Chapter 11: Locks

I tried the door.

It had a deadbolt with a keyhole on each side, and no knob to turn.

I stood in the dim hall with my hand on it and my mouth gone dry.

It was a good door, thick and quiet.

Someone had fitted it to keep people in or out.

For a moment I was back on the floor above Corvin's office, listening to the bolt slide across.

I made myself breathe.

I could have picked it. I knew exactly how, with the hairpin from the bathroom and about a minute.

I didn't.

I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, facing the door, fully dressed, with my shoes on.

I waited.

The elevator opened at midnight.

A key turned and the bolt slid back.

Bram came in with a split lip and the knuckles of his right hand raw.

He saw me and stopped.

"Calla? Why are you on the floor?"

I stood.

"You locked the door."

"There were three men in the lobby last night asking about you.

"I put two guards downstairs and shut the door so nobody would come up."

"You locked it from the outside."

"For you."

"No locked doors," I said. My voice was shaking, and I let it. "That was the rule. You said done."

He looked at the door, and then at me.

I saw it land.

His face changed, slowly, from impatience to something I had not seen on him before.

"I wasn't thinking," he said.

"No."

"I walked out of here and I only thought, if she's inside, nothing can reach her.

"I didn't think what it was to you."

"Where did you go?"

"My grandfather's." He touched his lip.

"I told him I'd have the board vote him out of the company on Friday. He said I'd lost my mind over a waitress.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Called Me His Weapon, So I Died and Came Back Free from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.