Isaac marched out. I could see he was overcompensating for the injuries he had suffered in the crash, but he didn’t want to show any weakness. He aimed his gun at the man on the ground, while Lorcan still had hold of the other one, the muzzle of his gun now jammed into the side of the man’s head.
“Where the fuck is Hollan?” Isaac demanded. “What’s he done to the base? Is he down there?”
The soldier on the ground clutched his bleeding leg. “I don’t know.”
Isaac took a step closer. “You don’t want to die for that son of a bitch, trust me.”
Lorcan jammed the muzzle harder against the other man’s head, his upper lip curling in a snarl. I recognized this side of Lorcan—the cold, merciless side. It frightened me a little, but he got the job done.
The man on the ground lifted one hand from his gunshot wound to wave it in the air in self-defense. “Okay, okay. He’s down there. He jammed the communication system, and overrode the electronics so he could get in.”
“So he’s down there now?” Isaac confirmed.
The man nodded.
“How many men does he have with him?”
“The same as he left up here,” the soldier blurted. “Six.”
“And where are the boys he took from Atlanta?”
Confusion crossed the man’s pale face. “I don’t know. Not here.”
Isaac frowned. “What do you mean, not here?”
“He said it was a separate part of the mission, and left with them and a couple of the guys. I don’t know where they went, or why.”
My stomach sank. The boys weren’t here. Fuck. Where the hell had he taken them, and why? I was worried for them, but that concern only entangled with my fears for the people currently underground with Hollan and his men. Were they still alive? Had they fought back? Had my aunt managed to leave before they’d arrived?
“We have to get down there,” I said.
Clay pressed his lips together and glanced between us. “He’ll already know we’re here.”
Isaac shrugged. “There’s nothing we can do about that.”
Kingsley emerged from behind the trees to join us, limping and holding his side. Alex was with him, too, helping him along.
This all felt futile. How were we going to help the people in the base? Where had the boys been taken?
I looked between the men, my eyes wide. “We have to go down there.”
Lorcan’s jaw was rigid as he replied. “Hollan’s men are going to shoot us the minute we step out of the elevator.”
“Then we’ll just have to shoot faster,” Isaac said.
Clay shook his head. “This is insane.”
Lorcan jerked his chin at the two men we’d taken down. “We use them as protection. Hold them in front of us as we’re going down, and the moment those doors open, we start firing.”
The man with the gunshot wound whimpered in pain. I’d almost have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t been shooting at us ten minutes earlier.
“We won’t all fit inside the elevator,” I pointed out.
“I’ll go down,” Lorcan continued. “I’ll take Isaac and Clay.”
I bit my lower lip. “I don’t like this.”
He stared back at me. “We don’t have any choice.”
Lorcan was right. There was no way we were going to walk away from this. My aunt was down there, together with innocent children. There was no scenario where we’d abandon them and leave Hollan to do whatever he wanted.
I thought of something. “How are we going to get the elevator to come up? We can’t call it from the outside.”
“I’ve never needed to look for it,” Isaac said, “but there’s supposed to be a failsafe somewhere close by that can be used in case of an emergency or power cut.”
“I’d say this probably qualifies as an emergency,” I pointed out. “Isn’t there another way in? An emergency escape route?”
He nodded. “Yes, there is. But it can only be opened from the inside. So unless we can get someone to open it for us, we’re going to have to find the failsafe for the elevator.”
Still keeping our weapons trained on the two men, we made our way over to the hatch for the elevator shaft.
Clay and Lorcan remained standing guard over the two men, while Alex, Isaac, and I started to hunt. Kingsley joined in as well, but he was moving slowly, and I could read the pain etched in his face.
“What are we looking for, Isaac?” Alex called out.
“Not sure. A lever or push button of some kind.”
We continued to search, swiping our hands through the dirt and tufts of grass.
“Got it,” Alex yelled, and he lifted his hand and brought it down on the switch.
The whirr of the elevator started from deep beneath the ground, and we all stepped back.
“Get ready,” Isaac warned. “There might be people inside.”
By people, I knew he meant Hollan’s men.
Lorcan shrugged but raised his gun, aiming it at the elevator shaft. “That’s only if they know we’re here. If Hollan cut the communication, could that mean he did the same for the security cameras?”
Clay lifted his eyebrows and pushed his hand through his hair, but like Lorcan, he kept his gun trained on where the elevator would appear. “That would have been a pretty dumb move.”
“But if he only had the choice of taking it all out, or taking none of it out, I guess he’s going to have gone with all of it.”
I hoped he was right. Was there a chance Hollan didn’t know we were here?
Isaac perhaps knew what I was thinking. “Don’t get complacent. Go in there assuming Hollan knows everything.”
I nodded.
The elevator rose behind him, and he hauled the man he had hold of, twisting his body so the other man was directly in front of him. Maybe he would have fought more, but he had a gun pressed to his head, and he’d already seen his friend shot in the leg, and most of the others killed. Perhaps he hoped being taken down to Hollan would be his best chance.
Everyone braced themselves as the doors slid open, expecting men to start shooting at us from inside the car, but they revealed only empty space. There was no time to relax, however.
Isaac turned and looked at me, and then his gaze flicked to Kingsley. “You should stay here, take care of Kingsley.”
I shook my head, my heart flipping. “No, I know what you’re doing. I’m coming down with you.”
“This is dangerous. You might end up hurt, or dead.”
“So? So might you, or Lorcan, or Clay. You can’t make me stay behind, not after everything. I need to see this through. I understand you’re trying to protect me, not just from Hollan, but from what we might find when we get down there. But I’m one of you now, and you can’t protect me just because I’m a girl.”
“It’s not because you’re a girl, Darcy. It’s because we love you, and the thought of anything happening to you is worse than the idea of us dying ourselves.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Well, I feel the same way about you, but you don’t see me telling you to stay behind.”
Kingsley shook his head, too. “We’re all coming. You need as many people on your side as you can get.”
Isaac glared at him, and Kingsley glanced over at me, realization dawning across his face.
“We’ll come back for you,” Isaac said.
Isaac shoved the man forward, and Lorcan moved with the one who’d been shot in the leg, using him as a human shield. The man whimpered and limped, so Lorcan basically had to drag him. Lorcan wasn’t a big man, but he was fiercely strong, every inch of his body covered in muscle. With his fist bunched in the man’s jacket, he dragged him into the elevator.
My heart was in my throat. I didn’t want to watch them vanish out of view, knowing they could be killed seconds later, as soon as the doors opened on the next level.
“We’ll keep going down,” Isaac said, as though reading my thoughts. “They won’t expect us to head right to the bottom. It sh
ould take them by surprise.”
“We’re following,” I called. “Send the elevator back up.”
Isaac didn’t reply, his face stern as the doors slid shut, blocking them from view. Hot tears burned the back of my throat.
“We’re going after them,” I said, looking to Kingsley and Alex. “I don’t care what Isaac said.”
Kingsley nodded. “Yeah, we’re going after them.”
I braced myself, wondering if we’d be able to hear gunfire from below, but everything was silent.
Miraculously, within a couple of minutes, the elevator reappeared.
“Move to one side,” Kingsley said, his voice rough.
Using his body, he barged me out of direct view of the front of the elevator. Despite his injuries, with his limp and the way he clutched his ribs, he positioned his body in front of mine and aimed his gun toward the elevator to protect me. I wanted to feel like I could protect myself, but I still found my heart swelling with love for the way he was taking care of me.
But the doors slid open, and once again, the space was empty.
I pushed past Kingsley to get to the car. My gaze took in every detail, trying to spot signs of bullet holes, splatters of blood, empty shell casings. I even inhaled, in case I picked up on the hint of gunpowder or blood on the air. There was a smear of red on the floor, but I figured that could easily have come from the man with the bullet wound in his leg.
Kingsley and Alex joined me.
“What level?” My finger hovered above the buttons. Did we go to the bottom level, and hope to join the others, or mix things up a little?
Alex looked at me. “If someone has noticed the elevator moving, they might have chased it down to the bottom level. If we stop sooner, we might catch them off guard.”
I sucked in a breath. “Good point.”
I hesitated, not knowing what to do.
Kingsley leaned in and hit the button for the control floor. “If he’s there, let’s take the son of a bitch head on.”
We shared a glance, nodding in agreement, and then both men stepped in front of me, shielding me from whatever was coming next.
Chapter Sixteen
The doors slid shut, encasing us inside the metal box, and then we were moving down.
Tension seemed to radiate from the walls, as though they knew what was about to happen. I held my breath, sensing the men in front of me do the same.
The elevator jolted to a halt. Right before the doors opened, we all stepped to the sides—Kingsley and I to the left, and Alex to the right—so that if anyone was in front of us, all they’d see as the doors opened was an empty space.
The men didn’t stay in that position for long. The doors began to open, and, as soon as the gap was big enough, they burst into action. Leaning out only far enough to shoot, they fired a couple of shots. I heard a cry, and then a thud as some hit the floor.
A different person, I assumed, fired in return, and Kingsley darted back again. Opposite us, Alex leaned out and squeezed off a couple more shots. We received more return fire, and the bullets lodged into the metal of the back of the elevator car. I froze and held my breath, but everything had stopped, the silence deafening.
Kingsley and Alex both leaned out again. Apparently not seeing anything immediately threatening, they both stepped out, Alex jerking his head toward the exit to tell me to do the same. I quickly took in the scene before us. Two men, who I assumed were the people the guys had just shot, were on the ground in front of us. A little farther away, another man lay dead, but this one I recognized as being one of our own.
But something other than the bodies caught my eye.
Devlin was in a chair, his hands cuffed behind his back, and something shoved in his mouth to stop him from talking. His eyes widened at the sight of us, and he started to struggle. Considering the other man had been killed, I wondered why Devlin had been taken hostage rather than executed.
“It’s okay,” Alex said, rushing toward him. “We’re getting you out of here.”
“Where’s Hollan?” I demanded, though I knew he couldn’t talk yet. “Did you see the others? Isaac, Lorcan, and Clay? What about my aunt? Is she still alive?” The sight of the other bodies filled me with dread. They’d been executed. Had the same fate met my aunt and the other boys?
Devlin still couldn’t speak. There was no point in me firing questions at him until we had the cloth out of his mouth.
Alex reached him first, and yanked it out. Devlin sucked in a breath and started to cough.
“Where’s everyone else?” Alex asked. “Where’s Hollan?”
“I don’t know.” Devlin started to cough again, but managed to control himself enough to speak. “He went to the lower levels. He left those men you shot to guard me and took the others with him. He noticed the elevator working and figured he hadn’t given anyone instruction to move around.”
Kingsley looked to the surveillance screens. “So he wasn’t watching us on the cameras?”
For the first time, I noticed they were all blank.
Devlin shook his head. “No. He did something to the communication systems down here and took out our cameras at the same time.”
I remembered one of the guys outside saying that Hollan had shut down the communications systems. That must have included surveillance and explained why the screens were all blank. He’d handicapped Devlin and the others down here by not giving them a way to communicate with the outside world, but he’d also handicapped himself by not being able to see what was happening outside. I was sure someone had called down to him when they’d spotted the helicopter coming in, and probably had notified him when we’d gone down, too. But otherwise I didn’t know how much Hollan had known about what had gone on aboveground.
Or had he predicted what we were going to do, and planned for this all along? Were we being herded into a trap, as easily as sheep chased by a dog?
Still, my thoughts were with Isaac and the others, and with Aunt Sarah and the other boys.
Alex moved forward to where Devlin’s hands were cuffed to the chair. “Shit. I don’t suppose he left a key anywhere?”
Devlin shook his head. “Can’t you pick it?”
“I can try, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take. Those cuffs are top of the range.”
I chewed my lip, hopping from foot to foot. I was desperate to find my aunt and the boys. “The others need us.”
“Just go,” said Devlin. “I’ll be fine. Get Hollan and put a goddamned bullet in the back of his head. I’m sick to death of the son of a bitch.”
I nodded in agreement. “That makes two of us.”
Meanwhile, Hollan could be anywhere in the building.
I remembered the plan my aunt had been putting into place before we’d left. “Is Sarah safe?” I asked Devlin. “Is she with the boys?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
I looked to Kingsley and Alex. “I need to find them.”
“We’ll come with you,” Alex replied.
“No, you need to find Hollan.”
Kingsley fixed me with his dark gaze. “There’s no way in hell we’re letting you go alone, Darcy.”
“This is a big place. I know it better than Hollan. I can sneak around. Besides, you’re still hurt, Kingsley. I can see you’re trying to hide it, but you’re big and you’re limping. You’ll get us noticed. I can be quick, and will get my aunt and the boys out of here.”
I could see Kingsley was starting to waver. He didn’t want to let me go, and I understood that, but he also knew I was talking sense.
“Besides, we can’t unlock Devlin. Who’s going to protect him when Hollan comes back? ’Cause you know he will come back.”
It was a low blow. I’d known Kingsley’s loyalties were torn between me and his boss.
“Fine,” he relented. “I’ll stay here with Devlin, but you’re taking Alex with you.”
I looked to Alex, and he nodded.
“Okay.” I had t
o admit I felt safer with Alex by my side, even if it did mean leaving Kingsley hurt and Devlin still handcuffed. But even an injured Kingsley was still a force to be reckoned with.
Alex checked the magazine in his gun, making sure he had enough bullets. “We just have to hope Isaac and the others were able to locate Hollan. You never know, they might have even dealt with him already.”
I pulled a face. “As much as I want to believe you, Alex, my gut tells me otherwise.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
The levels were pretty well insulated for sound, but we hadn’t heard any telltale gunfire. Did Hollan even know we were in the building? Had Isaac found him yet?
We made sure Kingsley had enough weapons and bullets to protect himself and Devlin.
I looked down to see Alex’s hand on my arm. “Come on,” he said, “we’ll take the stairs.”
I’d never needed to take this route before. Everyone always used the elevators to get around, but there was an emergency staircase, just in case the power went down and the generators didn’t kick in.
I paused, and then spun back to Kingsley, wrapping my arms around his neck and squeezing him tight. He sucked a breath in over his teeth, and I leaned back so I could see into his face. “Sorry,” I said, realizing I’d hurt him.
He gave me a gentle smile. “You’re fine.”
I placed my hand against his cheek, his skin velvety soft beneath the start of dark stubble. “Be careful, okay.”
He nodded. “You, too.”
Leaning in, I kissed him quickly, not caring that Devlin was there. The rules had all changed now, and I knew how fast things could go wrong. If this was the last time I ever got to see him, I wanted to be able to remember I’d at least kissed him goodbye. I lingered, my fingers on his skin, not wanting to leave him.
“We have to go,” Alex called.
I had to think of those boys and my aunt.
I nodded and forced myself away, following Alex to a door at the back of the control room, on the opposite side to the elevator. It had a bar across the middle, which Alex depressed, allowing the door to swing open. Darkness lay beyond, but the moment Alex stepped through, a light flickered on. It must have been controlled by a motion sensor.
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