Sweet Seduction Sabotage

by Nicola Claire

  "The west stairwell," Drew guessed.

  "The advance team," I added, just as footsteps and shouts overhead could be heard.

  We scrambled back from the centre of the stairs and huddled down on the ground as we listened to them approach. Booted, not hiding their movements, heavy and fast.

  I didn't breathe, I didn't dare. They were still two floors above us, but moving in fast. For a frozen moment, neither of us moved an inch. Then Drew grabbed my hand and pulled me after him, my feet slipping and sliding in the dust and broken bits of the building, but thankfully the noise being covered by shouts and commands and the stomping booted feet above.

  "Fourth floor!" someone yelled. "Check there."

  "Copy," came the reply. Not just one, but several copies at once. Deep voices, clipped tones.

  Drew pulled me into the corner two floors beneath the fourth where we'd been. Where we last knew the ASI advance team had been. And we waited. And we listened. And I almost peed my pants with absolute fear.

  The fourth floor door was wrenched open somehow, the terrorists having a way to unlock them from the stairwell it seemed. One after the other we heard the booted men enter, then the door clicked shut at their backs. For a stretch of time nothing happened.

  Then Drew grasped my hand, looked me in the eye briefly, and started hauling arse back up the stairs with me tugged along behind.

  What the fuck? We were going toward the bad guys?

  Oh, yeah. There was still a hell of a lot to get to know about Drew Kline.

  And he wasn't finished meeting Oma's expectations just yet.

  Chapter 24

  It's A Simple Question

  "What are you doing?" I hissed, stumbling up the stairs behind Drew.

  "Shhh," he admonished, but he couldn't have meant it because he kept on talking. "I've got a plan."

  A plan. Of course he did.

  "We're heading towards the terrorists," I pointed out in a whisper laced with as much incredulity as I could muster at such a low volume.

  "That's part of the plan," he whispered back, slowing down as the fourth floor door came into sight.

  Both of us zipped our lips closed, listening for any straggling heavy booted men. I was quite sure there hadn't been. No more sounds or shouts from up higher either. From what I'd heard earlier, it sounded like the group had all gone onto the fourth floor, in search of something.

  Did they know the ASI team was there?

  Drew stopped next to a fire hose mounted on the stairwell wall. One hand outstretched to the metal door that covered it, the other indicating I should stand back, palm up in a slow down motion. His eyes were trained on the fourth floor door, which was just a few feet away.

  With my heart in my throat, I tentatively took a step back down the stairwell, sweat blooming along my hairline, my lips suddenly so dry I had to lick them unstuck. Every inch of me strained to hear any approaching threat, while my body flooded with enough adrenaline to last a lifetime of red. I closed my eyelids slowly, sucked in a measured breath of air, and when I opened them, realised I was just as anxious as before.

  My hands trembled when I fisted them at my sides, my head pounded to the beat of my racing heart. Why were we doing this again?

  Slowly Drew unravelled the water hose, careful not to let it squeak. It seemed to take forever, what with the knowledge that those military sounding men could come barging out of the fourth floor door at any minute and we were standing there with a fire hose, a screwdriver, a wrench, a hammer and a box knife. Some arsenal.

  With infinite care Drew walked the short distance to the closed door and began to thread the fire hose through the door handle and against the railing on the side of the wall next to it. He wound the rubber hose around several times, knotting it and then re-knotting it until it was a verifiable mess. He tugged on the door, but as it was locked from this side, it wasn't really a foolproof test.

  "That'll have to do," he murmured.

  I stared at his creation, a wound up, twisted, knotted rubber lock on the door.

  "Why'd you do that?" I had to ask.

  "I picked out eight different sets of boots." Shit. Eight military type men? "With any luck that's half of Declan King's mercenaries."

  Mercenaries. Fuck, now I had another word to go with siege that I'd never had cause to use before today.

  "What if they were the AOS?" I asked, because honestly, the thought of mercenaries was wigging me out a little.

  Drew startled slightly. "I hadn't thought of that." He fished his cellphone out of his pocket and swiped the screen, then brought it to his ear. Within three seconds I knew who he had called.

  "Eric," Drew whispered. "I've just locked eight armed men on the fourth floor. Tell me they're not the AOS."

  I stepped closer, pressing my ear to the back of the phone to hear Eric's reply. Drew leaned in to me automatically. His warmth, down the length of my side, managed to calm some of the panic gurgling through my veins right then.

  "No, the AOS have not breached yet," came Eric's steady reply. "They'll be King's men."

  That was surprisingly a relief. Because Drew was right, now King was down eight men. It was also not surprisingly a relief, because it meant they had to be after the advance team, aka ASI team.

  "The advance team is engaging them now," Eric answered and blew any type of relief right out of the water.

  "Should we unlock the door?" Drew asked.

  "No, not yet. King's men have got our team locked down, for now it means they're at least contained, if the AOS has to enter without further intel."

  "Why was the advance team so slow to clear the fourth floor?" I asked, thankfully Eric heard my question.

  "Because they located some hostages under guard and got caught in a scuffle."

  "Hostages on the fourth floor?" Drew queried, and I could tell what he desperately wanted to know, I could see the question behind the anticipation and fear in his eyes.

  "Yeah, just a small group, held separate from the ones we suspect are the main players in all of this, up on the sixth floor," Eric supplied.

  Drew held my gaze, then sucked in a fortifying breath of air and asked, "Is Dom amongst them?"

  Silence for a beat. "No. No he isn't."

  It's a strange thing hope, even when you have it for just a mere few seconds. A grasp of expectation, of a wish being fulfilled, is enough to lift your spirit flying. And when it's cut off, the fall feels as if from a great height, regardless of how long you'd clung to it.

  I sagged against the wall and blinked through angry and desperate tears. Where was Dom? Was he still alive?

  "When are the AOS planning to enter?" Drew was asking Eric, but I was no longer listening attentively, only half an ear on what Eric said in reply.

  "They're holding out so we can get the advance team up on the sixth floor for a sit-rep still. At this stage, they're giving our guys sixty minutes before they'll be forced to go in blind."

  "Do you really need that sit-rep?" Drew asked.

  "Any information is better than none. The sixth floor has been compromised on the north side, our building schematics will be next to useless. Besides, knowing how many men and what fire power we're up against all helps."

  Drew's eyes lifted to mine again, a question there I couldn't quite decipher. I cocked my head and frowned at him. Just what the hell was he planning now?

  "OK," Drew said, which sounded kind of strange considering what Eric had just revealed. It was hardly an appropriate statement to make, but I had the feeling Drew's mind was already somewhere else. "We'll be in touch if we see anything else," he added, then swiped the call closed.

  The phone was pocketed, but Drew's eyes never left mine.

  "You said I sabotaged your dates," he announced out of abso-fucking-lutely nowhere.

  "Hunh?" I managed in reply.

  "You also said you sabotaged your life. Up until recently," he added.

  I blinked in confusion.

  "I'd say we're the King and
Queen of Sabotage," he concluded with that blasted lopsided smile.

  "What the fuck are you talking about?" I demanded finally.

  "Think about it," he said, winding up in true Drew Kline style. "We know how to spy." He lifted his screwdriver and wrench up, clearly indicating the air ducts we'd figured out how to crawl through.

  "The sixth floor has been compromised," I pointed out on a whisper of breath. I had a very bad feeling about this, but part of me was shouting out, red, red, red, while another part of me was crying that it would never let Drew out of its sight again.

  That bad feeling was all about knowing where this was going and aware I'd follow Drew there without a blink of an eye.

  "We'll just go take a look," Drew suggested. "Carefully. No noise, nice and slow. We've got an hour. Get in, see what Eric needs to see, then get back out and down the stairs. It's surveillance only," he added, as though trying to convince himself, not just me.

  "Surveillance," I said with a nod of my head.

  "Eric's and the AOS's eyes," he returned.

  "Through the air ducts."

  "Where we can't be seen." Neither of us amended that with, "But we could be heard."

  "OK," I said with a long release of air.

  Drew nodded and then with one last, long look at my face turned and started creeping up the stairs.

  Our feet crunched over broken bits of concrete, debris from the last explosions. Signs that the building was no longer sound. The cracks on the lower floors had been significant, but the higher we got, the wider the cracks became. The initial explosion had occurred on the sixth floor, the damage sent out in concentric circles from there. The lower you went, the more intact the building was, but it was supporting a weakened structure, probably imbalanced and adding more weight in areas that weren't designed to carry that amount.

  It was ludicrous to be doing this and yet, for the life of me, I couldn't stop myself from following behind Drew. There was no way out for us. The emergency exit door in our stairwell locked, the rooms we could access on the floors through the air ducts also locked. This was a crumbling prison with no hope of escape unless the AOS - and maybe the ASI advance team if they made it off the fourth floor - got us all out. They were our only hope and they needed to know what they were up against to have the best chance of success.

  No more sounds, other than the odd ominous creak from the structure itself, could be heard as we neared the sixth floor. Drew spotted the door first, lifting a hand for me to come to a halt behind him. We both strained to hear any sounds that someone stood guard on that level of the stairwell. For a full minute we listened, but finally had to believe we were still on our own in this part of the building.

  Drew turned back to me and whispered, "Are you ready?" I nodded. "While I unscrew the cover to the duct, can you wait down here?"

  I knew what he was asking and why. If he made a sound that was detected on the other side of that door he could get caught. If I was far enough away I could escape. Every fibre of my body wanted to protest. Wanted to rail against logic and stand at his side. He wanted to hide me, while he faced the threat.

  He wanted to do what his grandparents had done all those years ago in Nazi Germany.

  I found myself nodding slowly before I'd even completed that thought.

  "Thank you," he whispered, something beautiful and heart wrenching flashing across his face. "I'll let you know when it's safe to come up."

  He leaned in and brushed his lips against mine. Too brief. Too bitter-sweet. Then he turned me gently, with his hands on my shoulders, and gave me a gentle push to indicate I should go down the stairs.

  I took a step and then stopped, swung back and found him still watching me.

  "I never asked," I whispered. "What exactly is on the sixth floor?"

  Drew frowned, clearly he'd not considered it either.

  "Judges' chambers, the odd meeting room." He shook his head. "Little else."

  "Then why...?"

  "I've no idea," Drew cut me off. "I've no fucking idea what this is actually about."

  I nodded, offered a small smile and then turned and walked down the stairs until I was just out of sight. My head popped around the turn in the stairwell and watched as Drew approached the air duct cover, screwdriver already out. He worked swiftly, undoing one screw and then the other. Within less than a minute he was prying the grate off and placing it gently on the floor.

  I realised we'd not be able to replace it. Once inside that tunnel, we couldn't turn around and screw the grate back on to cover our tracks. We'd have to chance that no one found it. We'd have to chance that we could turn around somewhere along the way or have to come out feet first and unprepared. We'd have to chance that we made it out at all.

  Too many chances, too great a risk. But there was no way I was letting him go alone. Staying behind to cover his tracks and keep guard. It was just as dangerous out here as in there. And, now that I'd found him, now that I'd found out what love is actually all about, I would rather face the dangers with Drew at my side, than risk doing it alone.

  The risk was greater staying separated, than following behind Drew into hell.

  "OK," he whispered, only just loud enough for me to hear, and probably only then because I was watching when his lips moved.

  I scrambled up the steps as quietly as I could without wasting time. Drew was pocketing his screwdriver and pulling his cellphone out with the intention of activating his emergency light. I stilled his hand.

  "They could see the light through any of the covers. It might give us away. We'll have to let our eyes acclimatise."

  Drew pursed his lips as he exhaled a breath of air. "You're right." He glanced at his watch. "Fifty minutes to go, it'll take at least ten to see at all in the dark stretches. We might have to do this by feel." He looked at me intently. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

  "No," I answered immediately. He opened his mouth, no doubt to tell me to stay here and wait, but I kept whispering. "But I'm fucking positive you're not going alone."

  "Kels," he whispered back.

  "Together," I offered, getting up on the tips of my toes to lay a soft kiss on his lips. "I won't share you either, remember?"

  He smiled, it softened the frown line that had taken up residence between his eyes.

  "Even with terrorists?" he asked, amusement hinted at the edges of his tone.

  "No one."

  "No one," he repeated, cupping my cheek.

  For a second or two we just looked at each other and then the building creaked, just its now usual settling or warning sound, but enough to shake us out of the moment and put some urgency back in our minds.

  "OK, let's do this," Drew murmured. "I'll get in as quick as I can so you can follow."

  He turned his attention immediately to the hole in the wall and hoisted himself up inside. I watched as he disappeared, a slithering shape fading away into black. For a moment I stood in the stairwell, listening to the sounds of the doomed building, realising I felt exposed and alone, Drew only metres away, but already out of sight.

  It was incentive enough to haul my butt up on in there, somehow managing the manoeuvre on the second attempt. Within seconds I'd caught up with Drew's still form some distance down the air duct. We were already shrouded in shades of black, the light from the stairwell hardly illuminating the space around us at all. I wasn't even sure if someone looking in the hole from the outside could spot us, but I really didn't want to stick around and try that theory out.

  "I'm here," I announced to Drew, wanting to indicate he should move forward about now.

  "Slight problem," he whispered back and my stomach fell. "I can feel a gap in front of me and I can't seem to reach the other side."

  "A break in the air duct?" I checked.

  "Yeah, the edges are jagged where it's twisted away, God knows how far down the gap goes."

  We lay in silence for a moment, then I asked, "Can you see light from a cover ahead?"

  "No," he whispered
back.

  "Then you're going to have to use your cellphone, take the chance." We were so not giving up yet.

  "OK," he replied, but it sounded unsure.

  Our options were limited. Use the light to go forward, or abandon the sabotage/intelligence gathering and back on out of the air duct.

  It would have been easy to go for the second option, to take the path of least resistance. But when has Kelly Quayle ever done that?

  Drew's cellphone light came on brightening up the tiny space we were in and I heard us both suck in a breath of tense air. Nothing happened, then Drew let the air out and lowered his cell.

  "Well?" I queried.

  "Well," he shot back in a faint whisper. "It's a short drop to what appears the concrete base of this floor, but it's a minefield of broken air duct and twisted pipes for about three metres ahead, which might as well be three hundred metres because I have no idea how the hell to get through any of it."

  I felt him move forward despite those words and then watched as he twisted onto his back and hauled his upper body out of the end of the part of the tunnel we were in. He held onto the upper edge of the air duct as he did it, sliding out his legs until he was standing on the concrete floor he mentioned and looking back towards where I lay.

  "There's space here, come and have a look," he whispered.

  I shuffled forward on my forearms and let him help me out of the end of the duct, until I was standing beside him looking at the carnage of the air conditioning system on the sixth floor of the District Court.

  "Crap," I murmured as I took in the sharp edges, knife-like metals twisted up into sculptured representations of a bomb having gone off. A hiss of steaming air wafted out of a broken pipe halfway along, and dust covered every available spot, hiding more hazards than outlining them. It was a complete and utter clusterfuck of a man-made construction.

  "What now?" Drew asked, his tone indicating his reluctance to go through any of that.