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Making another corner, he slowed as he came up to the furnished cell. His heart began to pound as he stopped and looked through the steel mesh.
Empty. But it made sense given the lockdown. In fact, he was willing to bet that when he and Nyx had first come by here, the Command had already known about the infiltration, about the dead guard, about the problem, and had taken steps to control the risk—which was why the cell had been empty before.
The Command did not take chances with certain things.
And on that note, he started walking again, but he didn’t get far before his instincts prickled and he caught a pair of scents coming toward him. Moments later, two guards marched into his path. On their approach, he made like he was ignoring them, keeping his eyes softly focused on the air that was immediately before him, relying on his peripheral vision to inform him about their affect, their weaponry, their gaits.
They were hurrying, but their weapons were holstered. And though their heads turned to him, they promptly looked away.
“Evening, gentlemales,” he drawled as he passed them.
Which was exactly what he would have done and said had he not been in the process of smuggling out the very female that they, and everyone else on their shift, were looking for.
Their lack of response was reassuring. He wanted everything to be uneventful.
As he came up to the bifurcation in the corridor, the one where if you took a right, you went to the Wall, he remembered Nyx putting her fingertips on her sister’s name—and thought that he would have saved her female if he could have. Turning away from where they had gone, he stuck with the finished part of the tunnel, with the flooring and the sealed walls and the air that was artificially heated. The entry to the guards’ bunk was closed, and the lack of chatter on the far side of the double steel doors suggested that all, or almost all, of those males had been called into service.
Continuing on, he ran through the plan again, rehearsing the stages, and by the time he approached the entry to the work area, he was ready to—
“Looking for me?”
At the sound of the low, menacing voice, Jack stopped—and hoped that his mind had played a trick on him. The scent of sandalwood denied this possibility, however.
“You missed the turn to my quarters.” Footfalls approached, and when he did not look over his shoulder at them, the tone got sharper. “Aren’t you going to turn around?”
The back of his neck tightened, and his upper lip twitched as his fangs descended. In his pocket, his hand tightened on the butt of the gun as he ran through calculations of distance, sound, and response. If he shot the Command here in the hall, if he killed the sadistic fucker right outside the guard bunks? The noise was going to attract too much attention, and he was just guessing there were none in there—
As if on cue, a pair of guards came in from the work area. The instant they saw him and the Command, they stopped short.
When the one on the right nodded and resumed walking, it was clear that the Command had excused them both, and they passed without looking at him.
It wasn’t until their footfalls faded that he faced off at the black-draped figure—and as he did, he cleared his mind of all thoughts except for how much he detested what was before him.
The chuckle that came out from under the hood was like the hiss of a snake. “I love how you hate me.” The draped arm rose and pointed to a locked steel door. “My quarters are here, as you very well know. We’re going there now. I want what only you can provide me.”
Jack glanced over his shoulder, in the direction he needed to go.
One minute earlier and he would have avoided this intersection. Thirty seconds might also have done it.
“Do I need to call for help,” came a low snarl.
Tightening his hold on the gun, he prayed that Nyx did what she had promised to do. He prayed that she would save herself.
Because it was quite possible he’d arrived at the end of his own road.
This way,” Kane said under his breath.
Nyx gritted her teeth and tried to orientate herself. They were hurrying now, moving fast side by side, as he took her deeper into a section of the prison that she didn’t recognize. The fact that the tunnel was getting smaller and smaller, and the scents of anyone else, prisoner or guard, were getting dimmer and dimmer, made her realize how far off track they were.
How far she was from Jack—
Kane stopped without warning. And as she shot by him, underneath the loose tunic, she brought up the muzzle of her gun.
