Red Awakening (Red Zone)

by Janet Elizabeth Henderson

  “Why do you want to know where the security hub is? I’m pretty sure there aren’t any security personnel in there now.”

  Did she have to question everything? Couldn’t she just answer him and help him save her ass? She was making it damn hard to keep her alive. “Do you know where it is or not?”

  She pushed past him and stabbed at the screen. “The security hub is located there. It’s marked ‘Development’ on the map.”

  She gave him what he could only assume was supposed to be a death glare. It wasn’t very impressive. Especially seeing as she’d just proven she couldn’t back up her threats with action. What was she going to do if he double-crossed her? Bite his ankles?

  “Okay. I’ve had time to think, and I agree we should stick together until we get out of this building.” She lifted her chin. Royalty, deigning to consort with the commoners. “But no more picking me up and carrying me around. And don’t even think about sex. We are never riding that train again. Keep your hands to yourself or you’ll be sorry. I can defend myself.”

  A bubble of laughter burst out of him, surprising them both. “No, you really can’t. But it’s kind of cute that even after that dismal display of your combat skills, you still think you can hurt me. Princess, you got to know that if you attacked me, you’d be unconscious before you could land a blow.” With a shake of his head, he turned back to the screen and flicked through the plan to the floor she’d mentioned.

  “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” she snapped.

  “Like I haven’t heard that before. Can you communicate with the network or any of your colleagues?”

  “No. I tried as soon as the trouble broke out. I’ve been trying ever since. I can access my integrated datachips, but I can’t send or receive information.”

  “Basically, you’re a stand-alone PC. One that isn’t connected to the network.”

  She cocked her head and considered him. “What’s a PC?”

  “Never mind.”

  A blast echoed through the building, and Mace clamped a hand over Keiko’s mouth, afraid she’d scream and draw unwanted attention.

  “Shh,” he hissed as he closed his eyes and listened.

  She yanked on his wrist, trying to loosen his hold, but it was like a butterfly attempting to move a mountain. Pointless. He ignored her and listened. It took a second to sort through the different sounds reverberating through the building. But then he heard it. A sound no human should be able to hear because it was on a frequency that lay outside their natural range.

  He leaned into Keiko until his lips were close to her ear. “They’re communicating with each other on a higher frequency than most common signals. One that’s limited to a short radius. My guess is they’ve jammed every wavelength except the one they need to contact each other.”

  She stiffened against his hand before again attempting to tug it away from her mouth. Reluctantly, he let it drop, but he was prepared to smack it back into place if she took a breath deep enough to scream.

  “How do you know that?” she whispered. “Do you have implants that enhance your hearing range? How is that possible without damaging your eardrums? Which company designed them?”

  Of course. He told her about the terrorists’ actions, and all she was worried about was product competition. “Focus. There are terrorists searching the building, looking for you. We need to move. They’re close, if I can hear them. Those sound waves don’t travel far.”

  “After this is over, you’re going to explain those implants to me.”

  Yeah, he’d get right on that. After this was over, he planned on being as far away from her as possible. And for some reason, that thought made his stomach clench.

  “Take off your shoes.”

  Her response was another glare. Would this woman ever do anything she was told? Her constant hesitations were slowing them down.

  “Take. Off. Your. Shoes.”

  “Why?”

  “Can you run in them?”

  “No.”

  “Then take off the damn shoes and do what I tell you from now on without wasting time asking stupid-ass questions.”

  With a glare, she curled her fingers around his arm to steady herself as she bent to take off her shoes. With shoes in her hand, she glared up at him. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “Fantastic.” He snatched the shoes from her and tossed them into the bath. Which earned him another strangled scream. Whatever. He inched the door open and listened. They were clear. “We’re going up. Stay at my side. Keep quiet.”

  “Why are we going up?” she whispered back.

  Mace closed his eyes and counted to ten. “Don’t. Talk. Don’t. Question.”

  “I don’t understand. The security base is down, not up.”

  Leaving her in the bathroom seemed like a better idea by the minute. “There’s an elevator that runs from the penthouse straight to the ground floor.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She nodded. “Good idea.”

  “I’m thrilled you think so. Now can we go? Or do you want to hang around and chat some more?”

  “This is the world’s worst rescue. And, yes, we can go.”

  “Well, thank fuck for that.” He grabbed her hand and yanked her out of the bathroom.

  “Don’t curse,” she snapped.

  Mace strangled a groan. “I’m fucking thrilled you agreed to accompany me. Now shut the fuck up.”

  She muttered something about kicking him properly when she got out of her dress but then fell silent. Mace bit back a smile. She was a violent little thing, and he kind of liked it.

  Chapter Eleven

  All Keiko had to do was stay alive until Enforcement rescued her. And if that meant sticking with the man who’d betrayed her, then she could do it. She would remain detached and professional. Which would have been a whole lot easier to do if his body wasn’t driving her insane. Why, oh why hadn’t she gotten him naked before he blew everything? Now she would never know what he looked like without his clothes, and even though he was a liar and a traitor, she was betting he would have looked very fine indeed.

  As she tiptoed, barefoot, behind him, she noted her eyes were level with the bottom curve of his shoulder blades. His size should have intimidated her, but instead it fascinated her. Her eyes rested on his hands, which hung loosely at his sides. They were massive, at least twice as big as hers. Her last lover had been only two inches taller than her, and he had delicate hands with long, artistic fingers. She’d always thought his hands were feminine. You couldn’t say that about Mace’s hands. Not only were they huge, they could be firm or delicate in their touch. She shivered as she remembered exactly how they’d felt on her body. He might be an asshole, but he had gorgeous hands.

  Her forehead suddenly smacked into his back, and she realized he’d stopped walking. He cast her a look of disgust over his shoulder. What could she say? It was merited.

  “Concentrate,” he hissed.

  “My mind wanders when I’m anxious.”

  He rolled his eyes at her. Disgusted with her lack of professionalism, no doubt. But how was she supposed to know how to behave? It wasn’t like she was blackmailed and kidnapped every day of the week. She was just doing what she could to cope. It was either let her mind wander or run screaming through the building until someone put a bullet in her head.

  “Cameras,” he whispered as he pointed to the motion detector at the top of the corridor. “These ones are on the closed circuit.”

  Keiko stilled. Anyone watching the wired-in feed from these cameras would see them. A signal jammer would only affect waves in the air, not images sent through a closed system. In other words, they were in trouble.

  “Can we sneak past them? Do you know how much of the corridor they cover?” She half expected him to make some smart comment about her assumption he’d know something like that.

  He didn’t. “They cover the whole corridor. There’s no sneaking past.” He pointed to the other end of the wall. “Two of them.” He gestured to th
e door leading to the staircase up to the residence. “The door is alarmed and locked with a biometric panel. Are you cleared to open it? Assuming we could make it past the cameras.”

  “Only Miriam, her head of security, and the lead on the security team here would be programmed to open that door.”

  “If we had a gun, we could blast it open.”

  “You’d need to blast the cameras, too,” she reminded him.

  “Let’s go.” Without warning, he grabbed her wrist and tugged her back into the room they’d just left.

  Getting dragged behind him like a piece of luggage was beginning to wear thin.

  Once in the room, he headed straight for the nearest wall panel and brought up the building plans, flicking through the screens at lightning speed.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “An alternative route.”

  He cocked his head as though listening for something, and Keiko strained to hear what it might be. All she heard was silence, but from the look on his face, Mace heard something else entirely with his enhanced hearing.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  Amazing. Who could have developed implants like that? She hadn’t heard even a whisper that they were in development. “I really need to get my hands on some of those implants.”

  As usual, he ignored her comments, took her hand, and dragged her to where he wanted her to be.

  “Do you think you could stop dragging me behind you? All you need to do is say, ‘Keiko, we’re going, move that way,’ and I’ll do it.”

  “Yeah, right. Because you are so good at doing what you’re told.”

  “Maybe if you added a please instead of ordering me around, you’d have better luck.”

  “I’ll get right on that.”

  She glared at his back. It was hard to believe she’d ever found that arrogant attitude of his attractive. It was one thing to dream about a grumpy, take-charge Viking. It was totally something else to deal with them in real life. In real life, the caveman attitude wasn’t sexy at all.

  Mostly.

  She hurried along behind him as he strode through the executive’s office to a room on the far side. It held a small dining and sitting area to relax and unwind. Mace headed straight for the window and pressed his nose against it, looking along the side of the building. A second later, he turned to her.

  “We’re going outside.” His mouth firmed into a line, as though he expected an argument.

  Hell yeah, he was getting an argument.

  She put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “Are you insane? We’re sixty-seven floors up. I’m not going outside. The sun has set, and it’s going to be dark soon—we won’t be able to see what we’re doing. Not to mention, the people hunting us will hear us break the glass. And, I’ll say it again in case you missed it, we’re sixty-seven floors up. Did you get it that time? Sixty. Seven.”

  He folded his arms and looked down his nose at her. “It’s our only choice.”

  How could he remain calm when she was freaking out? And what kind of person thought climbing out onto a ledge sixty-seven floors up was a good idea? An insane one, that’s what kind. She needed to go back to her original plan. He could take his death wish and carry on without her. She was done with him.

  “I think we need to split up,” she said. “You go out the window. I’ll find a closet to hide in until this is over. Good luck. Do you have any last words? A message I should pass on to your criminal friends after you splatter all over the sidewalk?”

  She didn’t expect a reply, and she didn’t wait for one. Instead, she turned toward the door. She was done dealing with insanity. As far as she was concerned, she’d fulfilled her part of the blackmail plan. It was time to move on and take her chances with the terrorists.

  Hands clasped her waist, and she was lifted. Again. A few seconds later, she found herself standing beside the window he wanted to smash.

  She smacked his chest. It was like hitting a tree. “Stop picking me up and moving me around to suit yourself.”

  “Look.” He pointed out of the window. “There’s a ledge. It goes around the building to the stairwell, where we’ll find another window. All we have to do is knock out both windows and we can head up to the apartment, where we’ll be safe.”

  His face didn’t change, but she knew he was lying about something. The lies hung in the air between them and felt so solid she was surprised she couldn’t see them.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” she challenged.

  He let out a huff. “The other window we need to get through is on the small side. But you’ll fit. You can go into the stairwell and open the door from the inside to let me in. It’s a fire escape. It won’t have a biometric scanner on the inside.”

  “And what about the cameras, smart-ass? How will you sneak past them in order for me to let you in?”

  “I’ll deal with it. You just need to get that door open for me.”

  She suddenly felt light-headed. “You’re serious? You want me to go out there? Alone? Let me list all the things I’d rather do first—have my fingernails removed with pliers, have needles stuck in my eyeballs, have—”

  “Stop.” He held up a hand. “You are seriously gory. No, I don’t want you to go out there alone. Who the hell knows what you’d do while you’re out there. If ever a woman needed a keeper, it’s you. I’ll walk you along the ledge. I’ll break the window and make sure you get inside. Then I’ll come back in here and make my way to the door, where you can let me in.”

  Well, that answered at least one question—he was definitely insane.

  “That is the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard. We need to go with my plan. We hide in a closet and wait for Enforcement to rescue us.” Yeah, her plan looked all kinds of awesome.

  His eyes darkened, drawing her attention to the thick black lashes that framed them. Feminine lashes. Completely out of place on a man who was the brutal definition of male. “Princess, I can’t let Enforcement rescue me.”

  Her heart missed a beat. The way he said it, that tone. He was telling her that Enforcement would arrest him, not save him. Of course they would. He was a criminal.

  Mace pointed behind them. “Go crouch behind the sofa while I break this window. I don’t want you getting hit by flying glass.”

  “I’m not going out on that ledge. I’m afraid of heights.”

  “Then don’t look down, because you don’t have a choice. Freedom’s soldiers are getting closer, and they’re looking for you. If they find you, you’ll die.”

  “If I go out there, I’ll die.” She shuddered at the thought of plunging to her death.

  His face softened, and his big hand came up to cup her cheek. She didn’t know why she let him touch her, why she didn’t step back out of his reach. Instead, her breath hitched in her throat, and she stood, mesmerized, in front of him.

  “I know you don’t have a lot of reason to believe anything I say, but trust me on this: I will not let you die. I won’t let Freedom get you. And I sure as hell won’t let you fall off that ledge.” His eyes went liquid with an emotion she couldn’t read, but seeing it made her heart ache. “Please, Keiko, in this one thing at least, trust me. Let me protect you. It’s all I can give you to pay you back for the damage I’ve caused.”

  The ache in her chest grew, and she fought the urge to rub the spot. “If you let me fall, I will come back and haunt you.”

  His lips quirked into a tiny smile. “I can live with that.” He straightened, his hand falling from her face. “Now go hide behind the sofa.”

  “Won’t the sound of the glass breaking attract attention?”

  “They won’t hear it. They’re too far away. Now stop delaying the inevitable and go hide.”

  “You know how crazy this all is, right?”

  “Yeah.” He snorted. “Trust me. It gets a whole lot crazier than this. You’re only experiencing the tip of the iceberg.”

  A gunshot rang out from somewhere on their floor, and her eye
s flew to the door, as though she might be able to see through it.

  “They’re getting close,” Mace said.

  “How do we know it isn’t Enforcement coming to save us?”

  “We only heard one shot. If Enforcement stormed the place, all hell would break loose. Go. Get behind the sofa.” He tugged her away from the wall and pushed her toward the sofa. “Cover your ears.”

  Against her better judgment, Keiko did as she was told. All the while praying that her fragile trust in Mace wasn’t simply stupidity on her part.

  …

  Mace ran a hand through his hair as he watched Keiko hide. There was a good chance that what he planned would go seriously wrong. He’d only tried to dampen noise a couple of times since his genetics had changed and he’d been given new abilities by the experimental weapon that ended the Tech War and inadvertently created the Red Zone. His abilities weren’t ones that normal humans should have. But he did have them, and he’d been working to master them.

  Working being the operative word.

  His only experience with dampening sound had been on a small scale—covering the noise of dishes being smashed or car doors being opened, that sort of thing. A breaking plate-glass window was going to make a massive amount of noise, and he wasn’t sure he even had the ability to neutralize it. But going out on the ledge was the only way they could avoid Freedom. Which meant it had to work.

  With one last glance toward the spot where Keiko hid, he picked up one of the chairs sitting at the table. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth and emitted a series of high-frequency sounds intended to cancel out the soundwaves made by shattering glass. Hoping for the best, he swung the chair at the window.

  There was a dull thud as the chair hit. The glass didn’t break, but the chair crumpled. With a disgusted sigh at the poor workmanship, he tossed the chair aside and reached for another one.

  “What are you doing?” Keiko hissed.

  He glanced back to find her peeking over the sofa, her big eyes glaring at him. “Get back down,” he ordered.