Chapter 7
“Tell me if we need to go back.” Savanah glanced over her shoulder as they emerged from the water and took off running toward the concrete compound.
“I feel fine,” he said with a smile. “I bet our views could have merged as well.”
“Maybe.” She slowed as an image of Willow flashed across the building. “Did you see that?”
“Yep. It was part of my vision.”
“Anything else I should know about that vision?”
“No. It ended here,” he said.
“Wow. I can hear you both,” Willow’s voice boomed between her ears like a set of loud speakers.
“This is way too cosmic.” Savanah came to a stop about twenty yards from the building, crouching down behind a tree. Not that anyone could see her, but it made her feel better about being out in the open.
“This is giving me a headache,” Willow said. “So, I’ll be quick. I got a call from Hazel who said she had another vision about this building being blown to pieces at seven twenty-two this morning.”
“Did she see where the bomb was?” Chad asked.
“If you go in the far east door and into the cellar, it’s behind the furnace.” Willow’s image faded as her voice grew quieter.
“What are you thinking?” Savanah turned to Chad as the link to her sister disappeared.
“We need to split up. You find the men. I’ll find and disarm the bomb.”
“We can’t do that. First, you have to come back with me through my tunnel or you could be lost here forever.”
“According to Scottie, I shouldn’t be able to do this, so we really don’t know what risk there is, and maybe I can summon my caves.”
“Then summon them, just to make sure.”
He turned, planting his hands on his hips. “They are there.”
“If you’re lying to me, I’ll come back here and kill you myself.”
“Trust me, I don’t want to be stuck here.”
“Fine, but my other concern is how will you disarm the bomb. It took Brett a long time to take something back from a different plane.” She glanced at her watch. “We have time to go back and tell Scottie to just—”
“Without knowing where exactly the men are and the bomb is, Scottie won’t have time to make a plan that would ensure at least a fifty percent survival rate of more men.”
Movement on the right side of the building caught her attention. Five men, all armed with Uzis, appeared to be making some sort of security check around the compound.
“We go into the building together. We only separate if we have to,” she said.
“Let’s go.” He patted her shoulder and started running toward the building.
No matter how many times she’d viewed, she always felt exposed when out in the open inside a view. Realistically, her body wasn’t there. No one could see her, except for maybe a few very powerful psychics, which included Brett and Chad, but others might be able to sense her presence. If anyone thought she were there, or anyone like her, she feared for the men who were being held captive.
“Quick.” Chad reached back, taking her hand, which shouldn’t be possible either. She shouldn’t be able to feel his touch.
Together they scooted through the open door into a long, cold corridor. “This door faces north. We can communicate with each other. So, I’ll go find the bomb. You methodically search the rest.”
“I don’t like this one bit.”
He curled his fingers around her biceps.
“You shouldn’t be able to touch me.”
“Really? That might come in handy when I find the bomb.”
“Interesting. Okay, call me when you’ve found it. I’ll go find the men.” She took off down the hallway, her feet hitting the tile floor, but she didn’t hear them. It was all an illusion. She wondered if him touching her back at the cabin had anything to do with them touching each other on the cosmic plane.
She pushed all those questions and pesky doubts from her mind and concentrated on moving about the building. Most of the time it was easy to step through a wall, or peek into a room, but Scottie was right, someone had built up a strong wall protecting this place from people like her. Only she felt stronger with Chad. It was as if her ability doubled in strength.
For the most part, the building was empty of people, but filled with explosives and military weapons. She peeked her head into the last room on the top floor on the west side. Boxes and boxes of grenades filled the room. She reached in through the wall. The cold, hardness of the cement bricks chilled her bones. The skin on her fingertips burned when they grazed the top of the metal objects. One moved slightly as she pulled her hand back. She froze, hoping that wouldn’t set them off. Glancing at her watch, she let out a sigh of relief. Would have sucked had she been the reason the building exploded and not the bomb.
Taking the stairs, she jogged to the lowest level, and made her way to the west side. The compound had four corridors off a center building. The few people that mulled around were either guards or what appeared to be office workers in the main tower, though what kind of office she had no idea because she didn’t believe this to be a government organization. The guards didn’t wear the North Korean military uniform, but it could be some secret government organization. Hell, the United States had a half dozen or so that even some of the highest officials didn’t know existed.
As she rounded the corner on the second floor, she heard male voices. She wished she’d taken a language in school, though it probably wouldn’t have been Korean.
From the third door on the right, two men appeared, both with bags over their heads, one visibly injured as he limped and groaned with every step. Behind them, four men wearing military camouflage, carrying large weapons, thrust the captives forward, hitting them with the butt of their weapons.
“Hunter,” she whispered in her mind, but got no response.
When the two men walked past, she felt a wave of psychic energy around one of the men. She couldn’t tell if it was him, blocking himself off from everyone, or someone else had wrapped him in a blanket of protective energy.
Or maybe a bit of both.
“I found them,” she projected to Chad. “They are on the move.”
“Follow them,” Chad responded.
“Find the bomb?”
“Yes. Tell me if they leave the building.”
“Be careful,” she projected.
“You too.”
On tip-toe, she slinked through the hall until the men stopped at the elevator. It wasn’t a very big elevator, fitting maybe eight people. With her, it would be seven people inside. While her non-existent body could be absorbed into almost anything, if she came in contact with organic material, and a person was organic, they could know she was there in a way that could zap her energy, making it difficult
She sucked in a breath, slipping inside the caged machine, right next to who she believed to be Hunter. Heat radiated from his body, prickling her skin. She kept reminding herself that her body wasn’t on this plane. That she really wasn’t feeling any of this.
But part of her wondered if Hunter really was emitting some kind of boiling, invisible steam.
The doors closed, and the motor roared. The elevator shook and bounced as it started it’s decent downward. Hunter’s body continued to come in contact with her mind. A dull ache built slowly from the base of her neck to the top of her forehead.
As soon as the doors opened, she leapt into the hallway, then followed them through the north wing.
“Where are you?” Chad’s voice filled her mind, giving her a sense of calm.
“Heading toward the doors on the north end.”
“I can’t disarm the bomb, and I can’t take it with us.”
“So, this place is going to blow soon.”
“Yep. Best part is that the bomb is not Korean, either North or South. It’s American. So, either our government has more than one op here and the branches aren’t speaking to one another, or some gorilla organization. Either way, we need to figure out how to get our men out.”
One of the captors pulled back the door. The warm sun filtered through the open space. A convoy of trucks awaited them.
“Not going to be a problem. They are getting in the back of a truck now.”
“Get in it, too. I’m on my way.”
“Hurry,” she said as she climbed on the back of the vehicle, standing on the bumper. Her body ached and skin still burned from crossing her mind with Hunter’s body. “First few trucks pulling out.”
“I see you.”
She glanced over her shoulder. A sense of relief settled deep inside as he jumped onto the back of the truck right before it lurched forward.
“You doing okay? You look a little green.” He wrapped a protective arm around her waist, holding her tight.
“I crossed bodies with I think Hunter, and he’s a cosmic ball of psychic energy right now.”
“If he’s one of my brothers, I’m going to have to have a talk with him about doing anything with my girlfriend.”
She swallowed the butterflies floating from her stomach to her throat. “Now you’re freaking me out on how easily you’re accepting this.”
“Not easily, just I’ve been fighting it my entire life, and I’m tired of it.”