For Her Own Good

They ran into several thugs in the stairwell, and for a minute, Riley thought that they were going to be captured again or worse. But Trent calmly whipped out his tranquilizing gun and shot them all, so quickly that they didn’t have time to react.

“That won’t keep them out long,” Trent said. They ran down the hallway and made it to a thick, windowless door. It was locked.

“This has to be it,” Riley muttered. She kicked at the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Stand back,” Trent warned, and charged at the door. It took several tries, but he broke it down. Inside was a computer lab. Riley immediately set about smashing all of their hard drives , leaving Trent to set fire to the filing cabinets.

They were nearly finished, and the place was getting hot, when the biggest man Riley had ever seen stepped up to the door. He surveyed the damage and looked furious.

“You will die,” he said. Chills went down Riley’s spine. For a second, she believed that to be an undeniable truth.

But then Trent shook her shoulder and they both scanned for escape routes.

The only way out seemed to be, once again, the window. They were on the fifth floor, though. How could they possibly survive a fall like that?

They couldn’t.

Still, Riley went perilously close to the flames that were spreading around the room, and she peered out the window. There was a ledge on each window, and it would be a struggle, but she just might be able to drop down one floor and escape through the window there. Maybe.

She wrenched the window open and climbed out, hearing gunfire behind her. One bullet whistled past her ear. But she made it out, and she managed to drop down. Then she was falling, falling….

And her fingers snagged one ledge, and slipped. She hit another, and this time caught on. Three more stories to go. Her fingers were in agony, but she was doing okay so far. She hung on with one hand and smashed the other through the window, clambering through just as she saw Trent climb out that fifth-floor window.

He looked down at her, white-faced, and watched while she made it into another room. He let go of the ledge he was hanging on.

Later, he wouldn’t remember how they’d done it. He remembered making it into the window Riley had broken, taking her hand, and running straight through a swarm of thugs.

His team had been waiting in their van. He hauled Riley into the back, and they were home free.