Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“Who’s come?” C.P. demanded as more shooting was traded out in the open area.
“The man who abducted you,” he said with a nod to Gus, “is actually trying to kill me. He must have seen me approach the house. I am afraid, in retrospect, I could have been far more discreet. It’s a bit of a family dispute, don’t you know.”
What, like someone hadn’t shown up at fucking Thanksgiving?
But whatever. The reasons didn’t matter at this precise moment.
The attack everybody had been waiting for…
… had finally arrived.
* * *
“Barricade the door,” someone said.
“Get his gun—” somebody else chimed in.
“What are you doing—”
The voices talking over each other, along with the sound of a bomb going off, were partially what woke Daniel up. The other half of it was a sixth sense that Lydia was in trouble: More than the noise or the evident panic, the inner core of him came alive to protect her.
As he forced his eyes open, he couldn’t understand what was happening: It looked like she was standing in front of Gus and seemed to be holding him against the far wall. Meanwhile, Blade was off to the side, dressed in one of Candy’s Santa robes, apparently, and Phalen was by the foot of the bed, a hand resting at the base of her throat like she was either going to throw up or scream—and was trying to stop the reaction.
Distantly, he heard the unmistakable exchange of gunfire.
“Weapon,” he mumbled. “Get the guard’s weapon.”
Well. What do you know. That had been him talking a moment ago, spitting out good advice about securing an available gun. Too bad everyone in the room was arguing with each other and didn’t hear him.
As adrenaline flooded his system, Daniel shoved the oxygen mask off and put everything he had into a holler: “Get that goddamn service weapon!”
His yelling got their attention, but before anyone could react, another explosion went off, and this one was closer than the first. With more dust floating down from a crack right above his bed, and the stench of burning plastic coming through the HVAC system, he knew they were all going to die.
Unless they got out before this attack—which he had known all along was coming—reached the patient room.
“Help me,” he said to Lydia.
The second he reached for her, she backed off of Gus and rushed over. “Daniel—”
“Listen to me,” he told her. “You have to get out of here. This room is a deathtrap with no escape—”
“I’m not leaving without you!”
Rumbling, somewhere near. Like a load-bearing wall was collapsing. “Then take me with you, but we gotta move.”
“Let us go then.” Blade bent down and stripped the guard of his gun—and a knife. “With speed.”
Daniel glanced over at the man. And then started ripping things off of himself, IVs, wires, blankets. “Take one side of me, will ya?”
“I need to be able to shoot—”
“I’ll do it,” Gus muttered as he lunged for the pillow and ripped the case off. “But let me wrap your vein up. You’re losing blood already.”
After he tied off the inside of Daniel’s elbow, Lydia and the doctor humped him to his feet, and it was a bad shuffle to the door.
“Where’s Phalen,” Daniel said just as they were going to step out.
“I’m right here,” the woman answered from behind. “And we need to go to the northern tunnel. It’s the best access point I can get us through. Left. Go left.”
Out in the smoke-filled hall, Blade led the way because he was the one with the weapons—a gun he’d evidently had with him plus the dead guard’s. Phalen, meanwhile, brought up the rear, and she was good with the navigation, steering them down the corridor in the opposite direction from the open area where the workstations were. Where the shooting and the explosions were.
Fuck. Researchers and medical staff were dead or dying…
At the end of the hall, there was a steel reinforced door, and Phalen elbowed her way forward to enter a numerical sequence on a keypad. For Daniel, everything was a blur, but he was aware enough that as they filed in and closed the heavier barrier behind their group, he thought they might have half a chance.
The tunnel ahead was lit with low-energy ceiling fixtures, the illumination dim and blinky, as if some of the power sources had been attacked or at the very least threatened by what had been detonated. He did what he could to keep up, but soon enough, Gus and Lydia were holding all his weight up by his armpits, his bare feet tickling the cold concrete floor.
At the far end was another steel door, and Phalen went ahead again.
He wasn’t sure where they were going to come out, but if they couldn’t get to a vehicle, they needed more weapons and a good barricaded position—