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“Just right outside.” Mayhem went over to the other door on the back wall. “All you have to do is take them down the shallow stairs and leave them right there—”
“This is ridiculous.”
As Luke spoke up, they both looked at him. Well, didn’t he seem happy. He had crossed his arms, planted his boots, and was the very picture of over-my-dead-body.
Ha-ha, Rio thought grimly as she glanced down at the guards. “Look, I can handle it, okay? You think these are the first corpses I’ve seen—or handled?”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Yes, it does.” She had to check out the outside of the building. “And it won’t take me any time at all.”
When she went to hook her hands under one of the guards’ armpits, Luke stepped in. “No. I’ll do it. I’ll take them—”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Mayhem blurted.
“There’s a little cover over the door. It’ll be okay.”
There was a tense pause between the two men, as if they were communicating telepathically. And then Mayhem shrugged as if Luke had won the argument with some really bad logic.
“I guess I’ll just make sure she gets out of here alive,” the guy muttered. “That’s all I got.”
“Don’t be so fucking dramatic.” Luke picked the guard up off the floor, and slung the dead body over his shoulder. “Get the door, will you?”
“You better hope it’s cloudy,” Mayhem announced.
“Like she said, I won’t be long.”
In the back of Rio’s mind, she tried to find a protest that wouldn’t make them suspicious. When she failed, she could only impotently watch Luke—and she couldn’t help but note how easy it was for him to lift a heavily muscled man up off the floor. And deadweight was tough because there was little resistance to get a grip on.
She couldn’t imagine being that physically strong.
As Mayhem entered a different code on the pad than the one at the other door, she memorized the pattern—and was surprised at the smell of fresh pine as things were opened. Light from an overhead fixture showed off all kinds of new construction, but as with everything she’d seen that had been recently added, nothing was painted or finished beyond the rough-in first stage of the work.
Luke descended four or five steps; then he paused at a second, reinforced door—and looked back at her.
For a moment that felt like an eternity, he stared at Rio like he was memorizing her face.
“You can trust Apex, too,” he said roughly. “The bastard’s a sociopath, but he feels like he owes you, so you’re safe with him.”
Dear Lord, he was saying goodbye.
“What the hell is out there?” she asked.
Mayhem drew her away and closed them in the quarters together. Putting his back to the panel, he squeezed his eyes shut.
Then they waited. And waited . . .
. . . and waited.
As time stretched out, Mayhem started to roam around, hands in pockets, hands out of pockets. He looked at a watch on his wrist—that was not actually there—and for the first time, Rio noticed what he was wearing. It was the same kind of loose sweatshirt Luke wore. And his boots were the same. Pants, too.
Like it was a uniform.
“How long’s he been gone?” she blurted. Because she was wondering, herself. Worried, herself.
Abruptly, he turned to her, took out a gun that was so big, it surely qualified as a hand cannon—and held the weapon out to her.
“You’ve got to go and check on him. I can’t.”
Rio didn’t even hesitate. She took the forty. “Open that door right now.”
The man went over to the keypad. “Listen, once you’re out there, I can’t help you. You’re on your own. Just please . . . bring him back. He can be an asshole, but I’m kind of fond of him.”
“Don’t worry. I got him.”
The sun was low in the horizon, its angle sharp, its rays dulled by the seasonal tilt of the earth on its axis. There was even some cloud cover in the sky, and on top of all that, there were trees around—granted, with not much on their limbs, but the trunks and branches were not invisible.
Yet Lucan didn’t make it more than two feet out of the door.
Yes, there was an overhang, but that didn’t do shit when that great-ball-of-fire was so close to going down on the horizon: The low position of the sun meant the blinding, strength-sucking golden light hit him like a ton of bricks, the force of it taking his breath away. As he slumped, he lost his hold on the guard’s body, but that did not matter.
Instantly, he couldn’t see anything.
The world turned into a shapeless, formless bank of white, and he spun around, thinking he was facing the door. Except he wasn’t. He put his hands out, but he couldn’t find the handle. Couldn’t find the building.
