Final Fall (Lock & Mori, Band 3) - Hardcover

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Heather W. Petty has been obsessed with mysteries since she was twelve, which is when she decided that stories about murders in London drawing rooms and English seaside villages were far superior to all other stories. She is the author of the Lock & Mori series. She lives in Reno, Nevada, with her husband, daughter, and four hopelessly devious cats. You can visit her online at HeatherWPetty.com.

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Final Fall

Chapter 1

I spent the first week of my confinement pacing my cage like a circus tiger and demanding to see my brothers at anyone who came near. I used mealtimes to gauge the passing of hours and ate as quickly as I could so I could hurl my empty plates through the bars at the heads of my captors. I thought then that I was as angry as I could get.

Then another full week went by and still I had no sign of Alice or my brothers. I knew this was my punishment for hurting Alice that first day—her face probably still showed the bruises from where I’d slammed her head against the bars of my cell. But in the darkest part of the night, I couldn’t sleep for the panicked idea that maybe they’d left for America without me. That maybe, by the time I escaped, Alice would have covered their trail so well, I’d never be able to find my brothers in that giant landscape.

By week three, the two guards Alice had assigned to watch over me started playing Ro-Sham-Bo to determine who would bring me food. I’d taken to hiding in the shadows of my prison, at first with the idea that I’d lunge out and scare anyone who got too close, but they seemed more unnerved by my silence than they’d ever been by my posturing. So I slid out of sight and watched the cowards huddle close together, stare at my empty cot from over their shoulders, and play their childish games. And when the one called Lucas bent down to slide my plate under the bars, I reached through and dug my fingers into his rough, auburn curls.

I hung on with all my might and pulled his head against the bars. And when he reached his arm through them to try to stop me, I leveraged the limb back and down, twisting his shoulder unnaturally and using my weight to keep him in pain so that he was forced to press his back against the cage to get some relief. Then I slipped my free arm through the bars and around his neck.

Lucas managed to yelp out, “Help!”

The other guard ran over. “Jus’ let him go. Nice and easy.”

“Get me my brothers and maybe I don’t snap his neck.” I was pretty sure I didn’t have the strength to actually hurt him all that badly, but the threat seemed to stun the nameless guard into a bit of a silent panic. Alice had apparently warned them about me. I could use that.

Lucas was doing his best to stay quiet, but when the other one took too long to decide what to do, he shouted, “Get Trent, you dullard!”

Trent was apparently their leader. That was good to know.

“Not Trent. My brothers.” I put a little more weight on Lucas’s oddly angled arm, until he yelped again.

“Stan! Just go!”

Stan obeyed readily enough, though I didn’t expect to see my brothers come through the doors. Not really. Alice was keeping them from me on purpose. She hadn’t even given me an update on Michael’s condition since the night her nurse friend had tended to my wounds. All I knew was that he hadn’t woken up yet, and that was supposedly normal “considering what he’s gone through.” That left me helpless in a cage, with Michael in a coma and my other brothers under the care of a psychopath who had killed three people and was unduly fixated on my mum. She could be doing anything to them, and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

Lucas cried out again, and I shifted my weight a bit to take some of the pressure off his arm. If I were going to break him, I’d do it in front of Alice, not before she got here.

“She’s not coming,” a voice said from somewhere up in the rafters of the barn.

“Who’s there?” I shouted. I must have clung tighter to Lucas in my alarm, because he started to choke and his fingernails dug into the skin of my arm.

“You’ll have to do better than threaten that one there to get her attention.”

“Show yourself!” I held Lucas tighter still, and his breaths started to rasp in and out. He scratched and pulled at my arm some more, but he was already weakening, and something about that fascinated me.

Could I really do it? Could I hold him until he fell unconscious? Until he died?

“Now you’re thinking. You’ve sent one guard off and you’re putting the other one out of commission. But if this was your plan all along, why’d you wait so long to do it?”

Lucas slumped unconscious in my arms and I let him drop against the bars. I immediately knelt in the dirt, feeling around his pockets for keys to my cell, while I squinted up into the shadows of the rafters looking for whoever was taunting me. It didn’t really matter who he was. He was only one man, and I couldn’t let him stop me. I had to get up to the farmhouse to see my brothers. I had to know they were okay.

No keys. I started to roll him over to check his other side, but then I heard a thud somewhere in the barn, and the voice came closer.

“Do you really think Miss Alice would leave the key to your freedom with a man too idiotic to use the flashlight at his belt to find you before approaching your cell?”

He was right. Alice was too smart for that. In fact, she probably wouldn’t trust anyone but herself. My key was most likely hanging round her neck.

I shook away an enticing little vision of me strangling her with the chain she’d used to hold that key and then grabbed Lucas’s flashlight, holding it up like a club, but turning it on to spotlight the corner of the barn from where I was sure the voice had come. He had already moved.

“Well done.”

I turned to the right where a figure leaned against one of the barn’s main support beams. He wore black, like the rest of the guards, but he had a short green jacket on. It was vaguely military, as was his hair, which was all buzzed around the sides and short on top. When the light hit his face, he lifted a hand to shield his eyes so that only his smile shone bright.

“You must be Trent,” I said.

He didn’t confirm or deny it, but I was pretty sure I was right. He had the confident swagger of a man in charge. Not at all what I expected from one of Alice’s men. Younger and smarter than her usual—too smart, perhaps, to work for the likes of her.

“So, what’s next in this plan of yours? You’ve dispatched your guards. Now what?”

“You let me out?”

He shook his head, but his smile widened. “It wouldn’t matter too much if I did. I’ve got men posted around the perimeter. You wouldn’t get far.”

“I only need to get to the house.”

Trent seemed to consider that. “Tell you what, I see at least four ways out of that cage of yours. If you get out on your own and can incapacitate me, I’ll give you a free pass to the house.”

I eyed him skeptically and then used my flashlight to take him in. He wasn’t more than four or five inches taller than me, and he was mostly skinny, until I got to his shoulders, which were broad; the fabric of his jacket pulled around his arms in a few key places. He was strong. But I’d learned how to fight in a way where his strength shouldn’t matter. Maybe.

“Just you? You’re not going to call in more of your men?”

“Just me.”

I watched him for a few seconds and then pushed my hand...