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I saw Bradan in the hallway, shouting and JD was shouting back but there was no sound. What are they saying?
The pain reduced again and, this time, I was sure of it. Then again and suddenly it plunged and was gone altogether. My body wasn’t ready for the shock. My muscles went limp, I fell forwards out of the chair and Gabriel had to catch me. My heart, which had been racing from the agony, was suddenly pounding in my chest for no reason and that made my brain go into a sweat-drenched panic. My senses suddenly weren’t overwhelmed and the room, the people and the noise rubber-banded from far away to right in my face.
“Easy,” Gabriel said as he eased me back into the chair. “Easy, big guy.”
For a few moments, I couldn’t do anything other than pant. JD marched over to me. He put a hand on my shoulder and looked at me with the most guilt-ridden expression I’d ever seen.
“Later,” I managed. “Tanya.” My jaw was cramping and I realized I must have been grinding my teeth the whole time Steward was giving me the drug. “He’s going to take her to a black site.”
JD put a hand to his ear, listening to his earpiece. “Cal says there’s a chopper spinning up, upstairs.” He grabbed my guns from a box in the corner and offered them to me. “Can you walk?”
I nodded. All my pain receptors must have been in rebound because I felt like someone had shot me full of morphine: even my cracked ribs didn’t hurt. I knew that was dangerous but for now, it was useful. I stood up, a little shakily, and we ran out into the hallway. I was completely disoriented. I’d had a bag over my head when I was brought here so I had no idea where to go. It didn’t help that an alarm was blaring and a smoke grenade had filled the hallway with roiling white smoke, lit up red by the flashing emergency lights.
But the team moved like a slick machine. Someone put an earpiece in my ear and I was hustled up flight after flight of stairs.
We stumbled out into a brutal wind that stole our breath. The helicopter that brought me here was on the helipad, the wash from its rotors blasting us and—
I looked around and stopped, stunned. Wait, what?
We’d run up at least five flights of stairs. I was expecting us to be on the roof, but we were on the ground. There was only a tiny, one-story building and a helipad, and all around us were golden fields of wheat. It sank in that the whole facility had been underground.
I shook my head and focused on the helicopter. It was about to take off and I could see Tanya strapped in the back, a bag over her head. Steward was just climbing in. When he saw us, he gestured frantically to the pilot: go, go! And to my horror, the helicopter started to rise. We stumbled forward through the downwash, but we weren’t going to make it in time. “They’re taking off!” I yelled helplessly.
“No they’re not,” came Cal’s voice, calm in my ear. A rifle shot echoed and the hub of the helicopter’s rotor blades sparked and smoked. The whole thing started to vibrate and twitch, and the terrified pilot quickly landed it again before he lost control.
I wrenched the door open almost before the thing was down and hit the release on Tanya’s harness buckle. She started to thrash and panic but I put my mouth next to where I thought her ear was under the bag and yelled over the rotor noise, “It’s me!” and she calmed and let herself be gathered into my arms. I staggered backwards with her as Bradan and JD fought with Steward’s two goons.
Steward himself jumped out of the far side of the helicopter and ran. Gabriel raced after him but he made it back inside the building and slammed the door. Gabriel wrenched on the handle, then kicked the door in frustration. Locked.
There’d be time for Steward later. I pulled the bag off Tanya’s head and brushed her hair back from her face. Then I brought my lips down on hers and just kissed the hell out of her.
When I came up for air, Bradan and JD were standing panting over the unconscious bodies of Steward’s two CIA goons. Gabriel ran over to us. “We need to hustle.” He pointed: guys with guns were running across the field towards us. There must be another exit from the underground facility.
We ran down a driveway to a dirt road. The sign on the rusted metal fence said the place I’d been held was supposedly a Department of the Interior Groundwater Monitoring Station. There was nothing else for miles: the land was flat all the way to the horizon. “Where the hell are we?” I asked.
