Hell Bent

room.

She didn’t have to ask when she walked into the room to find him bent over a separate filing drawer, pulling out a manila folder. She knew he’d found the files for past students.

“Got it?” she asked.

“Got it.”

She spared a furtive glanced over her shoulder, toward the double doors at the far end of the room. She was growing uneasy. “Should we just take the folder with us and get out of here?”

“No, luv,” he told her as he popped open the folder, searched for something on the first page, and then closed it again, re-filing it where he’d pulled it out. “Never different. That’s the rule.” He closed the drawer and turned toward her, his blue gaze finding hers and holding it, even in this darkness.

He didn’t have to specify any further. She was smart enough to glean the general idea. “Never different” meant “leave it the same.” Never leave a room different from how it looked when you walked in. Nothing out of place.

Like Kaiser Soze. Leave without a trace.

“Poof,” she teased, blowing air through her fingers.

Jack’s smile was a lop-sided grin that caught her off guard. “I saw that film,” he said softly.

“Yeah?” she asked. It was one of her favorite films. “What’d you think?”

He didn’t answer, but his smile broadened. She shivered. He chuckled and moved past her toward the folder on Craig Brandt that was still laying out on the table. She watched him put it away and close and lock the drawer.

“Let’s go.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. She was at his side and moving with him toward the door with almost the same kind of silent speed that he, himself, was infamous for. They peeked out the glass windows before opening the door and stepping through, making sure to lock it behind them. Then they made their way past the elevators to the stairs on the other side.

Just as Jack pushed open the door to enter the stairwell one of the elevators behind them dinged loudly to signal that its doors were about to open.

There was no good reason for her and Jack to be on that level. The only offices up here were locked and most of the lights were off. Being caught lingering on the restricted level would most likely garner ill consequences.

Jack hurriedly pulled Annabelle into the stairwell and attempted to swing the door shut behind them. But it was one of those god-forsaken spring-hinge doors that wouldn’t close quickly and resisted direct pressure.

Jack let go of Annabelle’s arm and put his weight into it, just managing to secure the door a split second before a janitor stepped off of the elevator and into the hallway.

Annabelle took the moment to sigh in relief, but her breath once more caught in her throat and her eyes widened into golf-balls when the door emitted a loud clicking-into-place sound that could surely be heard by the man in the hallway beyond.

Jack swore under his breath and once more grabbed Annabelle, rushing her down the stairs as fast as she could travel.

They managed two full flights down before the door they’d just escaped through opened up and a young man poked his head into the stairwell. Though Annabelle and Jack were out of sight of the man, they were definitely not out of sound. They could hear him and he could hear them.

And they didn’t sound as if they were supposed to be there.

Annabelle felt panic rising up inside of her when she heard the man above them speak into some sort of hand-held radio. At least, that’s what she assumed it was.

“Martina, someone’s going down the stairs. Just got off of level fourteen.”

Jack and Annabelle kept moving, even as they could hear “Martina’s” amplified voice echo through the stairwell. “Yeah? So?” she asked, clearly not understanding why it was such a big deal that someone was taking the stairs.

“I don’t know, chica, it’s just that whoever it is, they’re running down them like El Diablo is at their back!”

“Eduardo, just check if everything’s all right.” Martina told him, her tone one of annoyance.

There was a pause in communication that Annabelle figured was Eduardo looking around on level fourteen. “Yeah, I guess so-”

And then Jack was punching through the stairwell door on the first floor and leading Annabelle out through the building’s lobby. When they were safely beyond both the elevators and stairs, they slowed and Jack put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her near.

“Cozy?” she asked. Her voice shook. That had been too close.

“More than you know,” Jack replied, his Sheffield accent teasing. There was a casual grace to the man that blew Annabelle away. She wanted to break into a sprint and run like a mad woman until she was long gone from Columbia University, but Jack meandered them at a maddeningly slow pace toward the front doors of the building and then, just as slowly, out into the night.

“You’re killing me, Jack,” she muttered, feeling her blood pressure rise.

He laughed, deep in his throat, and let his arm slide down until he was again holding her hand in his gloved fingers.

“Always wanted to hear that from you, luv. Different place and circumstances, perhaps, but I’ll take what I can get.”

Chapter Twenty

As much as Annabelle would like to get excited over the prospect of getting a hotel room with Jack, the truth was, she was exhausted. And it wasn’t the first time Jack had ever spirited her away to a hotel. Never had it been for overtly romantic reasons, either.

Every time they’d checked in some place together, Jack was either married at the time or had just finished killing someone and she had mistakenly witnessed it. Okay, so that had only happened the one time. Still, she counted it as a weekend away with Jack, even if she had spent the entire time reasoning with herself that a man could still be a good man, even if he murdered others for a living.

Over time, Annabelle had simply grown used to the fact that human beings needed to sleep somewhere, eventually. And people who moved around a lot, the way Jack did, needed hotel rooms. She and Jack had ended up in a lot of hotels over the last ten years. Every time, out of respect for her privacy, Jack had either asked for two separate rooms or one large suite with two beds. And, out of a staunch need to establish her independence around him – and a gnawing nervousness about accepting any kind of monetary favors from Jack Thane - she’d always insisted on sharing the cost.

But when Jack had rather covertly slipped a bundle of large bills past her tonight to pay for the adjoining suites they would use, Annabelle had found herself unable to care a whole lot. Maybe it was the fact that she realized that a room in a hotel like this would cost a fortune that she couldn’t afford. Maybe she realized, along with a jolt of painful anguish in her gut, that she no longer had a job. Or maybe it was that she was tired. Or maybe it was all of those things and she was more than a little depressed and she simply couldn’t care.

She’d caught the surprised but frankly pleased expression on Jack’s handsome face when she hadn’t spoken up and insisted on paying her half. And he’d been gentleman enough not to say anything about it.

Now, Annabelle pulled off her jacket and un-did the belt loops holding the shoulder holster in place. She gently took the gun and placed it atop the bed stand, and then unclasped the snaps that encased it in the holster. She wanted to be able to pull it quickly if the need arose.

Then she sighed and her shoulders dropped. As she peeled off her clothes in the warm, dark room and let them drop to the plush carpet beside the bed, she turned to stare out the tall windows across the room. The glass was floor to ceiling, affording an amazing view. The twinkling sky line of New York City beckoned with its majesty. She wondered what all of those lights meant. All those windows and the people behind them, living their own separate lives.

She moved to the tall windows and stood gazing out. How many of those people were in trouble? Hiding? How many of them were lonely? Wasn’t it in some song that New York was the loneliest city in the world?