Chapter 4
Boots hammered metal behind Jen. Angry shouts echoed off the walls.
She risked a glance, almost stumbled.
Four men. Arms pumping. Rifles bouncing on tactical slings.
She had maybe a thirty-foot lead.
Not enough.
The men’s grunts reached her ears.
I won’t make it. They’re too fast.
A blinking green light cut through her blurred vision. The bulkhead control panel mounted to the wall, twenty feet ahead. Emergency watertight door—designed to seal sections in case of hull breach or fire.
She put on a burst of speed. Her lungs screamed.
Ten feet from the panel.
Five.
She slammed her palm against the red emergency release.
Please work.
A siren shrieked. Yellow warning lights strobed the ceiling.
The massive steel bulkhead door began descending from its housing in the ceiling. Slow. Heavy. Hydraulic pistons hissing as they lowered two tons of reinforced steel designed to contain explosive decompression.
Jen didn’t slow. The door was halfway down. She’d have to slide.
Behind her, the terrorists yelled.
She dropped and slid—tool belt scraping off the metal deck, her shoulder slamming into the wall as she cleared the threshold.
One terrorist dove after her. His hand reached through the narrowing gap—
The door sealed with a pressurized slam.
A wet crunch.
Blood sprayed across the deck.
Oh God.
Jen scrambled to her feet on the other side, hands on her knees, sucking in air. Fists pounded on the steel. Muffled screams in Russian.
She’d bought herself two minutes. Maybe three. They knew what they were doing, it wouldn’t take them long to override or take the long route around through the auxiliary passages.
She stumbled away from the bulkhead door, scanning the corridor.
Rooms lined both sides.
Electrical substation—yellow hazard warnings, locked panel, no help there. She spun. Shower room. An empty steel box, nowhere to hide. Equipment storage—red light above the lock, secured. No time to override it. Further down, the maintenance closet. She grabbed the handle and prayed.
It opened.
Thank God.
She slipped inside, shut it fast, turned the lock. Darkness swallowed her, thick and chemical-sharp. The air reeked of bleach and floor solvent—burning her eyes, stinging her throat.
Blind, she eased deeper, hands brushing metal shelving stocked with cleaning supplies.
Silence swamped her—but the red emergency lights kept strobing under the door, painting the floor in crimson flashes.
Her foot skimmed a bottle, knocking it over. It rolled across the floor, the hollow clatter sounding like an explosion in the tight space.
Shit.
She froze, flattening herself against the wall.
Her pulse slammed so hard she felt it in her teeth, her vision fuzzing for a split second like the world was squeezing her down to nothing.
When she didn’t die, she fumbled at her belt.
Penlight. She clicked it on and swept the closet. Shelving. Mops. Trolleys.
Nowhere to hide.
Her light beam bounced across the ceiling. An air vent. Two feet by eighteen inches.
Just big enough.
Her throat closed. I don’t do small spaces. Not since the cave.
The caving team-building thing four years ago—the one where she’d lasted twenty feet before she lost the ability to breathe.
Deep voices. They were through.
Okay. I’m fine with small spaces. Totally fine.
The shelving unit was industrial steel, bolted to the wall. She tested the bottom shelf with her weight. It held.
She climbed, the metal groaning under her boots. Her tool belt caught on the edge of the shelf, jerking her back. She yanked it free. Blood dripped from her temple into her eye, turning the world bloody.
The vent cover had four screws. She pulled her power driver, flipped it to reverse.
The first screw came out clean. She caught it, held it between her teeth, tasting grit.
Second screw. Third.
The doorknob rattled.
Her hands shook so hard the driver slipped.
Come on. Come on.
The last screw popped free.
The vent cover released. She yanked the cover aside and hauled herself up. Her arms screamed, the metal edge biting into her palms. Her shoulders barely fit. She had to twist sideways, scraping her ribs, exhaling hard to make herself smaller.
She was halfway in when the door slammed open.
Jen pulled her legs up into the vent shaft, twisting to hold the cover in place with shaking hands. She fought to slow her breathing, her heart thumping so loud it might give her away.
“Clear,” one man said. “Nothing.”
“Check behind the chemical storage.”
Footsteps. The scrape of something being moved.
Her arms shook from holding the vent cover. She screwed her eyes shut, the metal biting against her clenched palms.
Don’t drop it. Don’t breathe. Don’t move.
“Clear.”
“Bitch can’t have got far.”
“Copy that.”
The footsteps retreated. The door clicked shut.
She waited. Counted to sixty. Then sixty again.
Her arms were aching. She couldn’t hold the vent much longer.
Silence in the closet below.
Her arms gave out. With a shuddering exhalation, she lifted the vent sideways, letting it fall against her chest.
They’re gone.
Her eyes burned, and for one awful moment she thought she might cry, which was stupid and useless. So she bit down hard on the inside of her cheek until the feeling receded.
Keep moving. If I stop, they’ll find me.
She got two screws back in—just enough to keep the facade intact, but her hands shook so hard she had to try twice to seat each thread.
She had a plan now.
The armory.
She needed a weapon. The torque wrench in her belt was solid steel, but it wouldn’t do much against automatic weapons.
She crawled deeper into the shaft. The metal was freezing under her palms. Sharp seams scraped her knees and shoulders, the space so cramped she couldn’t even straighten her arms. A headache had clamped around her temple.
The walls pressed closer. And her brain wasn’t listening to any kind of rationalization.
She paused every few feet to swallow panic and force her breath to slow. It didn’t help. Her breath was warm and muggy in her face, slowly suffocating her.
The vent system connected to the HVAC network.
She’d reviewed the schematics six months ago when one of the air handlers had been making a grinding noise that kept half the crew awake.
The ducts ran through every level, every section.
If she could get to the main trunk line, she could move through Seven without being seen.
The vent shafts weren’t marked. No helpful arrows or labels. Just endless metal tunnels that all looked the same.
But she knew Seven. Eighteen months of nothing but steel and electricity and salt water did that for you. The hum of the coolant pumps two levels down. The rattle of the ventilation system in the east quadrant. The slight vibration in the deck plating when the gyrostabilizers spun up.
She crawled as fast as the cramped space allowed. Her breathing sounded too loud in the narrow duct. They’d hear her. They’d catch her.
I’m going to die in this metal coffin and no one will find me—
Stop. Focus, Jen.
She shuffled on, inches at a time, until light filtered up ahead.
The vent above the armory.
She inched closer, dropping to her elbows. Under her, the vent featured emergency access points. Quarter-turn fasteners. Standard near high-security areas.
Her fingers found the fastener slots through the grating. Quarter turn. Click. Quarter turn. Click.
All four corners released.
Almost there.
Voices.
Shit. She froze and peeked through the gaps.
Two guards took up positions outside the armory door. Black tactical gear. Short-barreled automatic weapons held ready.
They beat me here.
She sucked at a cut on the heel of her hand, trying to think. The armory had biometric locks. She had access—all senior engineering staff did, in case of emergency. But she couldn’t exactly walk up and ask nicely.
A single set of footsteps. Steady. Unhurried.
Below, the guards turned.
Jen laid her cheek on the grid to get a better view.
A man rounded the corner wearing a bright orange flight suit—Coast Guard rescue crew, unmistakable even in the silently strobing red emergency lights. But nothing about him said rescue.
He was big, broad shoulders filling the corridor. A black harness crisscrossed his chest, hung with gear she couldn’t identify. No helmet. Dark hair. A face carved from stone.
He moved with the fluid, lethal grace of a man who knew exactly how dangerous he was.
The guards lifted their guns.
The man moved.
Fast. Brutally efficient.
The first guard never fired. The man closed the distance in two strides, slapped the barrel aside and drove a savage fist into the guard’s throat. He caught the weapon before it clattered to the deck. The guard crumpled, choking.
The second guard tried to bring his weapon around. Way too slow. The man was already inside his reach. Leg sweep. The guard went down hard. His head bounced off the deck plating with a hollow crack that made Jen wince.
Five seconds. No shots fired. No noise.
His breathing hadn’t even changed.
The man checked the pulse on both guards before he stripped zip ties from a pocket and secured their wrists behind their backs. Professional. Not his first time. Not even close.
He checked the corridor, then dragged both guards by their vests out of her line of sight.
She held her breath. She’d seen combat training videos. This wasn’t that. This was real. And he’d done it a lot.
A moment later he stepped back into view and moved to the armory door.
I should go down there. Get a weapon. Maybe ask him what the hell was happening. He was Coast Guard. That meant friendly.
Probably.
The cleaning staff had been friendly, too. Lockhart had smiled at her every morning for six months. Asked how her day was going in his quiet, accented English.
Then he’d pointed a gun at her face.
And this guy moved like the terrorists. Same efficiency. Same cold professionalism.
Different uniform didn’t guarantee different allegiance.
But what if the most dangerous man she’d ever seen was also her best chance of surviving the night?