There was more chaos as they circled around the outside edge of the huge open space, trying to cut Tanner off. Clayne and Cam moved out in front, shoving people aside and making a path for them through the crowd. On the far side of the cage, Zarina heard gunfire. She looked over to see Diaz, Chase, and Tate engaging with a group of armed men. She hoped that meant Chad and the others had found their friends from the prepper camp and gotten them out of there.
She was stunned to see half a dozen people filming the chaotic scene with their phones. That was going to be bad. But there wasn’t anything they could do about it. All she could focus on was getting to Tanner, then doing whatever she had to do.
They tried to reach Tanner before he got to the tunnel leading out of the main area, but there were too many people in the way, and he disappeared from view down the semidark corridor.
Clayne and Cam moved to follow, but as they reached the entrance to the passageway, a handful of Ryan’s mercenaries suddenly bullied their way out of the crowd, swinging their weapons in Zarina’s direction. She didn’t even have time to consider throwing herself to the floor before Clayne and Danica reacted, leaping in front of her and knocking the first two men backward in a move so perfectly synchronized, it was like they’d practiced it a hundred times before.
“Keep going!” Clayne shouted as he lashed out at the man in front of him then turned toward the next. Beside him, Danica did the same thing. “Find Tanner before it’s too late.”
Zarina didn’t pause to think about the fact that she was abandoning her friends. Instead, she ran into the tunnel after Tanner, squeezing the auto-injector firmly in her hand so she wouldn’t drop it. A few moments later, she heard heavy feet running behind her. She knew it was Cam but didn’t slow down to let him catch up. Tanner had too much of a lead on her already.
The tunnel she was in soon split into a Y-intersection, and she instinctively went left. But then she ran into another intersection, then another. There were only a few lights in this part of the tunnel, and the darkness, combined with the absolute maze of twists and turns, quickly convinced her that she had a better chance of getting lost than finding Tanner.
Zarina slowed down, hoping she might be able to hear the sounds of Tanner’s footsteps when she heard a heavy thud behind her, quickly followed by a second one. Pulse pounding, she spun around, realizing with a start that Cam wasn’t behind her anymore.
“Cam?” she called softly, heading back the way she’d come. “Is that you?”
When she got to the last turn she’d made without seeing or hearing him, she started getting worried. She was sure he’d been right behind her. There was no way she could have outrun him. She wasn’t that fast.
“Cam?” she shouted, starting to freak out a little. Coming back here without Clayne and Danica had been really stupid. “Where are you?”
Zarina saw Cam’s boots first. She ran toward him, her heart in her throat as her mind suggested all kinds of horrible things that could have happened to Tanner’s brother.
She was so focused on Cam, she didn’t even realize someone was in the adjacent tunnel until Ryan slammed into her and knocked her against the wall. She grunted in pain, crying out in dismay as the auto-injector tumbled out of her grip and disappeared into the darkness.
Zarina quickly stopped worrying about the injector as she saw another big man with pale-blond hair step out of the tunnel, carrying a large automatic pistol. He leaned over Cam and, for a moment, Zarina thought he was going to shoot Tanner’s brother. But after yanking him partway into the light and seeing the blood covering the side of Cam’s head, the blond guy muttered something and shoved him aside. Oh God, Cam had been hurt bad.
“Let me go!” she yelled, trying to shove Ryan away, first in an attempt to get to Cam, but then to get to the revolver on her belt.
Ryan must have seen the move, because he caught her wrist and pinned her arm to her side easily. “I don’t think so, Zarina.”
Grinning, he casually reached up to slam her head back against the stone wall. The blow didn’t seem that hard, but stars still exploded in her vision, and she felt her knees go weak as she tried to keep her legs under her. She blinked and shook her head, refusing to let herself black out. She had no idea what Ryan had planned for her, but she was going to fight it no matter what.
“I couldn’t ask for a better hostage to help get me out of here,” Ryan added as he tugged her revolver out of its holster and tossed it aside. “Tanner won’t risk coming within fifty feet of me if I have a gun to your head.”
She could have pointed out that Tanner likely wouldn’t even recognize her at the moment but decided not to bother. Instead, she jerked her wrist out of Ryan’s hand and punched him as hard as she could.
Zarina hadn’t ever done anything like that before, and it likely hurt her hand more than his face, but she drew back her fist, ready to try again. Ryan cursed and slammed her against the wall again. Her legs buckled as pain stabbed through her, but she refused to be cowed, instead swinging at him again, getting in another glancing blow.
Ryan’s face twisted in anger, and he shoved her back, looking like he was ready to kill her this time. As his fist came up, Zarina didn’t think she was going to get out of this one with a thump to the back of the head.
Then a blur passed through her peripheral vision, and Ryan disappeared as Tanner
