by Cindy Skaggs
“Oh my god, I am so sorry.” Debi wanted to bury herself in the nearest lab manual. “Open mouth, insert foot.”
He shook his head sheepishly. “All’s fair in love and science. If you hate me, I must be doing something right.”
“Robert, I am so sorry you had to hear those words out of her very, very big mouth.” Allyson glared at her.
“But it’s a very pretty mouth.” His eyes had the look of a predator ready to pounce.
“And you’re charming.” Debi shook her head. A lab guy who knew how to work women was a rare thing indeed. “On that note, I think I’ll be going before I say something else completely horrifying.” Plus, something about the man put her nerves on edge. Freedom was two secure doors away.
“Actually, if you don’t mind, I needed Ally to check something for me real quick. Something about this formula doesn’t look right.”
Ally? Please. Now the guy was being an idiot, acting all buddy-buddy when Allyson had made it clear the guy was not a team player. Still, Allyson followed him around the corner. He peeked his head back around the credenza when she didn’t follow. “Coming?”
The shoulder up view shocked a memory loose. In the picture she had memorized, he was younger, with no facial hair or glasses, and he wore a military uniform. He was on the Team Echo wall of shame.
Debi’s fight or flight neurons kicked into gear, slamming her with adrenaline. The smile on her face felt synthetic. “In a sec. Let me clean up my mess here.”
Their voices moved down the lab, but not fast or far. As if he was waiting for her. If what she suspected was true, he was Echo, and he was toying with her. Either he expected her to run or the move with Allyson was meant to draw her deeper into the lab and farther from help, not that she’d make it through both levels of security before he caught her, and she couldn’t leave Allyson. Did he know about the men stationed outside?
Desperate, Debi panned the lab looking for a weapon. Anything she could use to brain him was too heavy for her to use one handed. The fire extinguishers were stationed on the opposite wall and he’d see her. The bottles and vials on the closest shelves wouldn’t slow him down. The slicing and dicing tools were down in the dissection lab.
Think.
Debi glanced up, her vision already swimmy, when her gaze landed on a bottle that might do the trick.
“Are you coming?” The tone hinted at impatience.
Bile twisted in her gut. “Slippers,” she whispered, hoping at least the outgoing bug worked. No response from Rose, which had her head spinning.
“Debra?” The tone escalated, held a bite that went beyond irritation.
She stepped into the open passageway. “You know, I always wanted to bring a pair of slippers in here and do a slip and slide down the hall.”
Allyson smiled from halfway down. “I did it in stocking feet. Once, after they buffed the floors. Don’t tell Barry.”
“I’m not really worried about him.” She was more worried about the psychopath locked inside with them. It had not occurred to her that Team Echo would have access to the labs. Debi wished there was a way to get Allyson free. “Maybe you should go before Barry shows up. I don’t want you to get in trouble. Robert can show me out.”
Allyson’s features tightened at the tension in Debi’s tone. “Do you two know each other? You called her Debra.”
“Just like Barry.” Which confirmed Debi’s worst fears.
“That’s right,” Robert confirmed. “We have some mutual friends.”
The rapid beat of her heart bruised her chest cavity. Fear pulsed in every beat. She was in a very big trap. “Allyson...”
“She’s not going anywhere.” Robert wrapped a beefy hand around Allyson’s bicep clamping down hard enough to bruise. And suddenly, the white lab coat failed to hide his bulk. In height and width, he resembled the members of Team Fear. Tall and broad like the others, but if Allyson’s assessment was correct, more muscle than brain.
“Hey.” Allyson tried to yank, but he clamped his hand down harder.
“Debra, come here. We’re going to go sit in my office and wait for reinforcements.”
“You have an office?” The hurt in Allyson’s tone was unmistakable.
“That’s not going to work for me,” Debi answered Robert’s command. No way was she going to go deeper into the maze where Rose and company wouldn’t find her. She had to believe they heard her code word. That they were even now working to get inside.
Robert pulled a gun and pointed it at Allyson. “Does it work for you now?”
“No.” But Debi stepped forward to avoid the danger he posed to her friend. She hadn’t given the team the key code for the second level security access, so even if Craft had acquired a keycard, he wouldn’t be able to get past the second layer of security. The knowledge had her temperature rising, but she couldn’t afford a panic attack. Not now.
Allyson stilled. “What’s this about, Robert?”
“Do you want to tell her or should I?”
“No.” Debi angled closer, trying for a position that kept Allyson out of the line of fire.
“Let me go.” Allyson twisted her hand and yanked, successfully freeing her hand.
Robert retaliated with a backhand that sent her reeling to the floor.
Debi raced to step between Robert and Allyson. “She doesn’t need to know. Let her go. I don’t think Barry would want his sister hurt.” Although she couldn’t say definitively. Barry was an egomaniac.
“I don’t give a shit what Barry wants. He’s not in charge.”
“You might want to tell him that.” Debi would love to be privy to that conversation. Her heart threatened to beat out of her chest as she asked the inevitable question. “Who is in charge?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” He motioned with the gun. “Move.” He shoved Allyson into the back hallway. With his hand now free, he grabbed Debi’s sore elbow to tug her faster.
“Ow, asswipe.” Struggling against his hold kept his attention off her good hand. She tucked it into the opening of the sling and gripped the vial she’d grabbed from lab. Carefully, she pried the stopper free. When the tile floor gave way to carpet, she tripped, freeing her arm from his grip.
“Watch it—”
His gun hand rose, but she was already in motion. She aimed for center body but failed. The acid splashed his gun hand and the white lab coat covering his arm.
“Fuck.” He dropped the gun, screaming as he raced for the eye wash station.
Allyson turned to run back to the security entry, but Debi stopped her. “We’ll never make it. The fire exit.” Debi hauled ass on a serpentine path through the offices, praying that one of the men from Team Fear was waiting on the other side. Even the campus police were something, although Debi was the one trespassing and she had no doubt Echo could incapacitate anyone but another member of their twisted experiment. Bile rose. “I’m gonna throw up.”
“Later,” Allyson pushed from behind her to keep going.
They rounded a corner and ran smack into a wall of muscle. Tall, blond, and silent, he wrapped an arm around her, stopping her from bouncing back from the impact.
“Echo,” Debi panted. She grabbed Rose’s hand and tried to pull him to the exit. “Need to go.”
Rose metamorphosed in front of her. Taller and wider, even his muscles appeared to grow in the dark back hall. She felt like Alice, shrinking in size while the world around her stayed the same. Rose’s eyes darkened to near black and not a drop of empathy lived in his cold features. No longer a healer, this Rose was the machine they’d created in the lab. The one designed to kill without remorse. Bulletproof? Maybe. Fearless, definitely. He was bigger and stronger and more terrifying than any soldier on the planet. “Echo is here? Excellent.” He turned toward the lab.
“Wait.” Debi put her hand over her mouth, but he heard and turned.
The dominant expression on his face threatened violence. “What?”
“You can’t go alone.”
“How many are there?”
“One.” Which to her was too many.
Rose’s smile could only be called feral. The easygoing medic had gone bye-bye. This Rose wasn’t turning back.
“He has a gun. And...” The impatience in Rose’s stance halted her words, but she swallowed the panic. “Wait for backup. Please.” She was afraid for herself, but more afraid for Rose, who looked on the edge of something dark that shimmered through him like a ghost.
“He’s not getting away. Period.” The roughness in his tone dropped an octave, as deep as he was wide. He gave her a gentle nudge toward the exit. Gentle, the contrast reminding her of the man who wrapped around her at night. The man she was starting to believe she couldn’t live without.
Echo had killed two men on Team Fear. Debi couldn’t lose Rose to the psychopaths the government had created. “I’m not leaving without you.”
“Yes. You are.” He turned, pushing into her space until he had her backed against the wall. “That wasn’t a request. Move out.”
Terror trembled in her legs, and she didn’t know if it was fear of Rose and the heated intensity of his demeanor, or the encounter with Echo. “What if. There are more. Outside?” The hyperventilating meant she’d soon be incapable of coherent thought or movement.
“Suck it up, right now.” The unbending authority acted like a bucket of ice water. “You will not have a panic attack. Do you understand?”
Holy crap. He scared the voice right out of her, so she nodded her agreement, because to do less would piss off an already angry soldier.
“You will be safe. Not fine. Safe. Craft is on his way around the building as my backup. Stills is on the back of the building waiting for you. Go straight to the drug mobile parked directly behind this building. I cannot work with you in the line of danger. Move out.”
Allyson gripped Debi’s hand. “Maybe we should listen to your friend. We can contact campus security. I don’t know—”
“No security,” Rose ordered. “Straight out.” He turned, a man accustomed to having his orders followed. The path down the hall was dark and monsters filled the shadows. Debi swallowed as her vision narrowed and the hall seemed to waver like a fun house mirror.
“Come on.” Allyson pulled her along. “I didn’t know you still had panic attacks.”
The hiccups started the instant Rose disappeared. “Only when people. Try. To kill me.” Debi attempted to count each breath in her head, slow it down, but with Rose headed into an inevitable war with Echo, her breath wouldn’t cooperate. They made it to the fire exit and a shadow separated from the wall.
Chapter Twenty
In the silhouette of the exterior emergency light, the shadow was faceless, but was definitely a male that stood nearly the height of the door. Almost as wide. Debi’s hiccup echoed against the cement cage around the fire exit.
Allyson stopped midstride. Debi stumbled right into her. Together, they inched backwards.
The shadow stepped with them in a wicked dance that brought him closer as his stride was longer. More certain. As he moved away from the blinding emergency light, his features came into focus.
“Craft,” Debi choked. She squeezed Allyson’s hand. “He’s one of the good guys.”
“That’s debatable,” he countered.
“Shouldn’t you reassure us,” Allyson said.
“Why? This is a volatile situation and you’re more than a thousand feet to a secure location.”
Debi had an image from Jurassic Park where the woman had to run from the raptors. Yeah, same odds. Acid rose up her throat with each hiccup. “Maybe we should hide.” Great plan. Hide in one of the offices until the team took care of Robert.
“And if reinforcements from Echo arrive? Not a chance. I’ll escort you ladies to Stills. He’ll drive you to a secure location away from the scene.”
“New plan.” Stills entered through the fire exit. He wore a ballistics vest loaded with enough supplies to start a war. “Fowler repositioned overhead. He can pick off any threat. You have a clear path to the car.” He tossed keys at Craft. “I’m on backup—”
“Bullshit.” Craft slammed into Stills hard enough to crack a rib. “We all have an axe to grind, but we don’t change mid-mission. Stick with the plan. I’m backup.”
“You’re needed on the computer, dumbass, if we’re going to keep this off campus security video.”
“Fuck.” Craft stalked off, anger vibrating off his massive chest. “You have a point—”
A feral bellow sounded through the tunnel like hall that lead back to the lab. Rose. Was he okay? The sound echoing down the hall was not okay.
“Saddle up, ladies. We need to roll,” Craft ordered.
“Debi stays,” Stills said.
“What?” She and Craft spoke at the same time.
Stills stood in the hall leading to the dark. “You saw what happened to Ryder. Rose is just as likely to take off my head as listen to me. If we need someone to talk him down, you’re it.”
“You want me to walk back into the burning building?” Sounded insane when she said it out loud.
“The building isn’t burning,” Allyson said.
Even Allyson’s literal interpretation did nothing to ease the tension.
Stills stared straight into Debi’s soul. “Do you care about him?”
Debi froze. The darkness of the back hall was like a dark cave, but that didn’t keep her locked into place. It was the sound of Rose’s scream. What had Robert done to him that elicited such pain and rage? She wasn’t one of the few and the proud, but she couldn’t walk away when the man she loved...
Loved? The thought of him dying left her cold and achy inside. Not three-margarita achy, but never leave the house again pain that threatened to drop her to her knees. Crap, there hadn’t been enough time, but the emotions she wanted to deny were real. Love was the only thing that could explain why she wanted to follow Stills. Why she needed to follow the sound of Rose’s pain. “I can’t leave him.”
“Move out.” Stills ran into the fray, one of the few brave souls who ran into situations the rest of the world ran from.
“There’s nothing you can do.” Allyson grabbed her by the arm.
Yet her gut said she needed to go. That Rose needed her, and for him, she’d face her greatest fears. A gunshot sounded from deep in the lab. Debi yanked her good arm from Allyson’s grip. “Go without me. My choice.”
Craft handed her a Glock. “Do not engage,” he ordered. “You are there only to deescalate the situation if Rose goes off the deep end. “Understand?”
“Absolutely.” Yeah, that was more bravado than truth, but she didn’t have time for cold logic. It was time to follow her instincts and not her education. Checking to make sure a round was chambered and the safety off, she shook like a teen at her first dance, but her moves didn’t give her away.
Craft grabbed Allyson and disappeared into the night. Debi swallowed a breath that didn’t stop the trembling. She twisted and jogged back down the hall anyway.
At the intersection to the well-lit lab, Debi’s bravado faltered. Once again, her mouth had taken her where her body didn’t want to follow. Her feet stuck to the carpet as she peeked around the corner and took in the scene. Robert stood in the open expanse staring down one of the narrow spaces hidden behind bookshelves and credenzas. A blood trail smeared down the otherwise polished floor.
“Rose.” She whispered his name, hoping to somehow summon him, whole and complete. Robert stalked forward like the predator the government had created, ready to kill. Debi couldn’t let it happen. She lifted the gun, but her arm shook too much to get a decent shot. She needed a brace. She ran forward, crossing the threshold of tile and lab, her hated tennis shoes squeaking. She made it ten feet into the open before Robert turned. He’d lost the glasses. Something inhuman swam through his eyes. He blinked, and then he smiled like a demented clown. Exaggerated and scary as hell.
Debi wanted to turn tail and run, but he�
��d be on her like a coyote on an injured deer. She’d come this far. Widening her stance, she faced him. No way would she shoot straight. Too much adrenaline ran through her system, making her quaky and her moves uncertain, but if she brought him close enough. Maybe she had a chance. The words she wanted to use stuck in her craw. For once, her mouth wasn’t running away with her. She used her body instead. She lifted the weapon and aimed at center mass. Her injured arm shook from the exertion, but she thought back to her physical therapy. If she could lift weights, and they burned her shoulder like a hot brand, then she could hold the gun long enough to shoot.
As it happened, she didn’t have long to wait. Robert stepped toward her with a definite swagger. Dead certainty that she wouldn’t, couldn’t hurt him, added to his ego as he walked calm as preacher on a Sunday stroll. “Have you embraced the fear yet?” he yelled. He smiled at her as he took another step. “Not you, baby. I smell your fear.”
Oh. Hell.
The slow pace was more threatening than a fast assault. Heat rose through her body in waves of pure terror. Her feet took a step back without talking to her mind. He took another step, his stride longer. Nothing could stop the backward glide of her feet across the tile. For every step she took, he took a larger one, moving him closer.
Panting a breath out, she slid her finger around the trigger. “I will shoot you.” Even her voice quivered.
He tilted his head to the side like he was looking over a used car. Assessing. “Baby, I’m invincible.”
Wow, this guy had nothing on the criminally insane. Maybe they should strap his ass down on the torture device in the basement at the manor. “What’s your plan here?”
“They join us or die. Simple as.” He held a syringe out like a psycho stabbing a knife. “Direct injection works much faster. Your rescuer has more chemicals flowing through his system right now than a napalm factory.”
Debi wanted to close her eyes, say a prayer that Rose was okay, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off Robert. Glass rattled in the direction of the blood trail. Debi raised her voice so Robert wouldn’t follow the sound. “He won’t turn. None of these guys will. You can’t turn a sane man crazy.”