A muscle twitched in his jaw. It cost him to let her lead—to not put himself between her and danger. He held up his handgun. “Go. I’m right behind you.”
The nod was sharp. Professional. But his eyes stayed on her a beat too long, making sure she was ready—the same look he’d given her on the ladder before she’d climbed into the dark.Be careful. I have your back.
Jen swung her legs through the hatch. The metal walls closed around her immediately, brushing both shoulders at once. It was thirty feet straight up to the next junction, then another thirty to open air with no safety lines or margin for error.
The rungs were slick under her hands, filmed with condensation and old lubricant. Her grip tightened instinctively—one slip in a shaft this narrow and she’d slam elbow-first into steel.
The air reeked of old lubricant and rust, thick enough that every breath tasted metallic.
Up. Just climb. Don’t look down. Don’t think.
She closed her eyes. She’d done this twice already tonight.
One more time.
She pulled herself through the hatch completely, boots finding purchase on the first rung. Emergency lighting cast everything in sickly yellow-green, shadows jumping as she climbed.
Her boot slipped once, just enough to spike icy adrenaline.
“Jen?”Wyatt.
“Fuck.” Her forehead bumped cold metal, the sound echoing hollow through the shaft. There wasn’t room to even straighten her arms. Her knuckles ached with tension as she fought to slow her lungs’ rapid suck of oily air. “I’m okay.”
The first grille loomed above her—heavy-gauge steel mesh bolted into the shaft walls. She braced her boots on the rungs, shoulders wedged against the shaft walls, and pulled the power driver from her belt.
Four bolts. Her hands were shaking and the driver kept slipping off the heads.
Come on. Come on.
The first bolt dropped. She caught it before it fell—a bolt pinging off Caro’s head was not the morale boost they needed right now. Second bolt. Third. Fourth.
She forced the grille sideways until it caught on the retention clip bolted into the shaft wall—a small mercy of engineering design she’d never been more grateful for.
One down. She didn’t want to think about how many more.
She looked down just as Caro entered the hatch. A sobbing noise escaped her. “I can’t?—”
“You can.” Wyatt’s hands appeared, steadying her. “Reach for the first rung. I’ve got you.”
Caro’s hand shook so badly it was visible from ten feet up. Her fingers closed around the ladder, slipped, caught again.
“Good,” Wyatt said. “Now, the other hand.”
Caro pulled herself through, jerky and uncoordinated, but she was inside the trunk now and moving upward in desperate lurches.
Wyatt’s voice was low and calm in the enclosed space. “I’m coming up. Keep moving.”
The hatch clanged shut.
Darkness swallowed Jen, except for the emergency lights, casting the vertical shaft in intervals of green-yellow glow and absolute black.
The three of them were sealed inside the vent now.
No turning back.
Only up.
17
