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Right into a landslide.
Some twenty feet of walling had collapsed, and she didn’t have time to wonder about the whys or the wherefores. Kane led the way up the mound of debris, and then they were on the other side, and tooling down the properly paved road that was lit from the ceiling. But they didn’t go far.
Two or three hundred yards away, a bright light was kindling, and she could hear a big engine growling as something approached. It had to be another semi.
“In here,” Kane said as he pulled on her arm.
A fissure in the rock wall presented itself at just the right time. As the next semitrailer truck rounded a corner and its headlights pierced the road right where she and Kane had stood, they jumped out of sight and squeezed into a horizontal crack the size of a shallow closet.
As he’d gone in first, she was on the outside, so she got a good look at the flank of the vehicle. Gray and black, just like the other one, with a cargo trailer that was big enough to fit two stacks of four cars. After it passed by, she caught another whiff of the sickly perfume of a diesel engine.
When she went to leap out, Kane tugged the sleeve of her tunic.
“No, wait. Those two guards will have called for—”
Multi-colored flashing lights now, down from where the second semi had come from—and then the van that streaked by them had “Ambulance” written all over it. Literally. With the red cross and a logo that looked legit on its flanks, it could have passed for an official human one—which was undoubtedly the point.
“We need to wait,” Kane said. “There’ll be another truck. And that’ll be the one you need to get on. Right on the top of the trailer. Stay flat, stay down.”
Nyx turned her head toward him and focused her tired eyes. There was enough illumination reflecting in from the road’s light fixtures that she could make out his face. He was bleeding at his hairline and pale beneath a layer of dirt and oil.
“What . . . what happened?” She sneezed into the crook of her elbow. “ ’Scuse me. What happened back by the Hive? Why the change?”
Kane shuffled his arm around in the tight squeeze and then he was offering her a square of cloth. “You’re bleeding.”
As she stared at the kerchief, he sighed. “I wish it were of better quality. I used to have ones of hand-loomed silk. With my initials.”
When he put the cloth above one of her eyebrows, she winced. “What happened?”
“The lockdown.” He shook his head as if he were frustrated. “When I tried to get to the transport area, to do the risk assessment, I could not get anywhere near it. They’d blocked off the entry to where the delivery trucks were—and no one called in for the shift was allowed anywhere near them. The guards themselves were doing the loading. I realized I had to take you another way.”
“What about Jack?”
“He’s going to run into the same problem even if he goes through the Command’s area. I don’t think they’re going to let even him in there. I’m so sorry.”
Nyx didn’t go there. Couldn’t go there. She shied away from the implications of her leaving right now, without saying goodbye to Jack.
“Shit,” she breathed. “I almost shot you.”
Kane smiled a little. “That’s the only reason I fought with you. I never would have put upon you a hand if I had not been convinced that if I did not, I would be a dead male where I stood.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I would have told you it all if I could have. There was no time to explain. It is I who am sorry.”
Nyx exhaled. And then started talking fast. “Please. I have to see Jack one last time—”
“We cannot.” Kane’s face tightened. “I can’t get you back there safely—and more than that, we are exactly where we need to be. I promised the Jackal, on my honor, I would get you out no matter what it took. Even if it meant you could not say goodbye. I never go back on my word.”
As she closed her eyes, Kane said, “Please know, if I could do so without endangering you, I would. But where we are now is a better position than I could have hoped for. You’re so close, and I gave a male I respect my word. I will not go back upon it.”
“I just wanted to see him one more time,” she whispered.
“I know.”
When she looked at Kane again, the sorrow on his face was so deep and heartfelt, she knew he must have been thinking of the love he had lost so cruelly. The love he had been robbed of.
“If you can’t do it for yourself,” Kane said, “do it for the male who loves you.”
