Chapter 11 #2
The confinement building was a concrete-block structure with a locked steel door.
Keira pulled a thin file out of the satchel she’d slung over her shoulder and stuck the tip into the keyhole on the doorknob.
She jiggled it several times until a soft click sounded.
She closed her hand around the knob, turned it, pushed the door open and stepped inside.
As Rogue followed, a movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. The man in the golf cart was coming out of the motor pool.
Rogue ducked through the door and pulled it closed behind him, careful not to make any noise.
“Hey, you! Do you have clearance to be in this building?” a man’s voice called out from the first room to the left of the entrance.
Keira stepped through the door and smiled. “Actually, I was looking for someone with a lighter. I left mine at home.”
“What do you need a lighter for? You don’t have a cigarette.”
She laughed. “You’re right. I left my pack at home with the lighter. Could you spare a smoke?”
Rogue stayed back, not wanting to alert the man to the fact that two people had entered the building.
“I don’t smoke, and you aren’t supposed to be in here. How did you get in anyway?”
“The door was unlocked,” Keira said.
“It’s never unlocked,” the man snarled.
“See for yourself,” she said and moved to the side.
As the guard stepped past her, his gaze locked with Rogue’s. “What the hell?”
Keira touched him with the taser.
The man dropped to the floor, twitching and moaning.
Rogue dragged him back into his office and behind his utility desk. “Go,” he called over his shoulder to Keira. “Find the target.”
Keira turned and pushed through the next door, disappearing inside.
Rogue flipped the man onto his belly, secured his wrists behind his back with a zip tie and cinched another around his ankles.
He slapped a strip of duct tape over the guard’s mouth and hurried to catch up with Keira.
He glanced down at his watch. Two minutes had passed.
They had eight minutes to find the girl and get her back to the dock without being seen.
He pushed through the door into a hallway lined with metal doors. Each door had a small, barred window and a lock on the outside.
Keira was halfway down the hall, calling out as she peered into the windows, “Lily.”
Rogue ran from window to window, peering inside, expecting to find them empty since Keira was still looking.
When she reached the end of the hall, she opened a different door and disappeared through it.
Rogue ran to catch up.
The door opened onto a staircase leading down into a basement or bunker with concrete-block walls and concrete floors.
More cells lined each side of the hall.
“Lily,” Keira called out.
“She’s at the end,” a soft voice called out from the first door on the left.
Keira paused, peered through the barred window and frowned.
Rogue came to stand beside Keira and looked through the bars at a teenage girl with dirty, stringy brown hair, dressed in a dirty T-shirt and worn, faded blue jeans.
“Who are you?” Keira asked.
“Rebecca,” the girl said and reached for the bars on the window. “Have you come to get us out of here?”
Keira blinked. “I’m looking for Lily.”
Rebecca dropped her hands from the bars, and her shoulders slumped. She tipped her head toward the far end of the hallway. “At the end of the hall.” She backed away and sat on a thin mat on the floor.
Keira and Rogue moved to the next door and peered through the window.
A girl even younger than Rebecca sat on her pallet, her eyes red-rimmed, her cheeks sunken.
“Lily?” Keira whispered.
The girl looked up at Keira, tears welling. “No, but I can be whoever you want me to be, if you get me out of here.”
Keira spun away as if she’d been slapped and moved further down the hallway, her eyes getting rounder the more she peered into the cells to find young girls locked inside.
Rogue tested the locks on the outsides of the doors. Each required a key. A key he bet he’d find on the guard in the office upstairs.
Even if they found Lily down there, without a bolt cutter or a key, they wouldn’t be able to get Lily out.
“Find her, Keira. I’ll be right back.” Rogue turned and raced back up the stairs and down the hallway to the guard’s office.
Once inside, he searched the wall for keys hanging on hooks.
When he found none, he moved behind the desk where the guard lay on the cool concrete, just starting to move his fingers.
Rogue found a wad of keys hanging on a D-ring clipped to the guard’s belt. He removed the D-ring and hurried back into the basement.
Keira stood in front of the door at the end of the hallway. She looked up with tears in her eyes. “I found Lily.”
Rogue hurried to her with the wad of keys.
The girl he’d seen in Jade’s picture stood on the other side of the door, tears slipping down her face. “Please,” she begged. “Get me out of here.”
“We will,” he said. “Hang tight.” He jammed one of the keys into the padlock. It didn’t open the lock. One by one, he tried the keys. Seven keys in, he turned the key. The lock clicked.
Keira yanked the door open.
Lily flung herself into Keira’s arms, sobbing.
“Shhh, sweetheart. We’re going to get you out of here,” Keira promised.
Lily took Keira’s hand and tugged her toward the stairs. “We have to go before they come back.”
Keira held back, her gaze meeting Rogue's. “We can’t leave the others,” she whispered.
They’d planned on rescuing one young girl. More than one would complicate the mission.
“How many?” Rogue asked.
“Counting Lily, Six.”
“We have five minutes,” he reminded her.
Keira glanced at her watch. “Now, we have four.” She took the keys from Rogue and worked each lock, one by one, until all the doors were open and six girls gathered around, some crying, others eager to get moving.
“Follow me and keep quiet.” Rogue led the way up the stairs.
As he neared the top, a small hand slipped into his.
He glanced down at a girl with long, dirty blond hair and dark circles beneath her blue eyes.
She stared up at him like a puppy expecting to be kicked.
“Are you here to save us?” she asked in a voice as small as she was.
“I hope so,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Jenny,” she said.
“Stay close and quiet, and I’ll do my best to get you out of here.”
Jenny nodded, her face grim but determined.
When Rogue moved, she kept up like a shadow he couldn’t shake.
He looked past her to Keira, holding Lily’s hand in her right hand and Rebecca’s in her left. They brought up the rear while herding the three girls in front of them.
Rogue climbed the stairs and hurried to the other end of the hall.
The guard they’d tied up was kicking his feet against the desk over and over, making enough noise that anyone walking by the confinement facility might step in to determine the cause of the ruckus.
Keira slipped past Rogue into the room and hit the man again with the taser, her lips pulled back in a snarl. “Bastard. They’re just children.” She didn’t linger but marched back out to the girls and pushed through the inner door toward the one leading out into the compound.
She turned to the girls and pressed a finger to her lips.
As she reached for the door, she paused and touched her hand to the earbud in her ear. Her face blanched, and she swung her head right to left, her gaze searching for Rogue’s. “It’s Jade. She says guards are surrounding the supply truck. We should punt.”