“Splendid. I shall continue to stand here with my hands on my hips. Hurry along now. We have heroics to undertake.”

38

ENEMY TERRITORY

here is a soft click, and the wall across the room opens up, and Stephanie peeks out.

A door. A hidden door. A panic room. She’s had a panic room installed.

Xena pokes her head out, sniffs the air and growls, and Stephanie hurries forward, her finger to her lips. Xena pads after her, tail wagging with suppressed ferocity, hackles raised. Stephanie crouches at Danny’s feet, fingers digging into the knotted rope. As she works, Danny can hear Gant and Jeremiah talking. Gant is telling Jeremiah to wash the blood off the tyre iron.

Stephanie hisses a curse. She can’t get the knot untied. Instead, she rises, pulls at the rope around Danny’s throat. It loosens instantly, and Stephanie hauls him to his feet, spins him in place. He falls backwards into her arms, and she starts pulling him towards the panic room, his heels dragging along the floorboards. They are halfway there when they hear the footsteps coming back.

Danny glances over his shoulder at the room. Too far. They’ll never make it. Before he can whisper at Stephanie to drop him, she drops him. He falls heavily, jarring his injured arm, hears Stephanie whisper an order to Xena. The dog runs into the panic room, spins and waits for Stephanie to join her. Instead, Stephanie ducks behind the sofa, aims a fob at the panic room and the hidden door swings closed just as Cadaverous Gant walks in.

Danny stops squirming. Gant looks down at him, frowning slightly.

“Danny my boy,” says Gant, “how am I ever supposed to trust you if, the moment I leave the room, you try to effect an escape, however ill-judged and badly executed it may be? What does that say about you, Danny? Does that say you cannot be trusted? I fear it might.” Gant picked him up off the floor with easy strength. “Now please, return to your seat.”

There is nothing Danny can say or do, and so he hops back to the sofa on his good leg, and sits. He has no way of telling if Stephanie is still hiding behind it.

Jeremiah enters, laying the tyre iron on a side table, and finishes drying his hands on a dishcloth. “Do you think she knows we’re here yet?”

Gant goes to the window, looks out. “She knows. She’s watching us right now. I can feel it.”

“Then we should string Danny up outside,” Jeremiah says. “Cut him a little. Let him bleed out. She’ll have to come save him, won’t she?”