Chapter 27 #2
I take off like a shot, dropping my head and tucking Nova close as her eyes fall shut. “You lay ground cover.” I match his pace, but twenty feet behind. “I’m unarmed for as long as she’s unconscious.”
“These are tunnels.” He slows just long enough to grab the sleeve of my shirt, then he takes off again, pulling me along faster as bullets chip the wall mere feet from my face.
If I stumble, we’re dead. “Aster winds these fuckers to make it impossible for his captives to escape. It’s a method of torture he enjoys. ”
My leg sizzles with every pounding step I take, blood making my jeans stick to my skin. “Please tell me you know the way.”
“Better hope I don’t miss a turn.” He jerks me left again, through a doorway I would’ve missed if not for his guidance. Then he draws us deeper underground.
My intuition demands we go up. Find the sunlight. Find freedom. But I have no fucking clue how to get there, and when he drags me to a stop and presses a finger to his lips, I clamp my mouth shut.
“Keep her quiet,” he whispers, releasing my shirt and tiptoeing toward a doorway cleverly hidden within the shadows.
His chest lifts and falls, his breath racing, but he approaches in complete silence, and after taking a beat to listen for voices on the other side, he points two fingers my way, then he gestures for me to follow.
He steps through the doorway and, turning back, waits for me to pass. When Nova babbles, groaning in pain, he claps a hand over her mouth and grits his teeth.
“Shit,” I breathe in silence, releasing her legs and replacing his hand with my own.
Satisfied, Tank circles around and closes the door at our backs.
“Are you in there, Nov?” I swallow the dry ache in my throat and peel her eyelid open to reveal a fat, dilated pupil. “We’re nearly there, baby. Hold on a minute longer.”
“This is Aster’s bunker.” Tank stalks across the thirty-square-foot room and tears a storage door open.
But instead of reaching in, he frowns and moves to the next.
“He usually keeps an entire arsenal down here.” Closing that door, he moves to the next.
“If the world is burning and the house is under siege, this room stays stocked with enough food and firepower to last him months. He’s always ready for invasion.
” He slams the next door and tries another. “The fuck is going on?”
“Tell me there’s another exit.” I carefully lower Nova to the floor, setting her back against the wall so she has somewhere to lean, then I dash across the room and open doors.
Drawers. I look up, like I did in Nova’s room, and hope for a fucking manhole.
“Every building needs at least two escape routes. Every bunker. Every treehouse built by an eleven-year-old comes with two exits. There is no way in hell Aster’s last stand has only one. ”
“There’s another door.” Tank strides around a sharp corner masked by the storage units, hidden to anyone without an express invitation to be here.
He wraps his palm around the handle, but before opening it, he swallows and looks me up and down.
“This door takes us through a tunnel that leads us off his property. Clear of the snipers, the fence, and his entire security system. But if I were Aster, I’d have sent men this way already. ”
“So, we’re walking headfirst into his army?” I set my hands on my hips and drop my head. Just long enough to catch my breath. Long enough to consider another plan. “The guards will already know we’re running. That means this exit is already dead.”
“Maybe.” He pulls his lip between his teeth and hesitates. Panting. Battle-weary. “It’s what I would do. Why chase your enemy when you could just wait for them to come to you? There could be a hundred guns waiting for us on the other side.”
“Are they gonna shoot us, or bring us in for questioning?” Fuck. I don’t even know which outcome I prefer. “Because I reckon we’ve kinda blown our cover and screwed this up.”
“He wants the code. He’s desperate for it.” He taps the handle. Gently, rhythmically shaking it. Then, exhaling a heavy breath, he brings fiery eyes back to mine. “If he had that room bugged, then he knows about Arabella.”
“Do you think he did?” My stomach turns hollow, aching at the thought of Aster and his men hearing the words I spoke to Nova.
Those of love and loss. Devastation. Desperation.
I spoke of Scarlett, too. If Nova and I die today, then that’s the end of that.
At least we go together. But Scarlett’s still out there, waiting for my text to let her know all is well. “Do you think he was listening—”
“I really fuckin’ hope not.” He taps the handle one last time, bouncing on his toes like a fighter readying to step into the ring. Then he grabs his gun and prepares. “Get ready. We get out, or we die protecting the women we love.”
I take my gun from the back of my jeans and chamber a slug. “Alright.” I roll my shoulders and drop my chin in a nod. “And sorry about blowing our cover back there. That was my bad.”
“Wasn’t the first time you’ve wanted to shoot me.
Won’t be the last.” He draws a deep breath and expels it instantly.
Inhales. Exhales. With a quick nod of his own, he yanks the door open with a flourish so violent it slams against the other side, then, wrapping his finger around the trigger, he charges forward.
Then stops… frowns…
In the silence, he shuffles ahead another step. Two. His shoulders grow with adrenaline, and a thick line of blood seeps through his shirt. He peeks through the door, then back again in confusion. “It’s clear. But I don’t like it.” His voice drips with suspicion. “Grab her and let’s go.”
At a pained gasp behind me, I spin and lock eyes with Richard fucking Aster, his arm circling Nova’s belly, his chest shielded by her weak, slumping body, and his left hand outstretched, a gun pointed straight between my eyes.
“Arabella’s alive?” His stare is wide. Frantic. Clinically manic. “My baby—”
“Wants nothing to do with you.” Tank slips back through the door and trains his gun between Aster’s brows.
Don’t shoot. Don’t fucking shoot! Not while Nova stands between them.
“She left you,” he sneers. “She isn’t coming back.”
“What would you trade her for?” Aster brings his weapon down and presses the muzzle to Nova’s ribs. “All this time, I was searching for her killer. But she’s… she’s alive?”
Nova’s breath whistles along her throat, her lungs struggling and ineffectual as Aster’s grip tightens with every inhale. Panicked, she lays her palm over her heart, her glistening, frightened eyes burning into mine.
“We trade nothing.” Tank inches two feet to the left, splitting the old man’s attention. “Not even the girl you’ve got now. Kill her. I don’t give a fuck. In the time it takes for you to squeeze the trigger, I’ll end this bullshit. Doesn’t matter to me if she dies with you.”
“I didn’t agree to that.” I have no plan. No fucking clue what we should do next, so I bring my gun up and surprise us all when I point it at Tank.
If we die, it’ll be gloriously fucking ironic, and always in pursuit of Nova’s safety. “I’d trade Arabella for Nova. I know where she is, and I know who she’s with.”
Tank’s furiously hot glare swings my way. “I’ll kill you too, Castro. I made no promises for your life, and Nichols’ ghost ain’t shit if my options are his sister or my mother.”
Aster’s cheeks pale. “Y-your mother?”
“I feel sick.” Nova slumps forward. “I’m gonna puke.”
“My daughter’s alive? And she has a son?” Aster shakes Nova until her hand drops and her fingers curl into a fist. “You’re willing to trade?”
“What do we get?” I cast a wary gaze toward Tank, his muscular shoulders swollen with adrenaline.
Then to Nova, weak and green as she tilts forward.
Bringing my eyes up to Aster, I squeeze the gun in my palm and wait for my moment.
“She’s already hurt, Richard. You fucked her up, even before my seven days were finished.
I want your assurance that we get to leave.
No guards between us and freedom. Not a single firearm in sight, threatening us on the way out. ”
“You can leave.” Eagerly nodding, the old man’s beady eyes burn into mine and leave him oblivious to the glint of steel in Nova’s fisted grip. “Take me to my daughter, and I’ll reward you with anything you could ask for.”
Tank swings his weapon my way. “If you take him to her, I’ll gut you like a pig. I’ll fuck your corpse and bury you with the old man. Won’t even give you separate holes in the earth. You can talk business then.”
“Burying me?” Aster chuckles, too arrogant for his own good. “You thought you would betray me? Take my codes? You just lost your only ally!”
“And you’ve lost your shield.” Nova frees the blade from my knife and brings her arm up with a powerful roar. Stumbling on her tangled feet and spinning with a dizzy cry, she plunges the glinting steel into the old prick’s ribs in the same moment Tank lets off a round.
“No!” I jump forward as the bullet zings along the barrel and out the other end, racing through the air and brushing by Nova’s jaw close enough to send her hair flying.
Aster slams against the wall at his back, and Nova falls the other way, collapsing to the floor and rapping her head against the concrete with a sickening thud. “Nova!”
Tank squeezes off a second round, the sizzling heat of his bullet passing through the meaty part of my shoulder as I kick the knife away and scoop Nova’s battered body into my arms. “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Nova?” I spin, even as a third boom echoes throughout the room, then I sprint toward the back wall.
“Nova!” I lay her on a stainless-steel countertop and brush her dress down.
I frantically shove bloodied locks of hair off her face and search for a bullet hole.
Maybe two. “Are you hit?” I roll her one way, then the other, desperately scanning for an exit wound and praying I find none. “Baby, speak.”
“Sick—” The green tint to her skin fades to a sickly gray, then she lurches upright on the table, stomach convulsing.
A sharp squeal escapes as she overbalances and pitches forward, but even as I catch her, her body jolts again—her chest spasming violently—as vomit surges up her throat and splatters onto the concrete.
Chunks and bile soak into the legs of my jeans, mixing with the warm slick of blood until I can’t differentiate between the two.
“Ew.” Tank towers over Aster and stares this way, his lips curling into a grimace. “I’m not cleaning that up.”
Nova groans and sways, retching into her lap while her eyes roll into the back of her head.
“What the fuck, man?” I wipe blood off her neck with shaking hands. From her cheek. Her chest. “Grow the fuck up and make sure Aster’s staying down. Do your fuckin’ job.”
“It’s done. Bullet in the brain says he ain’t getting up again.
I only ever heard of one other dude who survived that.
” He crosses the room, circling the vomit.
God forbid he messes up his boots. “That guy’s a little loopy these days, but legend has it his aim remains twenty-twenty.
” He holsters his gun and stops on my right, his furious glare burning the side of my face.
“Now let’s discuss the trading Arabella for Nova thing. ”
“I don’t even know where she is, stupid.
Calm down.” I need to get Nova out of here and into a fucking hospital, so I scoop her up, careful not to hurt her already tender side, and turn toward the door, still void of Aster’s guards.
“Get us out of here before shit gets worse. I’m done with this place. ”