Blaze

by Joan Swan

  She made the final jerk out of his grasp with tears shining on her cheeks. Luke stood frozen as she walked toward the team, swiping at the wetness.

  “Come on,” she yelled as she headed into the dark, tossing her M14 over her shoulder. “Let’s get this damn thing over with. And there’s obviously no cover here, boys, so no dragging your asses.”

  The team hesitated, their heads swinging from Keira’s disappearing form to Luke. They quickly folded their maps and picked up their equipment packs.

  “Too early to be sniping at us, boss—” Kai fell in behind her. “Bet your men love you when you’re in a mood.”

  Seth followed.

  “Come on, bud. Let’s go.” Teague hiked his pack higher on his back and gestured to Luke. “Give her some time. She’s pretty freaked out right now.”

  No. She wasn’t freaked out. He knew that look of conviction in her eyes.

  I just can’t.

  He understood the conviction too well. For Keira, living with the fear of losing the family she loved would be more painful than living the rest of her life alone.

  EIGHTEEN

  Keira flipped the night vision goggles over her eyes, then set out at a good clip through the desert terrain. Shrubs scraped the tops of her boots as she tried to focus on what lay ahead instead of what she’d just left behind. Tried to block the pain rolling off Luke in rivulets. It was for the best. Maybe, in time, he could find someone else. Someone who could give him the family he craved, without all the risks Keira brought to the table, without all the problems, the drama, the headaches, the heartache.

  She had to believe that. It was the only way she’d make it through the night.

  She activated the microphone on her Bluetooth. “Alyssa? Are you there?”

  A crackle came over her earpiece, then Alyssa’s voice with the kids playing in the background. “I’m here. Are you at the ridge already? It’s too early.”

  “No, we’re on our way.” Keira hated leaving her alone with the kids. Alyssa wasn’t really alone, of course, but that didn’t seem to do much for Keira’s anxiety. “Everything okay?”

  “My Lord, you’re worse than Teague. Everything is as fine as it was when you checked eight minutes ago. And, yes, I have Panos on the other line. And yes, all four Special Ops guys are still here, two inside and two outside. This is such overkill. Can you hear me, Teague? Overkill.”

  A click came over the line, then Teague’s voice. “Nothing’s too good for my baby.”

  “Be careful,” she said. “And don’t come on again until you’re at the ridge. I’ve got kids to entertain.”

  The grade they trudged up helped train Keira’s mind on the moment. Only it also drew attention to her body and all the aches Luke had left after an ambitious morning of amazing sex.

  No, not sex. So much more than sex. Even more than making love. Their time together had been about mending damaged hearts, soothing pained souls. And whispered promises.

  Promises she’d broken.

  Again.

  Already.

  He deserved so much more.

  She pushed harder. Moved faster. Wiped sweat off her temple.

  “Hey, boss,” Kai called from behind. Too far behind.

  She stopped, swiveled, and squinted into the dark.

  “You jogging this mountain or what?” He caught up with her, his chest heaving beneath his fatigue jacket. “You’re going to kill Foster.”

  “Speak for yourself, Ryder.” Mitch stopped and planted his hands on his knees. “But can we . . . save some energy for the . . . fucking rescue, please?”

  Keira hadn’t realized how hard she’d been pushing, and she had to admit, now that she’d stopped, she felt a little light-headed and nauseous herself.

  Seth paused alongside Kai and hit his arm. “Remember her as a rookie? She could barely get up a ladder with just her turnouts on.”

  “Couldn’t throw a ladder worth shit, either,” Kai said. “Barely passed the freaking academy.”

  “Shut up.” She stretched out the stitch in her side. “I beat your time on hose lays.”

  “Because I had a busted ankle.”

  “Right. Stick to that story.”

  Teague and Luke brought up the rear, and Keira scanned Luke’s face, his gait, his body language, for any signs of physical distress. Couldn’t detect any.

  “Mitch is right,” Teague said. “We’re moving too fast. If we get there too soon, we’re not going to mesh with their plans.”

  Keira nodded, let everyone take a swig of water, and rested another minute before heading toward the southwest ridge. She tried not to notice how unusually quiet Luke was. But it didn’t work. Guilt gnawed. She rationalized it away as she forced her body to work.

  Within ten yards something vibrated beneath her feet. Trembled up her legs. She stopped, hands out to balance. The guys stopped right behind her.

  “Did anyone feel that?”

  “Feel what?” Kai asked.

  She canvassed the dark. Nothing but scraggly shrubs and a lone Joshua tree fifty yards away leaning into the side of the mountain they were climbing. “Maybe just an earthqu—”

  Then she heard it. The sound vibrated in her head with an almost slow-motion echo.

  “Chopper,” she called. “Hit the dirt.”

  She fell, face-first, breaking her fall with her palms, and lay perfectly still. Within a second, the distant whap-whap-whap of a helicopter’s blades sliced the air.

  Keira turned her head just enough to see the bird, a blurred black spot in the midnight sky. Searchlights swept the ground. Shit. She held her breath as the flood passed right in front of her nose and seared her eyes.

  “Comanche,” Kai said in the wake of the chopper’s pass. “Infrared comes standard. They might have already seen us. We’d better break for the ridge.”

  Keira was on her feet, digging into the sandy soil with the toes of her boots, forcing her quads to pump. She didn’t slow until she’d hit the hard-packed wall of the ridge just below the Castle’s boundary. She broke the momentum with her hands and swung around to search for her men. They all hit the wall, full speed, just as she had.

  They crouched at the base of the wall. Silence filled the air. Everyone waiting for whatever surprise came next.

  She turned a glare on Mitch. “Choppers? Why the fuck didn’t we know about chopper surveillance?”

  “So . . . ungrateful . . .” he panted. “I never . . . said my . . . sources were perfect.”

  She dropped her head. Wiped at the sweat again. How much of their other intel was bogus? How many other surprises would there be?

  “Then I guess the faster we’re in and out, the better.” She glanced at the thirty-foot cliff they had to traverse to reach the entry point to the compound. “Last leg, guys. Ready for some mountain climbing?”

  Keira searched the dark sky once more before scaling the cliffside. She used brush roots and rocks as leverage, testing each for stability before trusting it with her weight. Sand slipped beneath her fingers and the soles of her shoes, making the climb slow, and she worried about the men behind her, all significantly larger. And with her own ribs aching like stab wounds, she worried about Luke’s trek up the wall as well.

  At the top, she crouched with her weapon sweeping the terrain. Movement in the brush caught her eye. Her finger tensed on the trigger. A jackrabbit hopped around a clump of brush and disappeared. She didn’t let herself relax until the scrape of boots and the spill of sand behind her ceased and all her men were at her side, including Luke, who continued to perform like a true hero.

  Kai tapped into the phone. “Lys, we’re here.”

  “Okay.” Alyssa came on with a click. “We’re all on the line.”

  “Panos,” Keira said as she started toward the estimated five-hundred-foot mark along the chain link electrified fence surrounding the compound. “We’re headed toward the hatch. Tell us when we hit it.”

  Silence filled the line as the six of them skirted sha
dows along the fence line where the field lights faded into night. The whoosh of their canvas fatigues and packs was nothing but a whisper in the night.

  “Ekee pera.”

  Mateo’s voice broke in her ear, followed by Panos’s. “There. He says you’re right there.”

  Teague swept a flashlight over the hard-packed dirt and brush that looked exactly like the rest of the desert floor. “They really don’t know it’s here. That’s amazing.”

  Yes, it was amazing. Mateo’s remote viewing had given the team information about the ancient facility that had been built at the original infamous Area 51 as a sister-site prison-slash-lab facility for aliens. Very X-File-like with a Habitrail of underground tunnels that hadn’t been used in decades. According to Mateo, this entrance led to the southernmost tunnel system running beneath the wing housing his father’s cell.

  “Don’t get excited, Creek,” Mitch said. “It’s nothing but dirt right now.”

  “Fucking pessimist,” Teague said.

  “Teague.” Alyssa’s familiar reprimand came over the line.

  Mitch grinned. Teague shot his brother-in-law a you-fucker glare.

  Keira barked an order before they killed each other. “Dig.”

  All the men dropped their packs, pulled out compact shovels, clicked handles into place, and started digging. Keira kept her weapon up, her gaze sweeping for movement, her senses open for choppers, voices, noises. All she got back was silence. But she did pick up on Luke’s frustration, which she pushed into the background.

  The deep chunk of metal on metal rent the air, followed by Teague’s voice filled with a told-you-so air. “Not just dirt, Foster. Pay dirt.”

  A steady hum of adrenaline strummed through Keira’s veins as she watched the men clear the heavy metal doors. Luke came in with bolt cutters and removed the ancient padlock.

  Seth spread his arms. “Clear the area.”

  Everyone stepped back, and even though they each had their own powers, it was always amazing to watch another member work theirs. Seth, a strong telekinetic, sat back on his heels, laid his hands on his thighs, and closed his eyes.

  His muscles strained. Sweat broke out on his face. The metal doors creaked and rumbled as if ghosts were trying to escape. Seth’s hands came out, palms down. A glow started at his fingers, spread to his palms, slid halfway up his forearms.

  Seth threw his arms overhead. The doors opened and flipped back, clanking to the ground in a puff of dust.

  “Shit.” Seth pushed to one foot, then the other. Wiped his face with the sleeve of his fatigue. “They’re heavy as a truck.”

  The team gathered around the black cavern and peered in. Silently. But Keira could hear their thoughts. And every one was thinking the same thing.

  Fuck me.

  Cash curled his fingers around the bars on the small window built into the holding cell door and watched Domino hightail it back toward Cash’s cell, where other guards were tearing the contents apart looking for something they’d never find.

  He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face or the excitement burning his stomach, but he bit his bottom lip against the trill of laughter that wanted to roll from his chest.

  No time for celebration. He had a long way to go.

  He dug in his front pockets for the plastic explosive he’d created in the lab and smuggled out over the last week. He dropped to his knees and worked the clay hard in his palms, using the single stream of light spearing the small opening as illumination.

  His body heat softened the clumps, and he thinned them, shaped them, and stuffed them around the hinges on one side of the door and around the lock on the other side.

  He pulled the lighter he’d lifted off the janitor from his opposite pocket. His hand shook as he peered through the bars again, down the hall. But he relaxed when he found it empty. He turned his back to the door, flicked the lighter once. A spark flashed in the dark, followed by a steady flame.

  Releasing the lever, he extinguished the flame and turned back toward the door. He pushed his wrist into the stream of light and checked the time. Soon. Very soon. But not soon enough.

  He paced the cell, running over all the scenarios he and Q had lined out. He imagined Mateo closer with each tick of the second hand. Imagined seeing Keira again as a grown woman.

  This was it. His last chance. He would make it or he would die trying.

  Keira pulled the map from her front chest pocket. The other five men crowded around her shoulders as she unfolded it and thought over their plan one more time. She didn’t like the idea of splitting up. At all. But she didn’t see another option.

  “Panos.” She glanced at her watch. This was her last chance at communication with Mateo before they went underground. “Where is Cash right now?”

  Mateo spoke, followed by Panos’s translation. “In a cell, in an area away from his main room. The one you have marked on the map as C-three.”

  “And Dargan?” she asked.

  “The last time Mateo saw her, she was in his father’s room arguing with him. The guards had started tearing apart his things. He can’t see her now; he can only see his father. He can only see one area at a time.”

  A dull growl sounded in Mitch’s throat. “You people really have severe limitations with these so-called powers, don’t you?”

  “Lay off the kid,” Teague said. “He’s freaking five years old. You were probably still wetting the bed at five.”

  “Stop it,” Keira said to the guys, then spoke to Panos again. “Are there guards around Cash now?”

  “No,” Panos answered. “Not that he can see.”

  “How far can he see?”

  Panos had a short conversation with Mateo. “He’s not good with distances. He says he can see to the end of the hallways leading in both directions, and there’s no one.”

  “Not good with distances,” Mitch muttered. “Beautiful.”

  “Shut up, Foster,” Teague said.

  “We’ll stick with the original plan,” Keira said. “I’ll take Teague and Seth and we’ll go for Cash, here.” She tapped the map, then moved her finger to the route the others would take. “Kai will take Luke and Mitch to search for Q.”

  She met Kai’s eyes, glowing green in her night vision. “Don’t dick around. If he resists, bail. If anything feels wrong, bail. We don’t know anything about him. As far as we know, he could be a decoy, a plant, anything. If Cash tells us he’s a legitimate prisoner, we can always come back for him.”

  “That’s appealing,” Mitch quipped.

  Teague sighed, but it sounded more like a growl. “Foster—”

  “I’m glad I put you two on opposite teams.”

  Keira folded and stuffed the map into her pocket and positioned herself over the tunnel. She let her gaze touch every member of the team—a silent message of connection.

  Her eyes met Luke’s last. Affection and support and lingering frustration trasversed the space between them. And intimacy. An intimacy from their firefighting days when they’d always connected just before having to separate at a fire scene. So many things said with one look—I love you, be careful, come back safe—she couldn’t begin to name them all, but tonight “I’m sorry” was also foremost in her mind.

  He looked away long before she was ready to let go.

  The combination of her regret and the focus of her mission helped temper the anxiety growing in her chest as she tested the strength of the narrow metal rung leading into the shaft. Teague held both hands to steady her as she put her full weight on one, then another. When they held, she climbed down the ladder. Teague started down next.

  The hole, lined with what looked like the same hewn rock as the tunnel at the safe house, was far deeper than she’d expected, and that creepy crawling sensation she’d been able to keep at bay started to slide over her skin. “I feel like I’m climbing into hell.”

  She used her arms to swing down to the last rung, hung off with one hand so she could tilt her head down and shine h
er night vision goggles below her, and found the ground.

  Thank God.

  “About a four-foot drop,” she called to the men above.

  Keira led the way down the narrow passage to where the stone walls split, creating two hallways. She turned right. Her team followed.

  The blackened hallways were bright as daylight and shaded green in her goggles. Keira’s gaze darted between the map in her hand and the tunnels ahead, which branched off in various directions every ten or twenty feet.

  A left turn. Another left. A right. Straight.

  “Crap,” Mitch’s voice whispered right behind her. “Every hall looks exactly the same.”

  Yes, it did. A freaking alien maze that tweaked her sense of direction the same way an ocean wave could turn a swimmer upside down. But they were close. She could feel it in an uneasy gnawing at that vulnerable space beneath her ribs.

  With her heart throbbing, Keira paused at the next break in the stone wall and peered around the edge.

  Clear.

  She swung her weapon toward the opposite end of the corridor and scanned the length.

  Five cell doorways lay recessed into the rock on the right. Wide slabs of metal with rivet-reinforced straps. A single two-by-two window centered in the top third with pudgy steel rods spaced three inches apart.

  She held up her hand and pressed it into a fist, signaling the men to stop and hold position.

  Teague and Seth remained behind her. Kai passed by with Mitch in his wake, then Luke. She willed Luke to reach out and squeeze her shoulder, touch her arm, even just slide her a glance. But he didn’t. Which was only right. She didn’t deserve the effort. Then he was gone, disappearing around another corner.

  Keira forced her mind away from the parting by focusing on Cash. On seeing her brother. On starting a new chapter in her life.

  She glanced at her watch and let her eyes follow the second hand as it ticked down the last twenty seconds. When the black line reached the six-second mark, a distant sizzle met her ear and a matching fizz kicked off in her gut. They were in the right place at the right time.