The doors slid shut and the elevator jerked slightly before starting downward.
“How do you like things so far?” the chatty guy asked. He had turned almost completely around, apparently more than a little interested in the new guy’s take on the job.
“Not bad.” Ryan shrugged. “No worse than any other job I’ve ever had.”
“What do you think of the security?”
The two men exchanged amused glances. “Guess you haven’t been strip-searched yet.”
“No, can’t say I’ve had that pleasure.” A bell dinged, announcing that they’d arrived on Sub Level 5, and the doors slid open. “My stop. Nice meeting the both of you.” Ryan moved to get around the two men. He paused. “Uh, the loading dock… Where is that exactly?”
“Three levels back up the way we came.”
The door slid shut on the two men.
Ryan checked the corridor. Empty. A sign on the wall announced that the Holding Facilities were to the left.
Ryan turned. He was fairly certain they’d secret Tess away in some kind of holding area.
Within minutes, Ryan found himself faced with a double row of doors on either side of the long corridor. Twenty to twenty-five holding rooms stretched the length of the hall. To search them all would take precious minutes Ryan knew he didn’t have. Anxiety squirted through his blood.
Every minute he stayed in the subbasement meant another opportunity for Bloom and his men to discover his treachery. But he had to find Tess. Something told him that she was close. He couldn’t leave without finding her.
Each door had a tiny window. It was the only way to see into the rooms. A quick check of the first window revealed a narrow cell. The walls were padded and the floor was stainless steel. The room was empty.
His heart rate increasing and his breath coming in short pants, Ryan moved to the next door.
A THICK FOG SWIRLED around her and a chilling breeze brushed her cheeks. Tess lifted her head and sniffed. The smell of copper hung heavy in the damp air, and its presence sent a shiver of fear down her spine.
She took a tentative step forward and her heart leaped into her throat, almost choking her. Something wet and sticky pulled at the soles of her bare feet.
But she looked anyway, and a low moan slipped from between her lips. Spreading out beneath her lay a pool of red, a dark liquid carpet of something red and slick.
Her mouth went dry.
The smell of copper, thick and heavy, swept up her nose, and her stomach turned over with dread. Blood. Gallons and gallons of blood. It rose around her, covering her feet and sucking greedily at her ankles.
She sloshed through the viscous liquid, and up ahead, the mist parted. In the distance she saw a black man standing on an embankment. He motioned to her, waving at her to come closer.
Tess squinted, trying to see his face, but the mist seemed to hide him. He gestured again.
She waded deeper, pumping her legs through the heavy liquid as it swirled and sucked at her, threatening to pull her beneath its shimmering surface. She fought the tide.
As she drew closer to the man, his figure seemed to waver, the lines of his body disappearing and then reappearing.
But the man’s body changed, morphing into something strange and ghostly. Tess stumbled.
Suddenly the man became something familiar. Something from her childhood.
But he drifted upward, just out of reach.
Crying, Tess stood on tiptoes and reached for her childhood hero. He drifted higher.
Tess struggled to reach him and then tripped. Someone or something lay beneath the surface of the sea. As she watched in horror, a hand rose up out of the ocean of blood.
Whimpering, Tess scrambled to get away, but the fingers reached out and clamped themselves around her throat. She screamed as the hand pulled her beneath the roiling blood-red surface.
RYAN HEARD THE SCREAM of total terror. He knew without question that it was Tess.
He tore down the corridor, following the frantic sound.
His hands trembled with rage as he slid the security badge into the slot outside the steel door. “Come on! Come on!” he said.
He watched impatiently as the light shone a steady red until it finally blinked green and the door slid open.
He stepped inside the tiny cell, taking in the sterile white of the room and the single stretcher clamped securely to the floor.
A woman with a cloud of shimmering blond hair lay strapped helplessly to the bed. Ryan ran to her side.
When he touched Tess’s cheek, she opened her eyes, and Ryan watched as the confusion clouding the surface of those exquisite jade-colored eyes disappeared. She stared at him, every muscle in that beautiful body tensing against the restraints holding her secure. And he knew the exact moment she recognized him, a single instant when her pupils constricted and she tried to lift her head off the cot.
There was a momentary flash of unmistakable joy, followed by a cold look of caution. He hoped the caution would fade and disappear, but it stayed. The fact that it stayed told Ryan that Bloom had been busy. He’d been pumping her full of nasty drugs, trying to destroy what little trust Ryan had managed to build in Tess.
No doubt the doctor had backed her into a corner and worked on the tiny wall she’d built around her faith. Ryan had a feeling it wouldn’t have taken much to topple it. Something told him that he was starting back at square one.
“Come back to gloat a little?” she asked, her voice hard, unforgiving. “To make sure you did the job right the first time?”
He put a finger to his lips and shook his head.
Her gaze immediately jumped to the camera overhead, and a tiny glimmer of confusion reentered her eyes. She wasn’t sure what he meant, but at least she understood that the room was monitored.
She lay back, but Ryan didn’t miss the reemergence of wariness in her gaze. She wasn’t about to believe anything he said, and Ryan knew without a doubt that Bloom had filled her ear with some kind of garbage about him.
Bloom wanted her vulnerable. Totally dependent. And in order to make sure that happened, he would have worked to destroy any lingering feeling of trust she felt for the one person who had tried to save her-Ryan Donovan.
He knelt down beside the bed and whispered in her ear, “A friend is sending a loop of video to their camera-it shows you sleeping. But if they catch on, we’re toast. So, we need to work fast. Nod your head if you understand?”
She nodded.
Ryan reached across and started to undo her restraints. Beneath his hands, every muscle in her body was tense and coiled to spring.
As soon as her arms and chest were free, she sat up and worked on her left leg while he concentrated on the right. Before he could help her with the IV, Tess yanked it out, throwing the needle and tubing on the bed.
“So much for following proper medical procedure,” he mumbled, digging into the pocket of his pants and pulling out a handkerchief. He handed it to her and she nodded her thanks, slapping it over the small puncture wound in an
