Captive Of Lies Book 2(Imprisoned in my Heart trilogy...Larry)

Chapter 20

It was pitch black when Harry snuck back into the deserted weapons room, surprised that it wasn’t better guarded. Not that he was complaining. Every creak of the floorboards on the way there had made him flinch; every few seconds he’d been chanting swearwords in his mind like a mantra at the slightest little sound, terrified that it would give him away. If Kylie found him trying to defy orders like this, ifanyone found him, then they’d realize that he had every intention of doing what he’d been told not to. They’d throw him out, uproot the base, and abscond with the map and his only hope of rescuing Louis, and then everything would be useless; his last hope would be gone. Harry was determined not to let that happen.

He had taken off his shoes and left them by the unguarded front door, along with his black trench coat, a first aid kit, a rucksack and plenty of food. Dressed all in black, he looked like something from a low-budget spy movie, but he didn’t care about that. Creeping forwards, silent in his socks as a – what was a black animal? A panther? Yes, a panther! – silent in his socks as a panther, he slipped into the room and then started stalking across the room until he reached the cabinet where the guns were kept. He only needed two; one for him, and one for Louis; nobody would miss so few, not at a first glance. They would miss him before they missed the guns, and they wouldn’t miss him until about lunchtime; he had a habit of sleeping in. Except he wasn’t really sleeping in, he was sobbing into his pillow for several hours because once again he’d woken up alone, but that was nobody else’s business.

Pulling several tools out of his pocket, he dubiously examined them all. A quick scout around Niall’s room had given him a few things to work with when it came to picking locks, but he still had no idea what he was doing with them. Pulling a hairpin out of the jumbled pile of debris in his hand, he uncertainly poked it into the lock and jabbed, wiggling it around a bit like he expected the mechanisms to click into place just because he was nudging them. Frustrated at being beaten by a lock, Harry fiercely jiggled the pin around, but no gratifying metallic snap greeted his efforts.

“You’ll never do it like that.”

Harry yelped, swore and fell over, and by the time he’d rolled onto his back and realized that he was screwed, he thought he might start crying – until he turned his torch, which he’d been shining on the lock, onto the face of the figure who was leaning casually against the side of the doorframe, and the glint of familiar blond hair made him go weak with relief. Wiping his clammy forehead, Harry sighed a little bit and then narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Whose side was Niall on? He didn’t think that his friend would grass him up to Kylie, but he couldn’t be sure.

“What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.

Pushing off the wall, Niall sauntered over to him, knelt beside him and examined the hairpin that Harry had jammed into the lock. Tutting, he gently slid it out, examined the very bent and abused metal, then shook his head almost in amusement and flicked it away. Harry couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed at the pitying look Niall was giving him – but hey, locks weren’t his thing. Guns were his thing. Unfortunately, a lock was between him and the guns he needed, and that meant that he was pretty much helpless.

“You won’t get it open with one of them. A hairpin’s way too flimsy for this kind of lock. What you need is one of these.” Fishing a metal bar that was about a centimetre thick out of his pocket, Niall expertly inserted it into the lock and started twitching it around with the kind of ease that Harry fired a gun with. Humbled, Harry watched him in silence.

After a while, he asked, “How did you know I was here? I didn’t make a sound.”

“I was waiting for you,” Niall told him as he gave the bar an experimental wriggle. Disheartened, he made a disparaging noise at the lack of success and then intensified his efforts, squinting at the padlock. “Shine that torch over here a minute.”