Chapter 18 #2
There was a note in that last word that stirred her further into consciousness. The note was fear, and whether she’d gained a newfound sense of confidence or not, she hated for anyone to be hurting and wanted to do whatever she could to soothe them.
Blinking open her eyes, she found nothing but darkness all around her except for the shadowy face of someone leaning over her.
Suddenly, everything came back.
They were searching a warehouse they believed had or still did belong to Dr. Gardner and his team of scientists.
The place had been bleached, and someone had been using a white noise generator to make it harder for the guys to use their enhanced skills.
But still, Blade had heard something, and the guys had told her and Rose to hide while they went hunting.
The two of them had been talking in hushed whispers when suddenly the world around them exploded.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice shaky and insubstantial as she tried to take stock of her body and figure out what injuries she’d sustained.
In the fall, she must have lost her night vision goggles, because she could no longer see with that eerie green light.
Still, she could make out Rose’s face, and she knew why the other woman had sounded scared.
She’d heard all about how Rose had tried to escape the basement when the guys were holding her hostage and had wound up bringing the ceiling down with her.
“Yeah, hurting all over but … just brings back memories,” Rose answered, her voice soft and more uncertain than Cassandra had ever heard it before. “I've never been claustrophobic, couldn’t have because my brother would have quickly figured out any weaknesses and exploited them. But now …”
“You were buried alive,” Cassandra reminded her as she slowly pushed herself up, fighting off a wave of dizziness and nausea that made her want to curl up in a ball and forget all about what was going on around her.
But she couldn’t.
The guys were still out there somewhere, and she had no idea if they had been closer or further away from wherever the explosives had been set.
If they’d been closer …
No.
She wasn't going to allow herself to go there right now. Rose was freaked out after the explosion, they were both hurt, and they had to find a way out so they could go looking for the guys.
“Thought I was going to die,” Rose murmured. “But then Steel looked for me. Saved me.” The woman paused, dragging in a deep breath. “We have to find a way to get out of here so we can find them. What if they’re trapped and need us?”
“We’re stuck in here?” she asked. Rose had obviously regained consciousness before she had, or never passed out at all, but she had no idea how long she’d been out and if Rose had managed to gather intel while she was passed out.
“Half the ceiling and walls came down,” Rose replied. “Total flashback vibes. Although at least this time I'm not pinned down and helpless.”
“Totally not helpless,” she said, infusing as much confidence into her tone as she could manage.
Just because she’d decided to stop pretending to her family that she was handling her paternity revelation just fine, didn't mean she didn't recognize this was a time when she had to fake it till she made it. Her life, Rose’s life, and the lives of Dragon and the other Delta Team guys might depend on it.
“We got this,” Rose said, sounding more like the woman she was getting to know.
“Of course we do. If we don’t, then Dragon and Steel are never going to let us do anything fun.”
Rose laughed at her joke, but it ended on a groan, and she knew the other woman was hurt. Asking how badly seemed kind of pointless. It didn't matter what injuries they had, they still had to find a way out.
Pushing herself up to her knees, the world spun sickeningly around her, but Cassandra did her best to shake it off. There was something sticky on the side of her head, and she assumed she’d struck it when she’d been thrown down.
“Do you have your night vision goggles?” she asked Rose as she blinked and tried to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness.
“No, lost them. My weapon too.”
“Oh yeah.” Cassandra realized she’d lost that as well. That was a major disadvantage if the person they suspected was still there had survived the explosion. Still, they had to be the person who set it, so the chances that they’d stick around to get caught up in it seemed slim.
“Where was the door?” she asked, looking around the room but unable to see anything other than shadowy piles of what she assumed was rubble. Since she’d been thrown down, she’d lost all sense of direction and had no idea where the way out was supposed to be.
“It was over here,” Rose answered confidently, and Cassandra followed her to where a pile of concrete blocked what she could now make out had once been the door.
Without discussion, they both reached down and began to move the debris. It was slow going and they had to work together. The pieces were too heavy for them to move alone, even if they weren't injured.
What felt like hours later, but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes at the most, Cassandra heard something that had her freezing and spinning around.
“Did you—?”
“I did,” she answered Rose’s question before the other woman could even get it out.
“Was there another entrance to the lab?” Rose asked, heading closer to where they had both heard a sound.
“I didn't see one, the guys didn't mention one either,” she replied.
“A secret entrance then? If this was a lab run by my brother, I wouldn't put it past him to have secret entrances and exits just in case the place was ever raided. Ridge was a paranoid guy,” Rose muttered.
Abandoning where they’d been working, Cassandra followed Rose. “Maybe the guys found it.”
“I hope so.”
In Rose’s voice were the same emotions she was feeling.
Fear, worry, restlessness. Rose wanted to get to Steel as badly as she wanted to get to Dragon.
Of course, she didn't want any of the guys to be hurt—or worse—but the need to get to Dragon was unlike anything she’d experienced before.
It pulsed beneath her skin, like an itch she couldn’t scratch, and she prayed like she’d never prayed before that Dragon was about to come through the wall, strong and unharmed.
Another sound, one that definitely sounded like a person moving rubble out of the way, came from a corner of the room, and they zeroed in on it.
“There,” Cassandra said, pointing to a small hole in the wall. “There was a hidden door right there.”
“I see it.”
“It has to be them, right?” Just because she didn't see why someone would set explosives, then hang around in the blast zone, didn't mean there wasn't someone else in the building.
“Wish I had my weapon,” Rose muttered, and the anxiety in the room seemed to amp up.
If it was whoever had set the explosives, she and Rose were sitting ducks. They were trapped in there, they wouldn't be able to get through the debris to safety before whoever was coming got in.
“It’s them,” she said confidently, trying to convince both Rose and herself.
Before either of them could say another word, someone grunted, and the rubble in front of the hidden door tumbled down as the beam of a flashlight danced over them, temporarily blinding them.
“Huh, wasn't expecting two of you. The sister and the girl, two for one. My lucky day,” a strange voice spoke, and Cassandra’s blood ran cold.