* * * *
Simon didn’t have to search for the hidden door. It was standing ajar when he reached the office. Rushing toward it, he discovered the ‘room’ was no more than a couple of feet deep, no more than a small closet. Shelves lined the walls, though, and at the back was a steel door.
Scanning the shelves swiftly, he grabbed up a case of the sort used to store data chips and shoved it into his pocket. When he saw nothing else beyond stacks of money in a dozen different denominations, he tried the door. Without surprise, he found that it was locked. Stepping back, he flicked a glance over it, saw that the hinges weren’t visible, which meant it opened in to whatever was on the other side, and began kicking at the edge of the door near the handle.
Caleb arrived just as he fell back to catch his breath and try again. Spying the door, he pushed Simon aside and began battering at it with his shoulder. Simon was having another go at it when Ian arrived.
“Is there enough room for three?”
“We can give it a try,” Simon responded after glancing at the door speculatively.
Lining up belly to back, the three of them launched themselves from the door of the office in a concerted lunge. The door, already weakened from the battering Simon and Caleb had done, flew open the moment the three of them slammed into it.
There wasn’t a hall or a room on the other side. All three of them flew into a well of pitch. The explosion disintegrated the house above them a split second before they hit the bottom, illuminating the walls of the cave and the tunnel that led away from it.
As stunned as he was when he hit the dirt, Simon knew everything that had gone up would be coming down any second. He scrambled to his feet dazedly. “Move!”
Either the explosion had cracked the rock the tunnel was carved from or the debris slamming into the ground above them shook loose rocks from the wall and ceiling.
The three of them launched themselves in a staggering run along the tunnel, covering their heads with their hands in an effort to ward off the rocks raining down on them.
They found the underground channel by falling into it in the darkness.
Splitting up, the three of them searched the walls of the channel until Caleb found the opening they were looking for. Simon knew after five minutes that, without the right gear, no human could’ve swum the distance, and there hadn’t been gear in the tunnel or a boat in the water.
The realization galvanized him and he pushed himself to swim faster. Even so, he heard the distant sound of a boat motor before they emerged from the channel. Two men, he saw, were drifting toward the sea in a boat. One of them working feverishly to get the motor started.
Simon reached the boat just as the man finally succeeded and the motor roared to life. Shooting out of the water, he caught the man as he began to straighten and turn away, using his weight to pull him with him as he dropped toward the water again. A bullet plowed through the man he was holding and dug into his arm. By the time Simon had managed to resurface with the dead weight of the man he’d jerked overboard, Caleb and Ian had wrestled Miles Cavendish into submission.
* * * *
Anna swam upwards through a painful fog toward awareness as a voice penetrated her subconscious.
“What happened?”
“I think I cracked one of her ribs when I jumped from the wall with her.”
She recognized Joshua’s voice, though it sounded strangely rough and shaky.
Someone lifted one of her eyelids. When she managed to focus, she discovered it was Simon staring down at her. “Simon!” she murmured in pleased surprise, swamped with relief to discover he’d made it out alive. As soon as he let go of her eyelid, she drifted down into the dark abyss again.
The next time she roused it was to discover she was being strapped to something.
Before she could open her eyes, she felt herself tilted upward. She managed to lift her eyelids just enough to get a dizzying glimpse of her surroundings and closed them again, struggling with dizziness and nausea as she listened to the voices around her.
To her vast relief, she picked out Simon’s voice, and then Caleb’s and Ian’s.
She’d been more than half convinced she’d dreamed that they were with her. “Wer ‘m?”
she murmured drunkenly.
“She’s come around.”
She didn’t recognize that voice and peered from beneath her eyelids. The bright lights above her said ‘hospital’. She closed her eyes to shield them from the stabbing light, and found herself drifting, swirling.
“Anna! Open your eyes!”
She opened them, but discovered she was still dizzy.
“How many fingers do you see?”
It seemed like a stupid question, but she struggled to focus. “Two.”
“What day is it?”
She frowned, trying to think. “Donno.”
“Did you give her anything?”
“Something for pain. She cracked a rib.”
“Cracked her head, too,” the stranger said. “We need to do a scan. You’ll have to wait outside. You might as well go get someone to look at that burn and those cuts.”
“Where?” she managed to ask after a few minutes.
“New Atlanta. Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of you.”
“Simon?”
“He’s in a treatment room.”
“Caleb?”
“Him, too—and Ian and about a dozen others.”
“Ok?”
“Ok what?” the stranger asked absently.
“Be alright?”
He understood that time. “I’ll check their status and let you know something if you’ll be good for me and stop talking while we do a scan.”
She subsided, but it was more because of the wave of nausea that rushed over her when she felt the gurney she was on turn suddenly. She managed to pitch herself toward the side to throw up.
She felt like crying when she lay down again because she’d thrown up right in front of strangers! And she thought she might throw up again.
“Don’t worry about it,” the man said, commiserating as if he’d read her mind.
“You have a mild concussion. The nausea will pass.”
It didn’t seem to be passing very quickly. She couldn’t decide what hurt worse, her head or her ribs, but it was hard to breathe and throwing up hadn’t helped that at all!
She had to focus just to catch little snatches of breath. Each time she tried to gulp just a little more, pain engulfed her.
After a while, she decided that she must be passing in and out of consciousness although she didn’t seem to be completely awake or completely unconscious at any time.
Her awareness of her surroundings was fractured, though, so it was either that or memory lapses. One moment she was aware of a scanner being moved above her, the next she felt the gurney she was lying on moving and opened her eyes to see lights flashing by overhead.
She was so grateful when the movement finally stopped she felt like crying, and then did because they moved her from the gurney to a bed and she threw up again. And then she couldn’t breathe at all for several moments because she’d stopped her head up and her lungs felt like they were in a vice. Panic at not being able to really catch her breath threatened to engulf her. She clutched at the bedding a little frantically, trying to focus on getting enough air.
“I’m going to give you something for the pain and to calm you. Try not to cry, sweety. Alright? I know you’re upset, but it’ll only make it harder to breathe. I don’t want you worrying about your men anymore either, doctor’s orders. They’re all alright.
I give you my word. We’re going to keep them here a couple of nights to make sure their wounds are healing like they should, but they’re in damned good shape all things considered.”
Her men? “Simon?”
“Yes, he’s going to be alright. And, before you ask, Ian and Caleb, too. Joshua’s in better shape than the others. Cuts and burns from having pieces of burning debris landing on him while he was trying to shield you, but nothing too serious. Like I said, they’re all just fine. Now you can concentrate on getting better so they can take you home.”
Anna was still trying to make sense of all that when the drug kicked in. She didn’t think it had kept her out long, though. She felt just as bad or maybe worse when someone woke her up. “You doing ok?”
She frowned. She’d been doing a hell of a lot better before she was woken up.
She informed the stranger of that and he chuckled. She fell asleep again as soon as he quit annoying her, but he was back again, it seemed, before she’d slept any time at all.
And so it went, on and on, until she felt like she was in hell where the demons stood over her, just waiting for her to doze off so they could wake her up again. She’d lost all track of time. Finally, though, she woke up at the sound of yet another intrusion and realized she didn’t feel nauseated. She even felt vaguely rested, or at least not exhausted to the point that she felt drugged and disoriented.
Her ribs still hurt. The moment she tried to drag in a deep breath to yawn it felt like she’d been stabbed.
“How are you feeling?”
Annoyance flickered through her a split second before recognition of his voice dawned. She opened her eyes to see if she was right and smiled faintly at Joshua’s worried face. “My hero,” she murmured, discovering her voice sounded rusty with disuse.
Joshua blushed to the roots of his fair hair. He looked so miserably uncomfortable she regretted the comment even though she’d intended it as appreciation. He looked so miserable, she lifted her arms to him impulsively, wanting to sooth him.
He hesitated fractionally and got up from the chair. Lowering the rail on the side of the bed, he leaned down over her and very carefully gathered her into his arms, burrowing his face against the side of her neck. “It wasn’t much of a rescue,” he muttered. “I’m not sure you would’ve been hurt worse if I hadn’t done anything at all.”
Anna searched her memories and discovered everything that had happened almost from the time Paul had taken her was a confusing jumble. She did remember the terror that there were explosives in the house, though mostly her fear that Simon would be killed and then Caleb and Ian when they’d rushed off to help him.
She stroked Joshua’s cheek soothingly, trying to think of some way to banish his guilt. It was misplaced to her thinking, but she could tell it was troubling him deeply and it made her ache for him. “You saved my life. You’ve got no reason to feel guilty that I got hurt anyway. Don’t you think I feel just as guilty that you got hurt trying to save me?”
He lifted his head enough to search her eyes. Apparently he saw what he needed to see in them. Some of the tension eased from him. He moved closer, nuzzling his nose against hers as if seeking forgiveness. Anna was more than willing to bestow it.
Although there was nothing to forgive him for in her mind, she could tell he needed it to forgive himself.
Cupping his hard cheek, she guided his lips to hers and brushed her lips lightly back and forth along his and then pressed her mouth to his more firmly. He plucked her lips gently, almost experimentally with his own, drawing warmth from her that was a combination of empathy, affection, and gratitude at first. The instant he settled his mouth more firmly over hers, though, the entire tenor of the kiss changed, and the warmth with it, to something else entirely.
The heated pleasure of desire spiraled through her as her focus shifted to the feel of his mouth on hers. His taste and scent were as beguiling as his touch, seductive, drawing forth an appetite for more.
Surprise flickered through her, for although she’d noticed from the first that Joshua was a very attractive man, she hadn’t sensed a mutual attraction. She’d thought of him more as a friend, thought he saw her that way.
It was a little disorienting to feel his desire and surprisingly exciting. There was nothing even vaguely platonic about the way he made her feel now, though.
“That’s enough of that!” someone said briskly from directly behind Joshua, making both of them jump guiltily and break apart.
Joshua met her gaze with a mixture of guilt, desire, apology, and amusement and then, as carefully as he’d embraced her before, he disentangled himself and straightened, moving away from the bed.
She was acutely conscious of him waiting near the door as the doctor checked her out, half fearing he would leave and just as uneasy about him staying when she was no longer sure about how to act around him. Had she read more into the kiss than there was? Or had she misunderstood his friendliness before? Or had something changed between them because of what had happened?
“I’m guessing you’re getting antsy about getting out of here?” the doctor murmured with amusement, then added dryly, “I know someone—actually several who’re certainly anxious for me to cut you loose.”
Anna felt her face heating but hopefulness ousted her discomfort. “I can go?” she asked hopefully.
“Not today,” the doctor responded with a mixture of amusement and censure, “but if you’ll behave yourself and you’re showing this much improvement tomorrow … I’ll think about it.”
She studied Joshua a little warily when the doctor left again, struggling with her confusion. The doctor’s reference to ‘several’ had resurrected a dim memory. Someone, a stranger not the doctor, had been talking to her about ‘her’ men, she remembered abruptly. He’d been referring to Simon, Ian, Caleb and, she supposed, Joshua because she’d kept asking about them. It had seemed strange to her even then that he’d referred to them as hers.
It dawned on her that multiple ‘marital’ partners, or pods as they often referred to them, were the norm in the territories, not the exception. The author of the piece she’d read had cited several reasons why the practice had come about—finances being one of the biggest factors. The shortage of women and the difficulties of protecting their ‘claim’ in an area still pretty wild had also made it necessary and acceptable if not completely satisfactory to the men.
Had the doctor simply assumed since she was so concerned about them and, maybe, they’d been equally worried about her, that they were a … ‘pod’? Or did he know something she didn’t?
The thought made her pulse go a little wild for a few moments until it dawned on her that there was no agreement between them. There’d never even been a discussion—not a hint that they had interest in that direction, as far as that went. As shocking as their custom was to land dwellers like herself, the Atlanteans still took it very seriously, just as seriously as land dwellers did marriage, maybe
more
seriously. It wasn’t an informal thing. It was a commitment
.
It couldn’t have just ‘happened’ without her knowledge and consent. The depth of her disappointment when she realized it had to be a misconception on the part of the hospital staff was telling.
Then again, she’d found all of them extremely attractive from the first. The circumstances that had brought them together had taken that physical attraction to an extreme dependency with dizzying speed—from her perspective anyway. She’d had her security snatched out from under her so abruptly and so completely she’d been like someone who couldn’t swim being suddenly tossed out into an ocean. She’d been ready to grab anything to keep her afloat and safe, and hold on for all she was worth.
It didn’t follow that they felt anything like that. In fact it seemed highly unlikely that they would. She certainly wasn’t a man magnet. She thought she was average, maybe even a little better than that, but she was shy and socially awkward and men hated having to carry the burden of courtship entirely on their own shoulders. It made them uncomfortable and they tended to avoid that, and her, like the plague even when they seemed interested. They might enjoy the hunt, but they expected the woman to let them know she wanted to be hunted, not run like hell in the other direction.
And, unfortunately, she’d never really mastered that part. Her college ‘hunk’, Chance, wasn’t the only man she’d ever mooned over, just the only one who’d managed to stick out the hunt until he caught her. She had a ‘taste’ for ‘pretty’. Unfortunately, it scared her so badly when they actually noticed her, she made like a frightened rabbit and scurried into her burrow to hide until they gave up.
She couldn’t even really trust her own feelings, if it came to that. What she felt for them
could
be as real as it could get. They were handsome, fatally attractive men, she w as sure, to any woman with eyes in her head. Beyond that, they were ‘hero’ material, the very epitome of what a man should be, flawed, temperamental, aggressive, possessive, but intelligent, protective, and capable of gentleness and affection. She could’ve easily fallen just as hard and just as fast if not for the extreme circumstances, but she couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was blinded by her need for safety either.