Free Hitman's Baby (Mob City Book 2) by Holly Hart

arsenal of ammunition. As the first few inches of the closet came into sight I was overjoyed, thinking I'd found my ticket out of there. But as the mirror swung backwards to completely reveal what it had been hiding, my stomach fell through the floor.

    S ure , there were plenty of bullets, in boxes and scattered around, and dozens of fully-loaded magazines.

    B ut no actual guns . There were clips where perhaps half a dozen handguns might once have rested, but the weapons themselves were gone, as if the ammunition was just there to taunt me.

    A s if I needed it , it was another reminder of exactly how dangerous the situation I found myself in. I needed to tread carefully. I walked over to the door, grateful that the thick cream carpet soaked up every single wave of sound that I made. I tried the brass handle, and just like the closet door had been, it was well-maintained and recently oiled, and opened without so much as a click. I pulled the door back carefully, peeking through the crack to make sure I didn't find a nasty surprise waiting for me. But there was none.

    I stepped out into the corridor, tense, jumpy and ready to run at a second's notice. I couldn't believe that I'd been left unattended. My mind was still casting around for the reason why I'd been taken in the first place, and not coming up with much in the way of answers. I could only think that it had something to do with my job at the paper, that perhaps someone thought I knew something, and wanted to silence me. It wouldn't be the first time a thing like that it happened in Alexandria, that was for sure.

    I wished they'd just checked with my doctors, though, it would have saved everyone a whole lot of bother. I could barely remember a thing before my accident, and I definitely wasn't in a fit state to write a hard-hitting report on police corruption, or whatever.

    A ccident . Something niggled in my brain, as though it wasn't the right word, but I shook it off. My mind had been playing up enough recently, to the extent that sometimes I barely knew what was real and what wasn't. The nurses all said it'd go away in time, if I rested. I don't think they expected a situation like this.

    T he bedroom's carpet gave way to rough, unvarnished wooden floorboards, and the corridor was strewn with the detritus of recent construction: pots of paint, loose screws and nails, and enough sheets of plasterboard to build a house. All in all, it was basically an obstacle course. I trod carefully, like a misbehaving child breaking out of their bedroom late at night, and walked as close to the walls as I could, so that I didn't disturb a loose floorboard. The last thing I wanted was for an errant creak to give me a way to my captor.

    T he apartment , if that's what it was, was a helpless mishmash. It didn't feel like a block of condos, more like someone had found a warehouse and decided to turn it into a home. It had an old, middle of the century industrial vibe, with old brick walls and original wooden rafters poking from the material.

    I froze .

    T here was a man lying on the couch, a huge man, perhaps six foot four and two hundred and twenty pounds of lean muscle, though it was hard to put a precise figure on his height lying down. I held my breath and didn't move, didn't even put my foot back on the ground in case it made a sound. I watched the man carefully, and saw that his chest was rising and falling gently. He was asleep. At least, I hoped he was, because there was only one way out of the apartment, and it was past him.

    I gently placed my foot back on the floorboard. The last couple of feet before the corridor gave way into the living room felt like a couple of miles, and I made it almost without breathing. The room was surprisingly large, and had a kitchen at one end, and a doorway at the other. The doorway called to me, it was freedom, escape. But as I looked to my left, I saw a row of chef's knives attached to a magnetic strip on the wall, and a wall of rage