Chapter 30 #2
Trigger looked at me once, and that was all either of us needed before we started toward the lower route.
Harrow was escaping while I carried Daniel in the opposite direction, and I felt the truth of it with every step as the bastard put more distance between himself and Saint Brigid's.
Fifteen years earlier I might have considered choosing the boy over the man responsible for destroying my family a weakness, but tonight it felt like the first thing Gideon Harrow had fundamentally failed to understand about me.
Revenge no longer had the right to decide who I abandoned.
The chapel corridor shook beneath us before we had gone far, a vibration traveling through the floor strongly enough that Skye stopped and looked toward the walls. "That wasn't fire."
I felt it too, the tremor moving beneath my boots while something heavy cracked somewhere overhead. "Structural?"
"Maybe."
Another sharp report followed before plaster fell behind us, striking the floor hard enough to send dust through the corridor as Trigger swore and ordered us to keep moving.
"Move."
We reached the stairs to the hidden infirmary just as smoke began pouring upward from the opposite corridor. Raze appeared below us wearing a respirator pushed over his face.
"Found the last lower resident."
"Everyone accounted?"
"Storm has twenty-three."
Daniel lifted his head.
"My mum?"
"Outside," Raze said immediately. "Won't shut up about you."
The boy almost laughed at Raze's answer, and under the circumstances I counted that as a victory.
"Take him."
Daniel tightened his grip on me.
I looked down.
"He's getting you to your mother."
"You coming?"
"Aye."
He studied me.
Then nodded.
I transferred him carefully into Raze's arms.
Raze grunted.
"Jesus, kid. Sunshine's going to feed you for six months if she sees you."
Daniel looked confused.
"Who's Sunshine?"
"Terrifying woman with casseroles. You'll like her."
Despite the smoke, Skye laughed at Raze's description of Sunshine, and for a few seconds Daniel seemed distracted enough from the fear around him to breathe a little easier.
Raze carried him toward the tunnel with the rest of us following close behind, and we were almost through the old stone arch when the collapse came from behind us without warning.
One second Skye was only three steps ahead of me; the next, the ceiling above the passage cracked with a sound like a gunshot and part of the newer masonry lining the tunnel crashed down between us.
"Skye!"
Dust exploded through the corridor as I lunged toward the falling stone, but Trigger caught the back of my jacket and hauled me backward before I could run directly beneath the remaining section. "Wait!"
"She's there."
"I know."
A second piece of masonry slammed into the floor before either of us could move, forcing us to wait until the debris settled enough to determine whether anything else was coming down.
Silence followed the second collapse, but not complete silence. Coughing came through the debris a moment later, and every part of me recognized Skye before she said a word.
"I'm fine!"
The sound nearly dropped me to my knees. I shoved through Trigger's grip once the debris settled enough to move.
"Skye!"
"Still here."
Her voice came from the other side of the partial collapse. Raze had already carried Daniel farther toward the exit. Storm shouted something through the radio, but I barely heard it. I crouched beside the debris.
"Can you move?"
"Yes."
"Are you hurt?"
"My shoulder. Nothing major."
"I need more than that."
"I'm Scottish. We use understatement."
I closed my eyes for half a second.
Of course she was joking while trapped on the opposite side of a collapsing tunnel, because apparently terror had done nothing to improve her instincts for self-preservation.
"Can you see another way around?"
There was a pause. Then the answer that should've surprised nobody.
"Actually..."
Trigger looked at me. I almost laughed from pure relief.
"What?"
"This wasn't the only tunnel."
Skye's voice became sharper as she moved.
"The collapse broke through a plaster skin on my side. There's an older arch behind it."
"Where does it go?"
"I don't know yet."
"Skye."
"You hired an interior designer."
"I didn't hire you."
"Technicality."
I heard Skye moving again on the other side of the collapse, followed by a cough that immediately destroyed what little patience I had left. "Stop."
The word came out harsher than I intended, and the silence that followed made me force myself to bring my voice back under control before trying again. "Please."
Trigger's eyebrows lifted at the change in tone, but I ignored him because this was hardly the time to discuss whatever progress I had apparently made in learning to ask rather than command.
"Okay," Skye answered more quietly.
I leaned closer to the narrow gap between the fallen stones. "Can you get back to us?"
"Not through the collapse."
"Then we come to you."
"How?"
I looked toward Trigger, who was already studying Cipher's plan and searching for another route through the old lower levels. Before either of us could answer, Cipher's voice came through the comms with another possibility.
"She may have broken into the original sisters' passage. There was a secondary route from the infirmary toward the courtyard."
Skye answered, "Yes. I can feel airflow."
"Do not follow it alone."
"I heard him the first time."
"Good."
Trigger pointed toward a branching corridor fifty feet back.
"If old plan's right, we can circle."
I touched the radio.
"Skye, stay where you are."
"I am."
"That's a request."
A faint laugh came through.
"Progress."
I almost told her I loved her, the words reaching the back of my throat before I stopped them.
I wouldn't say them here simply because fear had ripped them loose, shouted through smoke and stone after nearly losing her.
When I finally gave Skye those words, I wanted her to hear them without ever wondering whether terror had spoken first.
When I said it, she would hear it without wondering whether fear had spoken first.
"Stay with me," I said instead.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Trigger and I turned back. The alternate corridor was worse than the first, low enough that we had to crouch beneath old utility lines and hot enough that sweat ran beneath my jacket despite the cold air still moving through portions of the tunnel.
Cipher guided us using historic plans that became increasingly unreliable the deeper we went, while Skye talked intermittently through the radio so I could hear her breathing.
Then she said, "I see light."
I stopped.
"What kind?"
"Outside."
Trigger looked toward the plan.
"Courtyard exit."
"Can you reach it?"
"Yes."
I hated the answer for one ugly, instinctive second, not because Skye could get herself out but because it meant she no longer needed us to reach her. The reaction exposed exactly how deeply some of my old instincts still ran.
I pushed the thought away.
"Then go."
There was a pause.
"You sure?"
"Aye. Get outside. Hawkeye, can you see courtyard?"
"West side partial. Moving optic."
Several seconds passed.
"Visual. Fraser emerging now."
My lungs worked again.
Skye came through the radio.
"I'm out."
I stopped in the dark tunnel and rested one hand against the wall.
Trigger looked at me.
"You good?"
"No."
He nodded.
Fair enough.
We followed the secondary route and emerged less than three minutes later through a low service opening behind the old infirmary courtyard.
Skye stood twenty feet away beneath the rain, dust covering her hair and coat, one sleeve torn near the shoulder and a shallow scrape marking her cheek, but she was alive.
I crossed the courtyard before thinking.
She saw me coming.
"Callum—"
I wrapped both arms around her without bothering with a tactical assessment, checking who might be watching, or pretending the force of relief moving through me could be handled quietly.
Skye's arms came around my waist.
"I'm okay."
"I know."
"You're crushing me."
"Good."
She laughed against my chest. Behind us, Trigger cleared his throat but I ignored him.
Hawkeye's voice came through the radio.
"All residents clear."
That mattered enough to make me loosen my grip.
Storm followed.
"Twenty-three accounted from Saint Brigid's. Daniel's with his mother. Two need immediate hospital transport. Everyone else moving to secure site."
I rested my forehead briefly against Skye's.
"Twenty-three."
Her expression softened.
"Twenty-three."