He shrugged, and managed to hide a wince when she touched his face. “Just a little. Do you know you look like the Invisible Man with that getup?” She was covered from head to foot in dark material. “The gas mask looks really strange on a faceless person.”
“Yeah, well, what about flopping around, trying to walk with just your hands and belly? What was that, your rendition of the Little Merman?”
She sounded more like the Amber he knew and he wanted to kiss her. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much time for that, either. Besides, he didn’t think she would be turned on by the taste of his blood. “Remind me later about the ‘little’ comment. So, how do we escape?”
“Can you climb?” Amber indicated the rope that she had used. “I hope so, because that’s the only way out at the moment.”
“Let’s do it.”
Something that would usually have been an easy task proved to be a formidable undertaking. Halfway up, Hawk struggled with shortness of breath as he blocked the surge of pain that accompanied every pull of the rope. He could feel the strain of his arm muscles as he slowed down from fatigue.
Amber reached the upper beam first. “Hurry,” she urged softly. “There are some kind of spikes in the beam to your left. I use them for footholds.”
“Now you tell me,” Hawk muttered.
He found one of the spikes with one foot, secured his hold on the rope, and then, taking a deep breath, resumed pulling himself up. He finally made it to the top that way.
Amber helped him climb onto the ledge.
“You should have let me know how injured you are,” she scolded. “And don’t lie now. You would have climbed a lot faster.”
Hawk was too out of breath to tell her that he hadn’t had time to check the extent of his injuries. At the moment, he was feeling every punch and kick that had landed on his body.
It was pitch-black up there, but she seemed to be well acquainted with the cubby space, pulling up the rope and twining it around something that he couldn’t see from his angle. She had an air of quiet efficiency that reminded him of her in the kitchen. He loved to watch the way she moved so minimally and accomplished so much.
“We’re going through the ventilation access. There’s a breeze as we head out and it can get quite cold at this time of the year. There are different chutes and one comes out near the fireplace. That’s where we usually climb down from. I didn’t have time to bring us jackets. We can’t run with them on anyway. Ready?”
Simple enough. “Yeah,” Hawk said.
“Tell me if you need to stop,” she told him.
He followed her, barely fitting through the opening of the access. They started on their hands and knees, and he found that he had to belly-crawl through parts of the chute. Again, he was struck with how capable Amber was, moving along in the cramped darkness, seemingly able to know which turns inside the chute they needed to take. A regular person would be lost inside this maze, but then she wasn’t one. She was doing what she did best as a contract agent, and he finally understood that guiding had many different kinds of skills. He had at first scoffed at the idea that he needed a guide when he could, with a map and weapons, get anywhere faster than most people. He’d bought the part about the need for someone who spoke the language like a native and knew the region, but still, part of him had held on to the idea that, out in the wild, he would work better alone.
But Amber was showing him a side of being a contract guide he hadn’t considered. She was trained to be a human compass and, gender aside, she must be viewed as someone who had studied every possible route in an assignment, weighing every aspect that might affect the people she was assigned to guide, including timing and conditioning. That was why she had kept asking him how injured he was. Her job was to go from point A to point B with the least possible impedance. He realized now that he should have told her he was a SEAL, that he could take a lot more than the usual covert agent. She needed this information, especially in a dangerous situation.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m right behind you, babe,” he replied softly. “Keep going. I’ll keep up.”
“We’re almost to the chimney. Once outside, the descent is roughly ten meters. The chimney is very old, so there are plenty of footholds. I don’t know how many guards are down on the ground, what with our little grenade fun back there, but I’m sure some of them are busy looking for us.”
“They’ll turn on the spotlights,” Hawk said.
“No, I disabled them at the main generator.”
“How? There was still electricity when you came in. I was shooting out the lights as we went upstairs.”
“Plastics,” Amber explained, finally coming to a stop. “I activated that when we started climbing. I figured if I started a fire of some sort, they’d have to call the fire department and all the commotion would give us an even better chance to escape.”
“Do you know I get turned on by brainiacs?” he asked. He reached out and took her hand. “You saved my life.”
“Not yet, love. We need to get out of the compound and to my car, then to my place, and then you can show me how grateful you are. Besides, I thought you were turned on by hamburgers.”
She squeezed his hand before pushing open the flap that led to the outside. A blast of cold air hit them.
“Cooking and brains…I just might marry you,” Hawk quipped.
She suddenly went still and his face almost smacked into her cute behind. He was actually as shocked at his own words as she was. It was probably the most inappropriate time and place, and he didn’t know where that came from, but it sure felt right when he said it.
