Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
Reese’s shoulder was a ball of hot red pain, but he stayed still, wedged into the corner of the cell.
The socks were too slippery, so he’d shed them, and the soles of his feet gripped the wall as his fingertips used a faint lip in the concrete to keep him aloft.
A good core workout, but he could have done without it.
Cal—his sweat full of that damn trank burning off—was jammed into the other corner, holding himself there with sheer will.
The cell door clattered and drew aside, groaning, and the lead for the team outside looked in, a yellow beam from his flashlight playing over the two empty metal bunks. “For God’s sake,” he snarled, “is this the right room?”
“Got to be,” someone else said. “Right on the sheet, A-54.”
Come on, Reese prayed, his feet slipping as he strained, silently, acrid sweat stinging as it dripped into his eyes. Give me something here. Get curious. Where did we go?
Cloth moving. “Can’t have vanished—” The dumb jerk covering the door made the inevitable first mistake, edging inside the cell as the flashlight beam played around shadows underneath the bunks.
Reese dropped, light as a cat. Then it was a blur, bones snapping and a spray of blood from the one whose nose he broke with a quick hand-heel up, dropping his center of gravity immediately afterward to power through the doorway, Cal landing behind him and the greenstick crack of a neck breaking.
Slapping the pistol aside, smelling refried beans and pico de gallo on the backstop guy, cheap beer and good steak on another, their uniforms familiar and strange at the same time.
A highly trained transport team had a good chance against two tranked, restrained agents—had they expected him and Cal to still be zoned?
Someone had miscalculated dosages, in a big way.
The team leader managed to squeeze off a shot that whined and ricocheted down the hall before Cal was on him, silent and economical, a strike to the throat and subtracting the pistol as the target folded down; between the two of them, they had just killed four men.
True-blue American patriots, no doubt, just following orders.
Had one of them shot Holly? Or had that pleasure been reserved for a higher-up? Was she still alive?
She’d better be.
The only sound was their breathing and soft rustles as the agents canvassed the bodies for gear. Boots that fit, still warm, a piece of luck. Ammo, service pistols, a crackling walkie-talkie—someone would get nervous and start looking for these guys soon.
Cal stiffened, blond head lifting. His blue eyes blazed, and the difference between this man and the one who couldn’t shut up back in the cabin was night and day. Maybe he’d just needed someone to talk to.
Don’t we all. Reese heard it too. Six sets of footsteps moving in doublequick, almost on them.
Something else nagged at him, but he didn’t have time to figure it out.
He was already moving, Cal following to cover.
The 9mm in Reese’s hand was a good start, and a multiplicity of targets meant that maybe he could neutralize and interrogate one of them.
First step was to find out where he was, and the second. .. well.
Louder and louder, and he smelled adrenaline, determination, a chemical reek and the peculiar staticky unsmell of men carrying live weaponry. Jingles and little creaks of gear. A cross corridor ahead, and if he and Cal could reach it before they did, the ambush would be simple to—
No.
He dug his heels in, hard. It couldn’t be. He simply could not be that lucky.
Faint noise under the louder footsteps. Beautiful, agent-strong scents, both female, but one raised his hackles. The other had quite a different effect.
It was Holly. Riding some current of air that almost vanished, and everything in Reese collapsed for a moment before reforming in a different constellation.
“You smell that?” Cal mouthed. He’d stopped, too.
Reese nodded, and the impossible happened.
They surged around the corner at a run, two slim female figures, one all in black, skirt and very practical flats, her hair tied back in a too-tight ponytail and her scent rasping a little unpleasantly across his nose.
The other, in an unzipped blue parka and still-damp boots, with a glory of mussed black hair, wild-eyed and fuming with fear and adrenaline, was Holly.
A shout behind them, echoing strangely, and the pop and zing of live fire.
Reese didn’t remember the intervening space. He moved and Holly ran into him, her breath high and hard. She was alive and whole, but both women reeked of blood and exhaustion.
The blonde barely broke stride, holding a standard-issue with the barrel down, moving smoothly and professionally.
“Incoming!” she barked, and Cal bolted straight for her.
Weird—the new woman’s smell almost vanished into a powerful burst from the other agent, a blue-tinted wave that might have knocked Reese down if his anchor hadn’t been in his arms, coughing as her eyes welled with tears that were could be, if Reese was lucky, partly relief.
“Come on!” the blonde stranger said, but Cal grabbed her, neatest trick of the week, and shoved her against the wall, almost knocking the gun out of her hand.
“Stay there,” he snapped, and turned, his own pistol coming up.
Thank you, God. Thank you. But they weren’t out of the woods yet.
Reese pushed Holly behind him and had bare seconds to brace himself before the first pursuers appeared.