“It won’t happen again, sir. Simple mistake.”
He watched me closely and then nodded. “Don’t let me catch you again…”
“Johnson,” I supplied, hoping there were enough people with the last name Johnson to make him believe me.
He nodded and moved on down the hall, turning around the corner. I slipped inside and shut the door behind me. I hoped that Blake had found someplace to go.
“Knight, I’m in,” I said, hoping he was still picking me up on coms.
“I’ve got you on camera.”
Glancing around the space, it was all very clinical. Beyond the main office, there was an entry into the lab, but there were all these procedures you had to take to enter. I had no fucking clue what I had to do to get in there.
“What the fuck am I looking for?”
“Notebooks, files that match our code,” he responded.
“If I could get in the lab, I might be able to grab samples.”
“That’ll take too long. We need data first.”
Taking my chances out here first, I started rifling through the paperwork, hoping to find anything that would give me what I needed. I about jumped out of my skin when there was a knock at the door. Blake was standing out there. I quickly let her in and got back to work.
“Any luck?”
“No. I don’t even know exactly what I’m looking for.”
I was shuffling through papers, but it was all foreign to me. I had no fucking clue what would be useful.
“You’ve got about two minutes,” Knight said. “Looks like someone reported suspicious activity.”
“Shit,” I hissed, working faster. There was no goddamn way I was going to find anything in here. I had no fucking clue what to look for.
“Over here,” Blake hissed. I ran over to her, peering over her shoulder as she flipped through a notebook.
“What is it?”
“It looks like a medical journal or something. Look, there are….hell, I don’t know what it is, but it looks important.”
It reminded me of being in science class in high school, seeing the DNA strands that the teacher would post on the board, only this was a hell of a lot more complicated.
“Look at this. Testing on patients show ninety-eight percent success rate. Still running tests on the two percent that survived.”
“Survived? Wait, that can’t be right. Why would they be calling it a success rate if only two percent lived?”
“Why do I get the feeling that this is a really bad X-Files episode?”
Commotion outside the door gave me only one option. I shoved Blake against the wall and snatched the journal out of her hands, shoving it into the back of my pants.
“One minute,” Knight confirmed. “You need to get your asses out of there.”
“You can’t take that,” she hissed. “If they notice it’s missing, they’ll know that we’re on to them.”
“Blake, if they’re killing people, I think it’s more important that we find out how and why.”
“They probably have our faces on camera,” she hissed. “If they catch us on the way out, they’ll find that notebook. We won’t be able to pass along any information to Knight.”
“Then we’d better not get caught.”
A loud buzz sounded and a red light kicked on in the room.
“Too late.”
I turned the handle just as the lock was starting to engage. I was faster though and yanked it open before the lock was in place. I grabbed her hand and flung the door open, racing out into the hall. Men and women stopped and stared at us, not wanting to intervene. Security raced around the corner at the end of the hall, spotting us almost immediately.
“Parker, I’ve lost the camera feed,” Knight shouted. “You’re on your own. Get the fuck out of there.”
I took a hard right and ran down the hall, hearing Blake running almost right beside me. I knew she could take care of herself, so I focused on finding us a way out of here. I was mentally mapping out the facility, trying to remember my way around the building.
I took another right and found myself at a dead end. We had nowhere to go and there wasn’t time to turn around and fight our way back through the crowd that would have gathered, along with all the security that would have been called.
“Stand back,” Blake shouted, pulling out her gun.
“You brought a gun?”
“Of course I brought a gun. We came here to break in. Did you really think I was going to come unarmed?”
“I came unarmed!”
“Sucks to be you,” she said, grinning and firing at the glass. She spread the shots out, making cracks in the reinforced glass. I spun and kicked out the glass of the housing for the fire extinguisher and grinned when I saw they also had a fire axe. I got to work on punching through the glass, but security came around the corner just as I made it through.
“Stop!” the first man yelled, holding up his gun. He didn’t have his finger on the trigger, and based on the sweat running down his face and the slight shake of his hands, he had never fired his weapon at an actual person before. I quickly took in the two other guards and came to the same assessment.
“You ready?” I asked Blake, swinging the axe one more time and widening the hole for us.
“Tuck and roll,” she shouted as she ran for the window and broke through the last of the glass. I gave a little wave to the security guards and ran for the window, feeling a slice in my side as I followed Blake out the window. I tucked, I rolled, and then I hauled ass after Blake, running around to our SUV.
Blake was the first there, already getting in and starting the SUV by the time I got in. She pulled out of the parking lot before I even had my door closed.
“Do you still have the journal?”
“Of course, I do.”
“Good, stash it. We have company!”
I swiveled around and looked out the back window. We had three vehicles following us down the road. We couldn’t afford to have them behind us. Chances were they had already called in the police, so if we didn’t lose these guys fast, we were already facing a lot more trouble than we had planned.
“Knight, we have a tail.”
“Lose them.”
“What do you think we’re trying to do?” I asked.
Blake took a corner harder than I expected and I went flying into the window.
“You should hold on. This is what we call a car chase,” she smarted off.
“No shit.”
“Just thought you might need some clarification.”
She took another turn, heading out of the heart of the city and toward the outskirts of town.
“We need to ditch the SUV or the plates.”
“Sure,” she smirked. “I’ll just pull over and let you take care of that.”
“You have a gun,” I pointed out.
“There’s a whole arsenal in the back.”
“How do you know that?”
“Knight told me.”
“He didn’t tell me that,” I grumbled.
“Well, why don’t you call him and complain. It’s not like we’re in the middle of getting our asses hunted down or anything.”
She took another turn and weaved in and out of alleys and side streets, trying to lose the guys on our tail.
“I’m just saying, it would have been nice to have been informed.”
I climbed over the seat and headed for the back of the SUV, pulling up the floor covering. My eyes widened as I took in all the weapons they had stored in here. “Holy shit.” Bullets pinged off the back of the vehicle and I ducked, narrowly avoiding a bullet that was just a little too close to where my head had been. “They’re shooting at us!”
“Is that what that was?” Blake snapped. “I thought they were babies falling from the sky.”
I rolled my eyes and loaded my gun. “You know, you’re not the nicest person when you’re getting shot at.”
“I’ll make sure I work on that.”
Th
e vehicle swung hard and I flew backwards, hitting the side of the SUV. “Hey! I’m trying to protect us back here.”
“Could have fooled me! I don’t hear any gunfire.”
“Maybe if you weren’t driving like a fucking lunatic,” I snapped, getting into position to fire. “There are no fucking windows to roll down back here.”
“There’s a small window in the corner that you can open,” Knight said in my ear.
More bullets pinged off the back of the SUV and glass shattered above me as I ducked. When the firing stopped, I sat up and looked at the gaping hole where the back window used to be.
“Nevermind,” I muttered, taking up my position. Firing off a few rounds, I was able to get them to back off enough that we weren’t at immediate risk of being gunned down, but we still needed something more. I dug around in the arsenal in the back, grinning when I came up with a grenade. “Get me closer to the car behind us,” I shouted.
I felt the SUV slow down and pulled the pin, grinning like an idiot as I lobbed the grenade through the blown-out windshield of the car. Blake gunned it, but not fast enough. The impact from the blast was stronger than I expected and I went flying sideways, my gun slipping from my fingers. I grabbed at it, my hand wrapping around the grip as the gun catapulted through the air toward the middle seat. It all happened in slow motion. My pointer finger slipped around the trigger, and as I tightened my grip on the gun, the trigger depressed and fired a round. My eyes widened and I shook my head in horror as I watched Blake’s body jerk forward slightly.
“Oh shit,” I said, still feeling like this was all moving in slow motion.
Blake gripped her shoulder, pulling her hand away to look at the blood stain on her hand.
“I’m hit,” she shouted. “Those fuckers!” She slammed her hand down on the wheel in anger, and that’s when I realized that she thought someone else shot her.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Fuckers. They totally shot you.”
“Parker, do me a favor and kill them.”
“On it.”
She slowed, allowing the other vehicle to pull up behind us. The third one had disappeared somewhere along the line. When we were close enough, I opened fire on the car, taking out the windshield and then the driver. The car swerved and then crashed into the ditch, leaving us all alone. I climbed over the backseat and got back into the front with Blake.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just a graze.”
I pulled off my shirt and wrapped it around her wound, tying it tight. She grimaced slightly, but seemed to be handling it well. I felt bad, but if she didn’t know, I wasn’t about to inform her that it was me that had shot her.
“We need to get the plates off the SUV and get back to Reed Security.”
“Pull over and I’ll get them.”
She did as I asked and I quickly took off the plates, then got back in. For now, no one else was on our tail and I wanted to keep it that way. We just had to get back to Reed Security and then we’d be out of hot water for the time being.
“That was some nice shooting back there.”
“Yeah, you too,” I grinned.
“What? At the window?”
“Yeah, it was good thinking.”
“Well, you weren’t too bad with that axe.”
“I always wanted to be a lumberjack,” I said jokingly.
“How long do you think we have before they come for us?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sure they’ve found out already that the SUV is registered to Reed Security. If we get there and hide out, Cap could always say that his vehicle was stolen. We could lay low in the panic room until we figure this shit out.”
“Doing what?”
“I could think of a few things,” I said suggestively.
“Right, because hanging around and having sex is always the answer when your life is on the line.”
“Hey, I didn’t say anything about sex. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Really? So, you weren’t thinking of shoving your hard cock in my soaking wet pussy?”
“I have to be honest with you, I’m always thinking about that lately.”
“You just-”
The SUV spun as a car slammed into the front end of the car on the passenger side, sending us flying toward the ditch. We hit the gravel and the tires lost traction, sending us down into a field. Blake just barely got control of the SUV before it would have flipped.
“Get us out of here,” I shouted as she slammed on the gas and took off across the field. I climbed over the seat to the back and grabbed an M27 automatic rifle. I hadn’t used one of these since my military days and found myself grinning as I loaded the rifle. I prepared to fire, but no one was following us. I scanned the area, looking for threats, but no one was there.
“Do you see anyone?” Blake asked.
“No.”
The sound of a helicopter had me leaning out the back window to see better. Coming in hot were two helicopters, flying low and headed straight for us. I pulled out a pair of binoculars to get a better look.
“Shit! Get us out of here!” I shouted to Blake.
“Where are they?”
“Right the fuck-”
I was cut off by the sound of a loud explosion. Blake screamed and slammed on the brakes, sending me flying over the back seat and into the back of her seat. Then we were airborne and crashing hard. The SUV flipped, sending me flying around the backseat like a fucking ping pong ball. When we crashed to a stop, I flopped to the roof of the SUV and rolled to my back with a groan. We were upside down.
“Blake?”
“Yeah, I’m good. You?”
“Fucking peachy.”
“We have to get out of here,” she said, unlatching her seatbelt.
“No shit.”I sat up and crawled to the back to gather up any weapons I could. I slipped a few grenades into my pockets and grabbed a tactical vest that I saw lying in the back. A second was just a few feet away.
“Here,” I said, tossing the vest to Blake.
I grabbed some thigh holsters as Blake worked her way back to me. I could hear the helicopter in the distance setting down. We needed to move now.
“Grab what you can. We have to move now.”
She quickly grabbed supplies along with me and we geared up in record time. We crawled out the back window and into the crater that the helicopter had made when it shot a fucking RPG at us.
“Knight, can you hear me?”
I pressed my finger to my ear, but the earpiece was gone. I must have lost it while I was flying around the backseat.
“Any luck?”
“I lost my earpiece.” I felt my pockets for my phone, but came up empty. “Do you have your phone?”
“No, I lost it when we flipped.”
“You get out of here. I’ll go back and find it,” I said, turning back to the SUV.
“Are you crazy? Are you trying to get killed?”
“If we don’t have a phone, how the hell are we gonna call in for help?”
“We’ll be dead if we stick around here,” she argued. “In two minutes, those guys are coming down here and they’ll put a bullet in your head. Calling in for help isn’t going to do jack shit right now.”
“Fine,” I bit out. I hated that she was right.
She glanced over my shoulder and her eyes widened. “We need to find cover now.”
Blake started crawling up the crater. I followed, placing my hand on her ass to support her as she climbed.
“Do you mind?”
“I’m not feeling you up. I was trying to help.”
“Well, help from somewhere else,” she snapped.
“I don’t get women,” I grumbled as I started climbing next to her. “Grab my ass in the bedroom, but don’t think of grabbing my ass when you’re trying to help me. You make no fucking sense.”
She spun angrily when she got to the top of the crater, her eyes widening in horror. “Parker, you’re hurt.”
&nb
sp; “Well, no shit. I just got tossed around the back of the SUV. What did you think was going to happen?”
“No, I mean, you’re seriously bleeding.”
I glanced down at my side, the same spot where I felt the slice as I jumped out the window. “Goddamnit!” I roared. “What the fuck is it with you and windows?”
“Me? What did I do?”
“You jumped through the window and I followed. That’s the second time that I’ve been sliced open because of a window and you!”
“Can we have this argument later? Right now we have to get to cover and then I need to take a look at that.”
“Fine, but we’re going to talk about the fact that I’m the one that always seems to get hurt around here.”
She started jogging toward what looked like some kind of cave. I glanced behind me to see the helicopter had touched down and there were three guys running for us. I took off after Blake, just catching up to her as we approached the tunnel.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“It looks like a mine shaft. There are a ton of closed mines around here.”
“Is it safe?”
Gunfire sounded behind us and I pushed Blake into the tunnel toward the ladder that would take us down. “I don’t think we have any other options right now,” I shouted as we started climbing down. It was dark down here, and we had to run our hands along the walls to feel where we were going.
“I really hope this thing doesn’t suddenly open up beneath my feet,” she said nervously as we walked down the dark passageway.
“I’ll catch you if you fall.”
“You’d better, because if I die, I’m coming back as a ghost and I’ll haunt you the rest of your life.”
“Ooh, I’m really scared,” I said mockingly. The wind blew in just the right way through the tunnel, creating eerie sounds all around us. Blake stopped in front of me, waiting for the sounds to stop, her hand gripping tightly onto my shirt.
“It’s just the wind,” I whispered in her ear.
“I know.”
But she didn’t sound so confident about that now. We started moving again and after a curve in the tunnel, we could see light shining in up ahead. It was reflecting off some kind of pocket of water, but Blake must not have seen it. She started running ahead, not paying attention to anything around her.
Parker: A Reed Security Romance Page 19