Chapter 16 #2
Cipher's voice changed suddenly in my earpiece. “Movement inside. Two security personnel descending from the east stairwell. Forty meters, maybe less.”
Trigger looked at me, and we moved without needing to discuss it. He took the left wall while Raze covered the right. I guided Skye behind the corner formed by a medical-storage room and told her to stay there. She nodded immediately, which worried me far more than if she had argued.
The approaching footsteps accelerated, and the first man rounded the corner with his weapon already drawn before Trigger dropped him.
The second man came lower and wider, using the wall for cover and trying to angle toward the storage section. I saw the muzzle before I saw the rest of him, and when he shifted toward Skye's side of the corridor, instinct took over before thought ever had a chance to interfere.
I moved into the open before instinct gave caution a chance to interfere, and the first shot cracked through the lower level almost immediately, striking the concrete beside my shoulder and spraying fragments across my jacket.
I returned fire and forced him behind cover, but the angle was bad.
Trigger couldn't see him from where he stood, and Raze's line was blocked by one of the medical carts.
I changed position deliberately, giving the man a clearer target and drawing his attention away from Skye.
He took the bait exactly as I'd intended and raised his weapon toward me again, but before he could fire, something dark flashed through my peripheral vision and struck him high in the shoulder. The force spun him sideways, and Trigger was on him before he hit the floor.
For half a second, the entire corridor went quiet.
Then Hawkeye's voice came through the comms from somewhere outside, calm enough that he might have been commenting on the weather. “Clear.”
I looked toward the narrow ventilation opening high in the wall, which connected to the sunken service well Skye had identified on the western side of the building.
Hawkeye must have repositioned above the well after hearing our movement over comms, giving him a narrow but usable line through the opening.
“Nice shot.”
There was a brief pause before he answered, “Aye.”
Raze let out a breath that sounded halfway between disbelief and laughter. “You know guns have been invented, right?”
“They've also been heard.”
Even Trigger laughed at that, the brief release of tension enough to keep everyone moving instead of thinking too long about how close the shot had come.
Skye stepped out from behind the corner, and the instant I saw her face I knew she had noticed the concrete dust covering my shoulder.
“You're hit.”
“I'm not.”
She crossed the distance anyway and grabbed the front of my jacket. “Your shoulder.”
“No blood.”
“I know what no blood looks like.”
Her hands moved over my shoulder and upper arm until she had convinced herself there was no wound beneath the dust, and only then did I realize how badly she was shaking. I caught her wrists gently before she could check me a third time.
“I'm fine.”
“You were standing in front of me.”
“Aye.”
“That wasn't the plan.”
“He shifted toward you.”
“And that means what exactly? You decide getting shot is preferable?”
“I didn't get shot.”
Her eyes flashed. “That's not the point.”
Trigger looked away with the exaggerated concentration of a man suddenly fascinated by a blank wall, while Raze bent over the downed guard's radio as though it contained the secrets of the universe.
I lowered my voice. “We're having this argument later.”
“You're damn right we are.”
The anger in her voice was strong enough to tell me the fear had started loosening its grip, and I let go of her wrists.
“Stay close.”
She glared at me. “Within reach, remember?”
That earned the smallest shift in my expression, not quite a smile but close enough that she noticed.
We continued down the corridor until Skye stopped again near the final junction and tilted her head slightly.
“What is it?”
“Airflow.”
I waited while she looked toward the left-hand wall.
“There's cold air coming from that side, but the reconstructed plan doesn't show anything there.”
Of course it didn't.
She crouched and examined the floor. “There are scuff marks too. Something heavy has been moved across this section repeatedly.”
Trigger ran one hand along the wall but found no visible seam.
Skye studied the base, then the ceiling, and finally pointed toward a narrow track partly concealed beneath rubber molding. “Because it doesn't swing. It's a sliding panel.”
Raze looked at me. “I like her.”
“You liked her yesterday.”
“I like her more now.”
Skye ignored both of us and found the recessed grip beneath the molding. With Trigger's help, the panel slid sideways, revealing another passage narrower and darker than the corridor behind us. A steel door stood partially open at the far end, and voices carried through the gap.
Two voices carried through the partially open door, one male and one female, before a third joined them and I recognized the controlled cadence immediately from Cipher's surveillance files: Dr. Helena Croft.
Trigger heard it too, and the entire team shifted into silence as we approached.