She could do this
. She pushed down again with all her strength, trying to shift the dead body but it stubbornly remained wedged to the blade. Her small size was now a disadvantage, and, unable to pound her frustration out, she hit her forehead against the table.
She yelled at the crying woman to shut up and heard choking noises escaping from her lips. It was only then that she realized that she was the one causing that racket.
Taking in deep breaths, Nikki closed her eyes. She had to get over this black terror and think…Rick’s face floated in her mind, that tough determined look in his green eyes. He had told her he loved her and she had held back. If she got out of this alive…
Her eyes flew open.
She could do this
. Climb up. Pull the knife out a few inches. She leaned forward onto the table and
used her knees to shake the dead body, ignoring the grinding sounds of bone and blade as the knife slowly dislodged from the man she had killed.
Rick frowned, slowing down the blistering pace of his strides. Strange. Cam’s car was still in the half-empty parking lot. Maybe he left with Patty. Then he spotted Nikki’s car parked right beside his.
She had been here. Where the hell was she?
He stared blankly for an instant. Something was so wrong but he couldn’t place a finger on it.
He walked between their cars. If she was here this afternoon, why didn’t she leave a message? Maybe she was nabbed here in the parking lot. He shook the thought off. His mind was running around in circles and he didn’t have time to figure out what had happened. When he opened his car door, the dome light flooded the space between the vehicles.
He was about to slide in when something grabbed the leg of his pants. His muscles bunched instantly as he glanced down. It was a bloodstained hand.
Someone whispered from under the car. “Don’t drive…your car, sir.”
The knife was sharp. Cuts on her wrists proved it. But Nikki finally freed herself after agonizing minutes. She hunched forward, the sudden release of the pressure pulling at her arms and shoulders giving its own kind of pain. She gasped as she shrugged tentatively, then pulled her hands onto her lap as if they weren’t part of her body. Even in the garish light, she could see the inadvertent cuts on her hands caused by the knife and electrical cords.
She bent forward to untie her ankles, but her fingers were too numb. She tried pulling the knife out of the table, but it was still embedded deeply with the dead man underneath. She didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to bounce off his body again. Lifting her legs onto the table, she trapped the knife between her feet, wiggling them up and down against the blade.
Rick ran with possessed speed, his mind racing over what Agent Jones had told him, even as he willed his body to go faster. He had tossed his jacket over the young operative as he made another call to the admiral to take care of the injured man. He now knew Nikki had gone off with Cam and Patty to the vaults. Erik’s account of what happened had made his blood run cold.
“I tried to save Nikki, sir, I really did, but I wasn’t…prepared for her showing up.” Jones’s usual confident voice was a cracked whisper, and Rick had to lean down to hear him. The younger man had some kind of a head wound, but he hadn’t been able to tell how serious it was. “This was my first chance at getting evidence against them, sir…I showed them how I traced Denise’s password to the vault, and since I had a copy of the files, I thought…it didn’t matter. I wanted to catch them red-handed, get some hard…evidence…”
Fire. Rick loosened his tie, tossing it away. He tore at the buttons of his shirt. He had to get there in time. He had to. There was going to be a major fire caused by electrical malfunction. Erik said they had gone to specific vaults where the security was lax and worked on the electrical panels. When the air-conditioning came on during its infrequent rotation, the motor would kick-start a special device, making a fire seemingly caused by faulty wiring.
“You…go…get her, sir. But don’t drive your car or Nikki’s. I think John…that’s one of the men in the vaults…I think he had orders to wire them. He was busy…didn’t notice me escaping from the van. Go get Nikki. I’m okay. Head wound. My Kevlar did its job but he went for…I’m still alive, right, sir?”
Erik had started to sound confused at that point, patting his head as if he were looking for a hole there. There was so much dried blood soaked into his hair, he looked as if someone poured a bucket of thick red paste over one side of his head. Head wounds were like that—the slightest cut bled profusely. The young man sounded remarkably steady for someone with a head injury. He appeared to have difficulty
breathing, so Rick unbuttoned his shirt, only to discover a bulky Kevlar vest underneath. It looked as if it had saved Erik from a gunshot there, too. After determining that the bullet didn’t penetrate, he called Admiral Madison to come to the scene.
Rick had no time to check the extent of Erik’s injuries. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t stay till the paramedics arrived. He had to get to Nikki.
Fire. Only Nikki mattered. He must get there in time. But without a vehicle, all he could do was run—something he had trained himself to do for ten years.
Please, let her be alive. His heart rate was going too fast. If he were to make it, he must fall back into his routine rhythm. With single-minded determination, he willed his breathing back under control. He prayed as he sped up, cutting between buildings and across the open space in the gathering dark.
Live for me. I’m coming, darling. Just stay alive.
Fifteen minutes or so later, he heard an approaching car coming up the crest of a slope. Then the beam of the headlights fell along the road as he continued running in the shadows. He had taken as many shortcuts as he could. There weren’t many vehicles moving in and out after work hours, and he didn’t feel like bumping into security and being forced to stop for explanations.
Nonetheless, the car stopped ten feet away from him, and clicked on its high beam before turning off the lights. Whoever had spotted him wasn’t from security for sure. Rick reached for his weapon in his holster.
“It’s me.” Jed’s voice carried softly in the dark. “Unless you want to meet me there.”
Rick slowed down, heading for the passenger door. Not bothering to respond, he climbed into the car. Who cared how the man had breezed through security? It was unlikely he had gotten authorization this quickly at this late hour. All he cared about was getting to Nikki.
The man apparently knew the way; he drove on without directions. Rick wiped the sweat from his face on his sleeve. He pulled out a flat plastic case, the size of his palm, from in
side his back pocket and handed it over to Jed.
“Here,” he said. Jed glanced at it briefly before accepting it. “That’s what I’ve decoded from the encrypted files from the other day. It’s not what you think it is. I’m not done with it yet, but in case something happens to me, I want you to get those bastards.”
“Do you have a copy?”
“Cam does, but according to Erik Jones, he’s in a crate somewhere with Patty Ostler. I don’t know whether he’s still alive. The Directorate of Administration is rife with double agents, it seems, all underlings to some cadre outside.”
“Interesting. Good infiltration network. Administration being in charge of supplying and security, everything done under its guise wouldn’t be questioned.”
“Money laundering,” Rick suggested. He was beginning to like the other man’s lightning-fast thought process, jumping from point to conclusion with analytical precision.
“Yes, but let’s up the ante to weapons. With a delivery system that uses the best from the USA, weapons make sense.” Jed tapped something on his clothing. Rick couldn’t make out what it was in the dark. “Did you get that, Center?”
Rick knew he wasn’t talking to him. “Do you guys record every fucking thing you say?” he asked, remembering how Nikki had patched a link on him without his knowledge that night Denise had interrupted them.
Jed didn’t answer him. Perhaps he never meant to. Rick would never know, since they were pulling into a scene straight out of a TV show. Black hooded teams, flashing lights, armed personnel. Except for one thing. When the men surrounded the car before they could get out, Rick noticed the silence in the air. This was no ordinary team of men. Jed presented an ID.
“This is Rick Harden, Task Force Two operations chief. His wife is in there,” Jed told the hooded man standing at the car window.
“Yes, sir. Admiral Madison already filled us in. STAR Force team at your disposal, sir.”
Rick opened the car door, studying the quiet efficient men
moving about. These were the admiral’s men. There were no bullhorns, no shouting. They were military-trained. STAR Force consisted of the admiral’s black ops. SEAL teams, the ones TIARA’s Task Force Two was supposed to work with. They relied on TIARA and thus, Rick’s men, to get their job done. Their lives were literally in TIARA’s hands because any wrong information could get them killed. Because of Gorman’s betrayal, the last few years had undermined some of the admiral’s operations. Yet here they were, doing their job, knowing full well Ricardo Harden was Gorman’s operations chief, with a high probability of having betrayed some of them.
“The fire department should be here any minute.” The man stepped in front of Rick. “Sir, you can’t go in there.”
Rick took another step. The soldier didn’t move aside. “I’m going in there,” Rick said. “You will have to shoot me to stop me.”
“Let him through,” Jed said from the other side of the car.
“But sir, I strongly advice against that. We’re evacuating the building. The fire is starting from below, so there is no chance of using the elevators. We’re still waiting for EYES personnel to give us the codes to countermand the vaults’ electronic locks and access wells.”
Rick had heard enough. He started running toward the building. The fire had already started. Somewhere down there was Nikki, and she could be one of the first victims.
He heard Jed call out. “Let him go, soldier.”
Other operatives rushed forward at the sight of him running straight at them and the building, but Jed and the other man must be right behind him, because they stopped and allowed him to pass. As he ran up the stairs of the building, he passed the few who had worked late hurrying out of the building. A few of them even greeted him, surprise and curiosity on their faces. No Nikki.
“All the electronic gates going down to the vaults need eye scans and codes,” the soldier explained to Jed. “We’re asking the few who are coming out of the building if any have access.”
Rick didn’t turn around as he headed toward down the hall. “I do,” he told them.
Access was nothing. For ten years he had collected access codes to find out the truth. He had been battling the system on his own, thinking it was better late than never. Better late than never. No. He couldn’t be late this time.
T
here wasn’t an explosion. Just the dull hum of the air conditioner coming on, and then several snapping sounds from the direction of the panel. An electrical smell filled the air, becoming stronger as the air conditioner continued to churn for a few minutes before coming to a grinding halt. New crisis.
At least she was freed from her bindings. Smoke burned Nikki’s eyes and lungs. She crawled to the back of the large vault, keeping as low to the floor as possible. It didn’t matter. She could already feel the temperature in the room rising. The panel was at the far end but it wouldn’t be long before the fire became stronger. She was going to die. Without Patty’s coded keycard, she had no chance to get out of the place.
It was strange how quiet fire was. Her new enemy didn’t crackle or roar; in fact she couldn’t see it as it choked and seared her throat. She had to stop several times as violent spasms of coughing took over. She dragged in a lungful of air and coughed again.
The silence. No one to hear her screaming. No warning alarm. Nothing to connect her to something she could hang on to.
The sprinkler system hadn’t come on. She was going to die. She looked behind her desperately, trying to gauge how far away the fire was. It was so smoky that the reddish glow of the emergency light cast a hellish fog. Where pockets of
air were still untouched by the smoke, the light glinted back like angry red eyes, glaring and mocking.
Nikki turned away from the sight, scurrying toward nowhere in particular. She couldn’t outrun this enemy. She was going to die.
She hit something solid—a wall. She curled against its surprisingly cool surface. Resignation filled her, even as she willed herself not to fear what was to come. This was it. She didn’t want to die alone, not as she had so many years ago. She thought of Rick, would not forget him this time. Would he hear her if she called him?
She closed her eyes, willed herself to look for her center, for that place called her
chuung.
She saw her beloved husband there and she called to him. “Rick,” she said softly, and his name sounded strange in the room. Her heart pounded and she could barely breathe, but she determinedly hung on to his image, with his green, green life-giving eyes. She would say his name with her dying breath. “Rick!”
She thought she heard a wind chime. Its soothing music was loud and clear, and she knew it came from inside her. Maybe she was losing it; maybe her grandmother had come for her. But something kept disturbing her peace, jarring the floating sensation of letting go. Like that magical chime that called her mind back that dark, dark hour long ago, something reached and grabbed her consciousness. It buzzed repeatedly against her thigh. Her eyes flew open. Her cell phone was ringing.
With a shaking hand, she dug into her pocket to retrieve the small phone. She had forgotten about it. It was her lifeline and she had forgotten about it. She punched buttons and held the phone to her ear. She heard the sweetest thing in her life.
“Nikki?”
She burst out laughing.
Rick stared at Jed. “It’s Nikki,” he stated. His voice came out calm and cool, as if there wasn’t an emergency in his life right now.
Jed’s silver eyes seemed to catch an inner fire, and then it banked. “And?”
“Nikki?” Rick said into the phone again. He said to Jed, “She’s laughing.”
“Hysteria?”
“She’s alive. That’s all that matters. Nikki!” he yelled into the phone.
“I hear you, my love, I hear you,” Nikki gasped out her reply. Her face was wet with tears. “I love you, don’t ever forget I love you.”
Rick swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. “Don’t you give up on me,” he said quietly, grasping his cell phone tightly. “I’m almost there. Move as far away from the fire as you can and wait for me. I’ll be there, baby, please don’t give up. I know where you are, Nikki, do you hear me? I know where you are this time.”
Nikki understood what he was trying to tell her. “I know,” she whispered. “I know you won’t give up, but just in case…just in case you’re not here in time, I want you to know that you’re the only one I love, will ever love. I’m sorry I forgot about us, so sorry I was afraid to come back to you. I—”
“No! I won’t have you giving up on me,” Rick interrupted fiercely as he ran. He could care less if the others were following him. He knew instinctively that more than anything else, Nikki needed to hear his voice. “I’m almost there. Where are you in the vault, Nikki?”
“I’m against a wall.”
“The far end?”
“I don’t…know. Rick, I can’t see. It’s dark. It’s getting really dark here.” Nikki peered at her surroundings in vain, her eyes slitting in the smoky atmosphere. She tried to remember. “I moved as far away from the panel as possible. That was to the left when we entered. Then I was on a table close to them when they were talking…then I killed him…and then the fire started…I crawled to my right…Rick, I must be at the wall to the right of the entrance.”
Her jumbled story tore at Rick. She said she had killed someone. He hoped it was the bastard who had cut off her hair. He shook off the images of what had been done to her, what she had gone through. He couldn’t afford to worry about her injuries right now.
“All right. Listen to me, Nikki,” he told her as he punched in some codes to an electronic door. “There are access wells going out of the vaults instead of stairwells. The elevators are useless. These wells are like air holes. Some of them come out in the grounds outside the building. Others are connected to access tunnels for air conditioner and electrical ducts. Am I making sense?”
“Yes.”
Rick frowned worriedly as he heard her coughing on the other end. He lowered his voice. “Regular air-conditioning pulls in air from an intake shaft for circulation. For underground vaults, they’d designed them to pull air through and direct it to the access tunnel. That means, if you can get close to the intake shaft, I can get to you from the tunnel. It’s usually a hole covered by a grilled panel.”
“Yes. I know what you’re talking about. I’ll look for it.”
“Good girl. And I’m right at the first access entry right now. I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay.”
Rick turned to find Jed right by him. He pointed to the small recessed panel he had opened with a keycard. “The air tunnels are for maintenance work, easier to get to her that way, but if she’s injured, it’d be difficult to maneuver through the narrower shafts, with all the ducts and electrical works in the way, to get back up here. I need you to show the outside access entrances to the firefighters. Here are the access codes.”
Jed listened to Rick’s instructions before asking, “Location?”
“They look like regulation manholes.” Rick gave the coordinates, then switched his attention back to his cell. “Nikki, are you there?”
Her reply was reedy soft. “Yes. I can’t find the intake shaft, Rick.”
He could tell that the smoke was affecting her. He took a calming breath and said quietly, “I’m there. Hang on for me, okay? Just stay where you are, little bird.”
“Okay. The wall is nice and cool where I am. So nice and cool.”
Rick handed the cell phone to Jed. “You talk to her while I get down there. She’s passing out.” When the other man took the phone from his hand, he added, “Thank you.”
Jed merely nodded, waving him to get going. Rick climbed through the small entryway. Before plunging into darkness, he heard Jed speaking behind him, “Nikki, this is Jed.”
Nikki hung on to the cell phone like an anchor. Rick was coming to save her. She heard somebody else talking to her as she crawled into the corner where two walls met. She placed her aching head against the cool wall. The other one felt strangely warm when she touched it.
It was Jed murmuring in her ear. She concentrated on what he was saying. “Nikki, don’t drift off. That’s an order.”
She had to smile at that authoritative tone. “I’m not, Jed,” she assured him. “Can’t you order the smoke to go away?”
“Doing the best I can. How’s the oxygen down there?”
“I’m still breathing. Barely, but there’s some left.”
“Fresh oxygen will make the fire bigger, so we can’t open the vaults from inside the building. The people behind this fire didn’t really account for the thick walls impeding it from spreading. You would think they would understand that since there aren’t any attics, all the usual ductwork had to be accessed from somewhere else. Obviously, our bad guys aren’t construction subcontractors.”
“Is there a reason why you’re giving me a lecture?” she asked.
“Multitasking. Telling you and the men around me who are going to rescue you, love.”
She imagined Jed running around, talking to her and giving orders to whoever was with him, coordinating her rescue
without screaming out commands.
Love.
“Where is he?”
“Isn’t he there yet? Must I do everything?”
Nikki laughed. Then coughed hard.
“You know I only let him come for you this time because you love him more.” His voice was low, as if he meant those words for her ears only.
“Yes, Jed, I know.”
“And he’d better get there in the next sixty seconds or I’ll just have to rappel down from where I am and get you myself.”
As if he had heard the ultimatum, Rick’s voice suddenly called out from behind the cool wall. “Nikki? Can you hear me?”
“Yes!” Nikki yelled back, jerking her head and bumping it on the hard surface, from being surprised to hear him so close. He sounded…like he was on the other side. She banged hard on it. “Rick?”
Rick silently thanked God for giving Erik Jones the strength to escape harm. Without him, he would never have known where Nikki was, or which vault she was locked in. It wasn’t as dark in the tunnels as he’d thought it would be. There was enough lighting from the above levels filtering through cracks and vents to help him along. He was sure there was a lighting system somewhere but didn’t want to waste any time looking around for light switches.
It had gotten hotter as he went deeper, until his shirt and pants stuck to his body as he fought through chunks of insulation and electrical cords in the narrower spaces.
“Nikki!” he called out. He was pretty sure he had followed the right air-conditioning duct, the long silver tentacle that circulated the air.
“Rick!”
Her reply was so clear it made him jump. Then he heard a sharp rapping close by. “I hear you!” he yelled back, pounding the barrier in return.
Nikki stood up, pressing her ear hard against the wall. This must be why it felt so cool to the touch—the access tunnel was right behind it. “Here!” She kept rapping, trying not to breathe too deeply. The smoke was getting thicker.
Suddenly she heard a series of loud crunching noises. The side of her face against the wall felt the reverberation of each blow but she couldn’t tell their origin.
Rick savagely kicked at the aluminum air intake. It was bolted down.
“Come on, you piece of shit! Come on!” He vented his frustration with each kick. The grating crumpled inward at each punishing blow, slowly loosening the small bolts at the corners.
Nikki sat back down. Her eyes were closing on their own, refusing to take any more torture. Her lungs felt like they were going to explode. Her head spun.
“Nikki!” Rick put his head through the opening and was immediately wracked by coughing. He covered his nose and mouth with a hand. “Nikki!”
“Rick…”
She was down there somewhere but he couldn’t see anything. “Stand up, baby,” he said. “Let me see where you are.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can, come on, darling. Stand up for me,” he pleaded. He pulled back from the hole and jumped into the vault. The smoke engulfed him and he went down on his knees. He heard Nikki coughing to his left and scrabbled on all fours to get there.
In the corner was his precious bundle, huddled like a lost puppy. He pulled her into his arms and wrapped her in a tight embrace. He had found her. Thank God. He found her and she was alive. She hung on when he lifted her, hiding her face in his chest.
The thick smoke disoriented him for a few precious seconds and he shook his head to clear it. First thing to go was the sense of direction. He backed into the wall and felt its coolness. The access tunnel behind it. The air intake above, to the right.
“Nikki, baby, you’ll have to grab while I push you up through the intake, okay?”
She coughed out a yes, lifting her arms free. He braced his knees and held her by the waist while she groped for a firm
hold. She pushed off him and slipped through the escape, her legs dangling for a few moments before her body disappeared.
Rick then pulled himself up, ignoring the broken grate as it scraped and cut through his sleeve. He took gasping deep breathfuls of needed air. Musty tunnel essence had never smelled so wonderful. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he reached for Nikki lying on her side.
“Rick…” she croaked.
“Yes, it’s me. We’re almost outside.” He lifted her high against his chest. She put her arms around his neck, and her lips felt like heaven against his jaw.
“Are you injured?” he asked. He didn’t want to hurt her more than necessary.
“I love you,” she told him instead. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
He paused to savor the moment. Had to savor her lips, taste her. Just for a moment. He had waited so long to hear those words, had never thought to hear them from her lips again. He tasted blood in her mouth and was reminded of how close he had been to losing her all over again. There was a cold tightness in his chest, and then a burst of lightness, as if she had squeezed his heart and released it at the same time.
“I love you too,” he told her quietly. “I will always love you.”
She nuzzled his neck and he could tell she was drifting off in exhaustion. “I know,” she replied and lay her head down heavily. “I’m safe now. Take me home, Rick.”
She felt cocooned and protected. The strength and tenderness within his arms obliterated what she had endured. There was only Rick. She belonged here near his heart beating so steadily under her ear as he hurried through the darkness. She didn’t care where he was taking her—she would go anywhere with him.