More Than a Man

by Rebecca York

  He squeezed into the area behind the sink, then started crawling. It was a good thing he had the flashlight because he might have fallen down a shaft about twenty yards farther along the tunnel. There were metal rungs on the side. When he shined the light down, he couldn’t see the bottom.

  Another man might have worried about falling. He just started climbing upward, with the flashlight gripped in his teeth.

  There were branch tunnels on what he figured was every floor. He might have done some exploring, if he’d had more time. But he and Olivia were supposed to be in the shower.

  He was looking up, wondering how far he had to climb, when a voice spoke in the darkness.

  “Noah, stay cool.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  When he heard the disembodied voice, Noah almost dropped the flashlight in his mouth.

  What the hell?

  Struggling to retain the light, he clenched his teeth.

  “This is Max Dakota from Light Street,” the voice said. “You can’t answer me, but I can speak to you. And I’m assuming you’re picking this up. It’s coming from the magic capsule you swallowed. In addition to the transponder, the capsule has a small transmission device inside.”

  The voice stopped, and Noah waited with his heart pounding.

  After several seconds, the voice started again. “Sorry. We have to do this in bursts, so they won’t figure out what’s going on.”

  Yeah, right. Was this some kind of trick? The voice sounded like Max Dakota, but he couldn’t be sure. And he was having trouble believing what the guy said.

  Then he reminded himself that nobody could know about the capsule except the Light Street guys.

  “We had to wait until you were alone to send a message. We have a schematic of the facility and we know where you are. We’re in a helicopter within range of the facility.”

  The voice stopped again, and once more he waited in the darkness, his heart pounding.

  Was he really in contact with the Light Street men? Or was Noah Fielding so desperate for help that he was making up voices in his head?

  He clenched his fingers around the rung of the ladder. He’d lived a long time and had been in some tight spots, but he’d never made up imaginary friends.

  In this case, the logical conclusion was that the Light Street operatives had figured out some very sophisticated technology. He’d like to talk to them about that, if he ever got the chance.

  Max Dakota began speaking again. “We know you’re in an access shaft that leads to the top of the mountain. The exit above you is on the roof of the facility. If you can get outside, we can scoop up you and your wife. But we need you to create some kind of diversion in there. Something that will have them running around so they’re not aware of us swooping in for the pickup. We’re hoping you can do that. We’ll stand by.”

  Okay!

  He couldn’t say it aloud, but he felt a surge of hope. Light Street was in position to get them off the mountain. Noah’s job was to get back to Olivia and figure out how to screw up Bainbridge’s security force.

  Reversing his direction, he started back down the ladder, moving faster than when he’d climbed up, yet it seemed like a long way down. He kept scanning the darkness and finally he saw the light shining through the access panel where he’d entered the shaft.

  When he scrambled back into the bathroom, Olivia was staring at him with a question on her face—a question she couldn’t ask because she understood that Bainbridge’s men might be listening.

  He gave her a thumbs up sign.

  “Wow. I feel good. That was a great idea about the shower,” he said, hoping that anyone listening would assume they’d been fooling around. He ached to tell her what had happened with the access shaft and the communication from Max Dakota, but he couldn’t take a chance on Bainbridge’s men hearing the news.

  He thought about the door to the lab. Hemmings had said it was locked, but Noah had had a lot of practice getting out of confinement.

  “Wait here,” he mouthed, then took the nail file through the bedroom to the living room of the suite.

  When he looked around, Olivia was right behind him. He wanted her out of danger, but he suspected she wasn’t going to cooperate.

  Without too much trouble, he opened the door, and they both stepped into the lab.

  Hemmings had told him the area was under surveillance. But would the guards be focusing on the lab when it was empty?

  He didn’t know, but he had to take the chance.

  Putting his mouth to Olivia’s ear, he whispered, “We don’t have much time. Look for fire accelerants.”

  She nodded and began opening cabinets.

  He ran back to a storage room he’d seen and started his own search.

  OLIVIA rummaged through the cabinets, glad to have something to occupy her mind. Since she’d found out Noah’s secret, her thoughts had been in turmoil. Could she live with him, knowing that she would grow old and he would stay the same? Could she be happy with him under those circumstances?

  She’d known he had a secret. Of all the things he could have told her, she never would have expected this. Not in a million years. And she still couldn’t come to grips with it.

  She clenched her teeth, angry with herself. She was all wound up with herself. But what about Noah? What was it like to live for centuries and lose the people you loved? You’d wall yourself off to avoid pain. Noah must have done that, yet he’d picked her out of all the women he could have married.

  Absorbed with her thoughts, she missed the sound of a lock opening. But when a door swung open to her right—not the door she and Noah had come through—she pivoted to face it.

  Dr. Hemmings stepped into the room, a gun in his hand.

  When she saw him, she went stock-still. So did the doctor.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in an icy voice.

  She scrambled for an answer, knowing she had to keep the man’s attention so that he wouldn’t discover what Noah was doing.

  Raising her voice so it would carry to the back of the lab, she said, “Mr. Bainbridge is setting up another experiment and he asked me to get some things.”

  Hemmings snorted. “If he were, he wouldn’t involve you in the planning.” He regarded her with narrowed eyes. “How did you get in here?”

  “Through the door.” Compounding her previous lie with another, she added, “Maybe I’ve switched sides, and you didn’t get word. Call your boss and ask.”

  “He’s not my boss!”

  Her heart was pounding as she waited for Noah to realize they weren’t alone. Finally, behind Hemmings, she saw a flicker of movement. It was Noah, creeping quietly toward the doctor’s back.

  Noah looked like he was about to leap at Hemmings, when the man must have sensed there was someone behind him. He whirled and fired.

  She screamed as she saw the bullet strike Noah’s shoulder, but his reaction wasn’t that of a normal man. He kept charging forward.

  And she knew Hemmings couldn’t deal with Noah and her at the same time. Weaponless, she leaped on his back, bringing him crashing to the floor. The gun discharged again, but this time the bullet only struck the bottom of a cabinet.

  Hemmings rolled one way and then the other, trying to dislodge her, but she wasn’t about to let go.

  Noah surged forward, grabbed the gun and kicked out a foot, slamming it into the doctor’s ribs with bone-jarring force.

  Hemmings gasped as Noah trained the gun on him.

  “How do you like a little pain?” he growled. “Want another kick?”

  “No. Please.”

  “Sit up. Hands behind your head,” he ordered through clenched teeth.

  Hemmings grimaced as he sat up.

  Olivia’s gaze swung between them. When she saw the blood spreading on Noah’s shirt, she couldn’t hold back a little sob.

  “You’re hurt.”

  He made a rough sound. “As we all know, I’ll live.”

  “You’re a priceless
resource,” Hemmings said to Noah. “Don’t do anything to endanger this project.”

  “You think setting me on fire isn’t endangering the project?”

  “You recovered. Just like you’ll recover from the bullet wound.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know that for sure before you tried that human torch experiment.”

  Hemmings’s voice turned desperate. “It was Bainbridge’s idea! I couldn’t change his mind.”

  “That’s a convenient excuse.”

  “Listen to me. We can both be rich if you cooperate with him.”

  “I have all the money I need.”

  “Work with me!”

  “Is that why you were being accommodating—to soften me up?”

  Hemmings didn’t answer.

  “We’re wasting time,” Noah snapped. “Olivia and I have to get out of here.”

  Noah made a wide circle around the man, then handed the gun to her. “Keep him covered.”

  She took the weapon and held it in a two-handed grip, her focus on Hemmings. From the corner of her eye, she saw Noah run to the back of the storeroom again. He returned with two bottles and a pile of towels.

  “Alcohol and benzene,” he said, as he began to pour the liquid onto the towels.

  Olivia could see Noah move around the lab, his teeth clenched. He was turning on the five Bunsen burners on the tables.

  “What are you doing?” Hemmings gasped.

  “Starting a fire. Turnabout is fair play, don’t you think?”

  Hemmings eyed the gas jets. “This place is going to go up like a torch.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  As Noah lit one of the towels, Hemmings leaped up and lunged for Olivia. She was too stunned to shoot, but Noah must have been ready for the move. Once again, he used his foot, this time against Hemmings’s back, slamming him to the floor again.

  But the man was obviously desperate. He hurled himself at Noah, who battered him down again. This time Hemmings stayed on the floor.

  Noah worked methodically, emptying the bottles onto the towels. When the terry cloth was soaked with benzene and alcohol, he used the burners to light them, then flung them around the room. Finally, he extinguished the flames on all but one of the burners but left the jets on.

  As Hemmings watched what he was doing, the researcher gasped. “Are you crazy? The gas will explode.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You can’t leave me here.”

  “You were perfectly willing to kill Olivia if I hadn’t gotten to her in time. You just watched.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You’ll have a chance to get out—after we do.”

  The smoke from the burning towels was already making Olivia cough.

  Noah whirled toward her. “Go into the bedroom. I’ll be right there.”

  But she wasn’t going to leave him alone with Hemmings.

  As the flames leaped higher, the doctor made a desperate grab for Noah, and she shot him in the shoulder.

  He screamed as he fell backward into the flames, then screamed again as his clothing caught fire.

  Hemmings begged for help.

  Shocked at her own actions and her unfeeling reaction, Olivia ignored him.

  “We’d better split,” Noah ordered, “before the gas blows.”

  They both turned and ran. Just as they stepped through the doorway, an alarm rang.

  “Hurry,” Noah shouted. “The guards are going to be here any minute.”

  THE alarm woke Jarred Bainbridge. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out why a bell was ringing. Then the speaker beside his bed crackled.

  “Sir, there’s a fire in the laboratory.”

  His immediate reaction was anger. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “The lab was vacant. We put it on an eight-minute surveillance cycle.”

  “You idiot,” Jarred screamed. “Noah Fielding is next door. Get him out of there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And keep me informed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The voice clicked off, and Jarred was left alone in his bedroom.

  Struggling up, he started for the door, but the smell of smoke stopped him. Apparently it had gotten into the air ducts.

  He pressed the communications panel again, but nothing happened, and fear clawed at his chest.

  For years he’d always been in command, but somehow since he’d started stalking Noah Fielding, the situation had gotten out of his control. He’d thought he’d been so clever bringing Fielding here. Now he knew he’d made a bad mistake.

  Smoke was filling the room, and in his weakened condition, he couldn’t breathe.

  Panic seized him and he struggled for calm.

  The floor. You were supposed to get down on the floor to get away from the smoke.

  He tried to crawl toward the door, but he wavered on unsteady arms and knees.

  “Help. Someone help me,” he called out, his voice barely carrying across the room.

  No one came.

  The last conscious thought he had was a curse.

  NOAH ran for the access panel. Just as they reached the bathroom, the door burst open, and two armed guards pounded in.

  “Go,” he shouted to Olivia. “There’s a shaft about twenty feet down the tunnel. Start climbing up.”

  She gave him a desperate look.

  “Go,” he shouted again as he fired at the guards. Neither one of them had expected him to be armed, and he was able to take both of them out. Leaping forward, he grabbed an automatic weapon from one of the bodies and headed for the panel.

  Earlier it had been dark inside. Now he saw emergency lighting along the interior of the shaft. Maybe the alarm had triggered the lights.

  Olivia had already disappeared inside, and he heard her gasp.

  “How far down is it if I fall?” she asked.

  “Don’t look down. Keep going up. I’ll be under you.”

  He climbed in, just as another guard charged into the room. He dropped the guy the way he’d taken out the others, then slung the gun’s strap over his shoulder so he could climb.

  His right shoulder still hurt, but it was getting better. He could feel the slug working its way out, the foreign object being rejected from his body the way he knew it would.

  Below him, another guard had crawled into the tunnel and started firing upward.

  Noah cursed under his breath as he paused on the ladder, turned and fired back.

  Bullets whizzed past him, and he prayed that one of them wasn’t going to hit Olivia.

  Then from below, a massive explosion shook the ladder. In the dim light, he saw Olivia waver on the rungs.

  “Hold on. Just hold on tight,” he called out, following his own advice.

  His heart leaped into his throat as he watched her feet scramble for purchase, but finally she stabilized herself. When she was steady again, he ordered her to climb, praying they could get to the top before the whole structure collapsed around them.

  She kept going, but he could hear her breathing hard, and the smoke was following them up the shaft.

  They had another problem, too. Since the initial contact, he hadn’t heard anything from the Light Street men. Were they really out there, or had something happened?

  When Olivia reached the top, Noah breathed out a small sigh. There was a narrow platform and an access hatch. Olivia climbed off the ladder and onto the platform. Leaning back against the wall, she sagged to the side.

  His heart stopped as she wavered toward the guardrail. Swiftly he reached for her, propping her against his side with one hand while he aimed the machine gun at the hatch with the other and fired a stream of bullets at the panel. The door flew off, letting blessed air into the shaft.

  “Come on.”

  Olivia didn’t move.

  “Come on,” he said again, lifting her up and heaving her through the opening.

  She flopped limply onto the surface above, and Noah scrambled out after her
.

  In the distance, he could see the small house with the entrance to the elevator shaft, and he knew they were on the same plateau where he’d landed yesterday. Or maybe it was the day before.

  He looked back at the escape hatch, thinking that if someone came through, he and Olivia were too exposed.

  “Olivia?”

  She made a small sound, but she didn’t move.

  “We have to get away from here.”

  Gritting his teeth, he lifted her in his arms. His shoulder still hurt after the long climb up the ladder. Carrying Olivia several yards away, he rounded an outcropping of rock and set her down gently on the ground.

  Desperation clawed at him as he scanned the sky. They were out of the underground facility, but where were the Light Street guys?

  While that question circled in his mind, he felt the ground quake below him, and knew that another explosion had shaken the complex.

  Was the whole top of the mountain going to blow? With them on it? That might solve the Noah Fielding problem once and for all.

  “Please, Lord. Not now,” he whispered. “Not when I’ve found Olivia.”

  But even if, by some miracle, he got her out of this, would she stay with him?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Behind them, Noah heard a whooshing sound. Whirling, he was in time to see the building with the elevator burst into flames. So much for anybody inside using that escape route.

  Unless someone came up the access shaft, it looked like everybody down there was done for. Including Bainbridge.

  That realization gave Noah a moment’s satisfaction as he crouched over Olivia. The unprincipled bastard had been looking for a way to prolong his life—and he’d only succeeded in shortening it.

  Nobody from inside the complex was coming after them. Unfortunately, he had the feeling they were sitting on a man-made volcano that was going to blow the top off the mountain.

  Desperately, he shook Olivia’s shoulder. “Wake up. You have to wake up.”

  She didn’t respond, and he felt everything inside him twist and cramp. They had to get away from the mountaintop, but after climbing the shaft with a bullet in his shoulder, he knew that he couldn’t carry her to safety.