Page 62 of Hunted in the Silence

She drove up from the floor with her bound wrists raised, driving them into his forearm the way she’d practiced in the self-defense course three years ago, the way she’d been mentally rehearsing since the tunnel, and the impact knocked his arm wide and the thing in his hand—a syringe, not a weapon, which told her something terrible about what he’d been planning—clattered across the concrete floor.

He recovered faster than she expected. Heavy build, older, but not slow—she’d forgotten that about him or pushed it down into the category of things she didn’t want to remember—and his hand slammed into her shoulder and drove her back against the wall. She hit it hard enough that the breath exploded out of her.

Somehow, she didn’t go down. She managed to plant her feet and keep her bound wrists between them and drove her knee up hard. He tried to absorb it, but not fast enough, and the sound he made was satisfying.

He stepped back, bent over. Breathing harder now. Looking at her in a way she hadn’t seen on his face before.

It was the first time she’d ever seen Andre Devlin look at anyone with something approaching respect.

“There it is,” he said quietly.

“Come near me again,” she warned, “and I’ll do it again.”

She had her back to the window now, which was where she’d wanted to be. She could feel the cold coming through the gap at the frame’s edge, the night air outside, the fire escape two feet of glass away. Her wrists were still bound. She was breathing hard and the place where she’d hit the wall was going to bruise badly, but she was upright and between her and him was five feet of space and the lantern on the floor.

Options. She had options.

Devlin straightened his jacket. Looked at the syringe on the floor between them, but made no move to pick it up.

“You’re waiting for him,” Devlin guessed correctly.

She didn’t answer.

“Maddox.” He said the name flat and assessing. “He’s been looking for you since the wire went dark. He’ll find this building. He’s good enough for that.” He grew quiet for a moment, then said, “Not good enough to be here yet. But eventually.”

“Eventually is enough,” she said.

“Maybe.” He looked at her steadily. “But I want you to think about something, Brynn. You have built a life. A real one, with real people in it and real work that matters and now this man who is—” he paused deliberately “—not unimportant to you. You have things to protect now. That’s different from before.” He let that sit before continuing. “It makes you more vulnerable than you’ve ever been. Not less.”

It took considerable effort for her not to react. She understood what he was doing and she refused to let it affect the way he intended. But she felt it anyway, the cold hard truth that she had things to protect now. A weakness she knew he intended to exploit.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “It does make me more vulnerable.” She held his gaze. “It also means I have more to fight for than I’ve ever had. And I have always been a better fighter than you gave me credit for. You just watched an experiment. I lived it.”

She made a decision in the half-second she had.

She drove up from the floor and brought her bound wrists above her head and slammed them down hard against her hip bone, the way she’d practiced in her self-defense courses, and the zip tie snapped on the first attempt. She shook her hands free at the same time she turned toward the window and drove her elbow through the glass, the old single pane shattering on impact, the cold night air hitting her face as the shards fell outward. She drove her elbow through the remaining fragments in the frame to clear it and got one leg through. Her jacket caught on the broken frame at the shoulder.

She didn’t let it slow her down.

She shrugged it off and kept going, her foot finding the fire escape railing, both hands gripping the frame, and she pulled herself through. Then she was out and on the fire escape, the cold and dark greeting her and the parking lot beckoning below her. Devlin’s sedan was parked against the rear wall, and there were two floors of rusted metal stairs between her and the ground.

She went down the stairs as fast as her legs would take her, the metal clanging under her feet like an alarm she couldn’t silence. Above her, movement—heavy, certain—and then the low vibration of Devlin stepping onto the escape behind her. His voice followed, not shouting, just carrying down in that unhurried, predatory way that meant he didn’t need volume to be terrifying.

“There’s nowhere to go, Brynn.”

She hit the first landing hard and kept going, the cut on her cheekbone stinging as cold air knifed across it. Below the second landing she saw the rear lot, the sedan, the dark stretch beyond the fence line.

And beyond the fence— Headlights. Two sets. Fast. Turning into the block.

She stopped on the last landing, breath catching, and those headlights slammed into her like a physical force—an explosive rush of desperation so sharp it shattered the iron control she’d been clinging to for the past hour. She gripped the railing to steady herself, her pulse ricocheting.

Above her, footsteps. Deliberate. Unhurried. Devlin descending.

Below her, the headlights cut across the lot. Car doors. Voices. And then—

A voice she knew better than any other, carrying across the cold dark with the tight edge of a man holding himself together by sheer will, because losing control now meant losing her.

“Brynn.”