AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her stomach pitched.Emit.
Why? How?
And then Colton was speaking to her. “Did you take the tablets I sent?”
There was something in the tone of his voice that cleared her head. That stopped the fear racing through her veins. “What?”
“The pink ones. Put two in water, shake it up, and drink it. It’s a portable IV.”
The backpack seemed exceptionally far away, but she poured steel into her backbone. She could do this. Shewoulddo this. Moe needed her.
Setting down the receiver, she crawled on hands and knees until she snagged the strap, dragging the pack to her shadowed base. Her fingers shook as she searched for the meds, and when she found the clear plastic bag with a dozen inside, she nearly cried with relief. If she could keep enough of the doctored water in her system for a few minutes, it might give her a boost.
She heard Colton’s voice again, and she managed to get the handset between her shoulder and ear. “…vitamins, antibiotics, caffeine, and electrolytes. There’s a needle and tubing if you need to put it directly into your vein.”
God bless him. She fumbled around in the pack once more and came out with a sealed package containing an IV rig. There was even a connector that could screw directly onto a water bottle. “I could…kiss you.”
He snorted a chuckle. “Shelby might not appreciate that. Can you hook yourself up?”
“Back in a minute,” she said, laying the handset down. She’d never had the opportunity to attach herself up to one before, and it was messy, taking several tries, but once she had the IV needle in, she leaned against the stones and lifted the bottle high. Field medicine was sometimes ugly. You did the best you could with what you had.
It took more than a minute, but after half of the electrolyte solution was in her, she moved forward and found the world didn’t swim anymore.Progress. Even her head eased up. She finagled the handset between her shoulder and ear once again, checking in. “It’s working.”
“ETA, fifteen minutes,” Emit said. “Hang in there.”
She relayed what she knew about the internal communication system and solar panels, then she maneuvered to peek through the scope. “Shit. The guard disappeared. Maybe he’s gone for a smoke.”
Wishful thinking. She heard him chuckle behind her and his accent was thick when he spoke. “Enterprising. This is quite an operation you have going.”
Easing around to see him, she swore under her breath, the handset falling to the ground. He was over six foot and a solid, heavily muscled two-twenty, if not more.
The black barrel of his weapon pointed at her face. “Welcome,” he said. He jerked the sat phone from her, smiling as he put the receiver to his mouth. “She’s mine now, Petit. We’ll be waiting when you get here.”
FIFTEEN
The dankness of the cave settled into Moe’s bones. His eyes had adjusted to the dim interior, a string of lightbulbs glowing here and there from some hidden energy source. He kept his flashlight—called a torch in England—off as much as possible, creeping like a rat through the passageways. Torch seemed like a more accurate word when in an underground cave system like this.
He thought about the miners who had worked here, both those from long ago as well as more recently. It felt like their ghosts were hanging around urging him deeper into the labyrinth of rock, metal tracks, and dripping water. Smells assaulted his nose, and occasionally, he caught errant sounds. In one passageway, he’d found a nest of bats, and if that hadn’t been bad enough, another was being used as RING’s latrine. Disgusting wasn’t a strong enough term.
Understanding human nature, he realized an impromptu shithouse would be placed as far from their command center as possible, and that pointed him in the direction he needed to go.
Returning to the central hub, he found the mineshaft directly across from it and stole down those tracks. It didn’t run as deep into the earth, instead paralleling a thick vein of some material the company had mined heavily. Here and there lay scattered tools, empty soda cans, and plastic food wrappers. Crates of explosives—dynamite sticks of days gone by and more modern chemical explosives, similar to those used in the military. He retrieved a pick ax from a pile, assessing the weight and balance of it before moving on.
His socks were soggy, and he had more than once considered yanking them off, but the stone path was sharp. The small amount of protection they offered was worth the aggravation. He followed the tracks, using the wooden slats between them as much as possible but being in the center of a tunnel made him a target.
His ears perked up at the murmur of voices coming from ahead. He debated shifting to the wall for cover but crept forward a few more steps in order to hear better. A faint light glowed at the end and someone moved around, throwing shadows on the walls.
An unexpected woman’s voice echoed down the track. “It won’t be much longer.”
Rustling, a grunt, then a Russian-accented reply. This time male. “So you keep saying.”
Shifting to the wall, he kept a loose grip on the pick ax. He needed to get a peek, make sure his target was inside, then vamoose and signal Parker. He couldn’t wait for hell to rain down on this group.
Inching along, he tried to control his racing thoughts. Everything in him wanted to hurry. He needed to know Parker was okay. The fact he couldn’t simply charge in, gun blazing, ate at him, but it was worse on this mission since she was injured and he was anxious.
The woman’s voice came again—he noted it was devoid of any discernible accent. Not Russian, not British, not necessarily American. As if she had scrubbed all identifying intonations and inflections from it. “You’ll get one shot. You better make it count.”
An icy sensation slipped into his gut. He had to get a look at her. Was she a new member of RING or someone who had given up Charmaine to these brutes?
