“Is that safe?”
“It might be easier to climb up than to go back through the tunnel,” I gestured behind her. The rocks had partially blocked the tunnel, so logically speaking, we might have more luck just climbing up.
“We don’t even know that it’s safe to go up. What if they made it collapse on us?”
“We can’t stay down here. If the ground shifts any more, the whole fucking place could collapse in on us. I think we have to take our chances.”
We moved through the rubble toward the big collapse, but the closer we got, the more I realized that something had actually fallen through the shaft. We crested a mountain of rocks and stared at what appeared to be a burnt out helicopter that had just fallen through the ground.
“Holy shit.”
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Are you seeing a spaceship?”
I tilted my head and tried to see it the way she was, but I still saw a helicopter. The blades were still there. It just looked like it had been stripped to bare bones.
“No.”
“Good, because I see a helicopter,” she said, climbing over the mountain of rocks to start working her way down the other side.
“Parker!”
I looked up through the bright light shining down, placing my hand above my eyebrows to block the sunlight. Someone was standing up top, but I couldn’t make out who it was.
“It’s Sinner. Good to see I didn’t crush you when I fired that RPG,” he shouted.
“You did this?”
“Hell yeah. It was fucking awesome. You should have seen it.”
“I was close enough,” I said dryly. I may not have witnessed the actual explosion, but I had first hand knowledge of the aftermath.
“Right, sorry about that. You know, you just don’t expect the ground to cave in when you blow up a helicopter.”
“I guess you’ll think twice next time.”
He laughed, shaking his head slightly. “Probably not.”
Twenty minutes later, the guys had pulled Blake and I up through the hole after throwing down a rope for us and making a pulley system for us. I made Blake go first, despite her protests that I should go first because I had taken the brunt of the impact of the rocks.
“See, Cap? I told you they’d be fine,” Sinner said, slapping Cap on the shoulder.
“Yeah, just a little light bruising,” Blake said jokingly.
“Do you have it?” Knight asked, not bothering to find out if we were okay first.
“Yeah, I have it. Thanks for making sure we were okay after jumping from a second story window, evading being shot up, surviving a car crash, almost drowning in the mine, and …what was that last one? Oh yeah, almost getting crushed from a helicopter, that you blew up, crashing down on top of us.”
I pulled the journal out of my vest, but held it away from him. He eyed, but made no move to take it.
“If it had crashed on top of you, you’d be dead,” he said slowly.
“Fine, I’ll give you that one.”
When I didn’t move to hand over the journal, he rolled his eyes and sighed. “Parker, are you okay?”
“A little bruised. I think that window got me again, but for the most part, I should be fine.”
“Then what the fuck are you complaining about?” He snatched the journal away and headed back for the SUV, his nose stuck in it the whole way. I shook my head in disbelief. It was amazing that guy fit in so well with Reed Security.
“You two ready to get back?” Cap asked.
“I am,” Blake said excitedly, raising her hand up like a little kid.
“You didn’t have a good time?” I asked jokingly. “Damn, I really thought that date would be a winner.”
“We’ll see how the night ends,” she said, giving me a devilish grin before walking away. My cock twitched in anticipation and Cap coughed out a laugh.
“Damn.” He slapped me on the back, making me flinch. My back was sore as hell right now, and as much as I tried to hide it, I really needed to just lay the fuck down. As much as I wanted to get my cock inside Blake again, that might have to wait until I could move without groaning. “Come on, let’s get back before someone sees this clusterfuck and comes at us again.”
We were all gathered in the conference room, going over what happened at the lab, what we saw, anyone we could identify…And the whole fucking time, my eyes were on that door, wondering when I could get the fuck out of here and get back to my room. I needed a shower desperately, and I probably needed Hunter to clean up my side. The bleeding had stopped, but I didn’t want to risk infection.
My eyes shifted to the blood soaked wound in Blake’s shoulder. I grimaced as I thought of accidentally shooting her. It had totally been an accident, but accidentally shooting someone when you were trained like I had been was something that I would never live down. I couldn’t let her find out about that. She would razz on me for the rest of my life. I chuckled to myself, thinking about her still harping on me a year from now.
I shook my head slightly. When was the last time that I had thought about anything a year in advance? Would I even still know Blake in a year? I had no clue what would happen when this was all over. It seemed like that was so far away. But I found myself wanting to stick around and see what could happen between Blake and I. She wasn’t like the other women I knew. Sure, the women I had served with were tough, but I felt like they were always trying to prove a point, even though none of us ever treated them any differently. Well, that obviously wasn’t true since Colonel Barrow had been fucking her.
But as I watched Blake talking with everyone else at the table, I noticed how easy it was for her. She
