couldn’t risk getting them caught so close to finding a way out. After sending a silent signal for Nikki to stay put, Jess crept toward the door, gun in hand.
With the alarm sounding, she couldn’t hear anything coming from the room. Inching closer, she edged a look across the door frame, peering inside. A sudden motion caused her to flinch. She ducked and pressed her back against the wall. Nikki cowered behind her, wide-eyed and close to panic. After replaying what she’d seen, Jess got the courage to try again. She rushed the doorway with her weapon leveled in a two-fisted grip, shifting the gun hard left, then right. After a better look, she relaxed and stepped farther into the chamber.
It looked like a main control room, the one where she’d seen the Russian and the other man in heated debate, with a bank of computers and monitors along the far wall. She would have kept moving down the corridor, but caught action on the monitors that forced her to stop.
“On my God,” she whispered.
Sam had two men with her and all of them were armed. She recognized her friend easily, but the men’s faces were not clear. Surveillance cameras had locked onto their movement. And wherever they were, they moved cautiously, expecting trouble.
“Where the hell are you, Sam?”
Nikki came into the room and stood by her side.
“I remember that place,” she said. “It’s by the loading docks. They brought me through that security door… my first day.” The girl pointed to the monitor, but her mouth dropped when she recognized a familiar face. Fresh tears slid down her cheeks and her lower lip trembled. “Uncle Payton…look, he’s here. Oh my God, he’s really here.”
With Nikki’s revelation, a rush of hope flooded through Jess. The girl laughed nervously at the sight of her uncle, unable to contain her emotion—touching humor mixed with tears.
“Do you think you know where they are?” Jess asked.
“Yeah, turn left out the door. Follow the corridor straight, I think.”
Not wanting to squelch Nikki’s moment of relief, Jess left her in front of the security monitor, watching her uncle. Then she noticed something of interest across the room, tucked near one of the hard drives—a trash can filled with discarded paper. She reached in and pulled out what looked important and official.
“What do we have here?” she whispered. She stuffed what she could into the waistband of her pants under her shirt, and when she looked up, her heart nearly stopped.
Positioned above each computer hard drive was some type of incendiary device, wired to explode. She didn’t know much about explosives, except that deactivating one by snipping a wire often set the bomb off. That popped into her mind a moment before she noticed the smell from the rear passageway. Gas fumes. If they were building, a detonation in the control room could trigger a massive blast throughout the whole facility. And where there was one bomb, there might be others.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath.
They had to get out now! And Sam, Archer, and the other man were in danger too. They didn’t have a clue they were walking into a powder keg.
“We gotta find them, Nikki,” she said, keeping her voice calm and steady as she stared at the bombs. When the girl didn’t respond, she raised her voice to be heard over the blaring alarm, “What do you say, Nikki? Let’s go find your—”
Jess stopped dead still. She raised her weapon and swallowed, trying to still her heart. The Russian held Nikki clutched to his chest, a gun to her head. In the murky light, it took her a moment to realize the girl wasn’t dead. She was breathing, but unconscious.
Jess clutched her gun tighter, hoping her shakes didn’t show. No way she could attempt a head shot, not under these conditions. And the Russian blocked the way out, threatening to kill Nikki. A hellish nightmare, the man wielded his sinister glare like a weapon.
“You leave without saying good-bye, bounty hunter?” He slowly shook his head. “Not on my watch.” His voice made her skin crawl.
“You rigged this room to blow,” she reasoned. “You really think you have time to mess with me? If this place goes up, you’re going with it.”
The man had the nerve to laugh. The sound of it echoed in the chamber, making her almost nauseous.
“You’re talking to a man with a death wish. Considering how much you are shaking, I would say life means a great deal more to you, especially the pathetic life of this girl.” He sneered. “Put down the gun and kick it over to me.”
Sweat trailed down Jess’s temple, and the air felt thick and stagnant, making it hard to breathe. She knew she had no choice. She wouldn’t force the man’s hand with Nikki’s life in the balance. Slowly, she lowered her weapon and laid it at her feet, then kicked it to him. The gun skittered across the floor, obliterating any odds in her favor. Her luck had run out, but she hoped Nikki would still have a chance. If the bastard had intended to kill the girl, he wouldn’t have knocked her out. He would have taken too much pleasure in slitting her throat and watching her bleed, drowning in her own blood.
The Russian let Nikki slide and drop to the floor before he retrieved Jess’s weapon and slipped it into the waistband of his pants. He pointed his gun at her again, a smug expression on his face. Jess took a deep breath and clenched her jaw, waiting for whatever the scumbag would do next.
“You’re coming with me.”
Wide-eyed, she let her panic show. “What about Nikki? You can’t just leave her.”
The bastard smiled. “She is expendable. Easy to replace. But you? I have plans.”
He’d taken her by surprise. She hadn’t expected his reaction. She couldn’t leave Nikki behind without a fight. Jess headed for the door, her mind racing with ways to take him out. But he came up behind her and turned the tables again.
A blow to the back of the head staggered her. She dropped to her knees and was shoved to the floor. A warm rush of blood drained down her neck, and the room swirled in a dark haze. She couldn’t shake her stupor and lost track of time, her awareness drifting in and out between shades of black. Behind her a shadow moved in the distance, but she couldn’t make her body move to see what was going on.
Time stalled and repeated like a skip on a CD, until a bright heat washed over her face and forced her to open an eye to see what was happening.
On the far wall, the grenades burst and catapulted white-hot sparks high into the air, a blast of hot debris. The computers liquefied under the intense heat, molten metal spewing across the room and setting off a string of smaller fires. She felt the heat around her. And the stench of sulfur hit the air under a cloud of billowing dark smoke. A devastating fireball raged in a chain reaction across the control room, and with it came a blinding fierce heat.
Pain spiked through her head like a taser bolt, making it hard to see. She tried to crawl, but her body anchored her to the spot she’d fallen. Breathing in smoke and the chemical fumes of the explosion seared heat into her lungs, making her gag.
Without help, she wasn’t going to make it. And it was only a matter of time before the rest of the tunnels would explode.
Mercifully, blackness came. For her, the nightmare was over.
CHAPTER 19
Her body moved, a series of sharp tugs. And her head lolled from side to side. Jess sensed the motion and caught only glimpses she couldn’t explain. Her legs felt useless, heavy as lead. A relentless blaring sound persisted, surging over and over. She couldn’t shut it out. And with the noise came a blinding flash of light. She tried covering her eyes, but her arms wouldn’t move.
She strained to see through a dense fog, nothing more than blurred images. But finally her eyes spiraled to a stop and focused, centering on a face. A woman with blond hair. The stranger’s lips moved, but the words were garbled and out of sync. She wanted to respond, but couldn’t force herself to speak.
Inside, an inexplicable urgency gripped her heart, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. She drifted in and out—
