behind a row of hedges that shielded him from sight of the house and realized with sudden despair that he should have asked Danielle what room she was in because, dammit, they were all barred.
All except the outdoor patio, twenty-five feet above his head, that led to sliding doors and a bedroom. The walls to the upper patio were the sides of one of the garages, textured and rough to look like Spanish-style stucco with ceramic tiling on the roof. Alex pushed his way out from between two of the hedges, leafy branches scratching at his skin and clothes, and held his palms up against the walls, testing the texture.
He'd have to climb somehow.
He stepped back and raked his hands through his hair. There had to be another solution.
He could walk in the front door.
No, too risky. There was no way to tell what artillery August had lying around inside, but it was a safe bet to think that he had something, given his line of work.
Alex moved towards the wall. Jammed his fingers into one of the cracks.
And began to climb.
'