The Bet

Chapter 4

Still kicking and screaming, I fought against whoever had me in their grasp. I was being dragged backwards; the heels of my very expensive shoes slid across the carpet whenever I couldn't kick my feet up. It was still pitch black and I couldn't see anything. Fear coursed through me shutting down the rest of my senses. Panic set in further as I thrashed and thrashed in my captor's grasp and he didn't relent.

"Relax princess," he finally whispered in my ear.

Tommy.

"It's just me."

"Why didn't you say something earlier?" I asked him. I was pissed. I thought he was Carson. "I thought you were Carson."

"I told you I wouldn't let anything happen to you," he said cupping my face sweetly.

Before I could give him a sarcastic retort I shouldn't, gun shots rang out. "We've got to go. Now," he said. Tommy pulled a gun from the back of his pants and pulled me behind him. "Take off your shoes."

"What?"

"Leave them. You'll be quicker without them." Kicking off my shoes, I obeyed him. "We need to get to the roof."

"How?"

"The stairs."

"This building is nearly thirty stories."

"Good thing you got all that home gym equipment."

Jokes. He was making jokes at a time like this. When our lives were clearly in danger.

"Jenkins is meeting us there."

Before I could ask how and what he knew about what was going on, I was being dragged behind him. "Stay close."

Tommy lead us back out the hallway he'd dragged me down. Popping his head out he looked both ways before taking my hand again and pulling me down the open entryway to the ballroom.

It was empty now. There were purses and shoes and jackets and discarded jewelry everywhere. But I couldn't concern myself with what happened to the people fleeing. Tommy clearly knew what was going on, what the danger was and had at least suspected it had been coming.

Or did he always have an escape plan?

Ironically, both statements were probably correct.

We'd miraculously made it to the stairwell.

"Wait here," he whispered.

It felt like my heart stopped when I watched him dispppear into the door that accessed the stairs. And when ten seconds later I heard three gunshots, my body set off alarm bells. I couldn't keep my feet where they were like he told me to. Instead, I rushed through the door and found Tommy standing over a man in full on tactical gear.

"I told you to stay where you were."

"I thought something happened to you." My words came out strained due to the hammering of my heart behind my rib cage.

"And if it had? What would you have done Princess?" I couldn't tell if his words were meant to be sarcastic as in, there wasn't anything I would have been able to do. Which was true. Or if it was a question asking what it would have done to me. How I would have reacted to seeing him laying on the ground instead of the man he'd shot.

"I don't know," I answered. It was the best answer because it fit any question.

"Can you use one of these?" He asked, handing me the handgun.

"Yes."

"Safely?"

"Yes."

"Okay," he nodded although he seemed skeptical of my responses.