Free Let Me Go by Chelsea Cain Page B

It was crowded, the men were all in tuxedos, wearing masks; it was dark. But Susan wasn’t just anyone—she was a reporter. She paid attention. She noticed people. Especially when they were wrestler-sized tough guys who had recently kidnapped her.
    Cooper took the stairs casually, with the easy gait of someone not in a hurry, not bothered, not stalking someone. He had changed into a tuxedo—nothing fancy, and a decade out of date—and he was wearing a simple black mask, like a comic-book henchman. When he got to the bottom of the stairs he stopped. Susan didn’t move. The bark was rough against her shoulder blades. She could feel Cooper’s gaze searching for her in the darkness.
    Suddenly the boisterousness of the party seemed very far away.
    â€œWatch out for snakes,” Cooper called.
    Susan had to bite her lip to keep from whimpering. She stood on her tiptoes and scanned the dark ground around her for any sign of movement.
    â€œLeo’s brother Jeremy liberated two pet Burmese pythons a few years ago, and no one’s seen them since,” Cooper called.
    Susan thought she heard a slithering in the dark. She tightened her grip on the wand of the mask, and wondered if it could be used to fend off a python.
    â€œPythons will wind around tree branches and drop right on top of you,” Cooper said.
    It was too much. Susan leapt forward, away from the trees, and stumbled out of the foliage onto the paving-stone pool deck. Cooper chuckled, the silver in his teeth glinting in the lamplight.
    Susan quickly checked behind her for snakes, saw none, and then turned back to Cooper. “Why are you following me?” she demanded.
    He was still fifteen feet away, and he didn’t make an effort to get closer.
    â€œIt’s a big island,” he said pleasantly. “I didn’t want you to get lost.”
    â€œI want to see Leo,” Susan said. She brushed at some of the tiny bits of leaves that were stuck to her dress. “Or I’m leaving.”
    â€œOkay,” Cooper agreed.
    That was too easy. “Right now,” Susan said, to be clear.
    Cooper produced a cell phone and lifted it to his ear. He said something into it, but Susan couldn’t make it out. She was too far away. She took a few uneasy steps toward him across the stone patio, but by the time she was close enough to hear, he had already put the cell phone back in his pocket.
    He didn’t say anything. She hated that. He made her ask.
    â€œNow what?” she asked.
    â€œWant to skinny-dip?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” she said.
    He shrugged. “Then I guess we wait.”
    â€œI know Archie Sheridan,” Susan said. “He’s a personal friend of mine. He’s caught serial killers. So he could catch you guys, if something happened to me. I’ve called him and told him I’m here.”
    Cooper crossed his arms and gave her an amused look. “Have you, really?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy don’t you check and see if he’s called back?” Cooper said. He gave her a nod. “Go ahead. We have a minute. Check. You might have a voice mail.”
    Susan tucked the bejeweled mask under her arm, and got her phone out of her evening bag and checked it. No voice mails. She scrolled through her texts to see if Leo had gotten back to her, but saw only red exclamation marks next to the texts she had sent him. She tried to hide her growing alarm. None of them had gone through.
    â€œThe elder Mr. Reynolds is not a fan of cell phones,” Cooper said. “He finds them rude. If you ask me, he’s fighting a losing battle, but he’s the boss, right? He’s had cell phone blockers installed. You can’t get reception anywhere on the island.”
    He held up the cell phone he had been talking on and Susan realized that it wasn’t a cell phone at all—it was a walkie-talkie.
    She was on an island with a bunch of masked criminals and no way to