“Jimmy, I want to go home, I need to go home right now!” his voice rose as he started to panic.
“Everything’s going to be fine. But we’ve got to find a way out of here with no one noticing, and we need to do it quietly.” Jimmy studied their surroundings, pondering the best option. The only way out he knew for sure was back by where the transport had exploded, and he was pretty sure that would be the worst direction to head. He had retrieved his fallen weapon, and, fortunately, nobody seemed to notice them. The firefight had ended with the explosion, and the few figures Jimmy could see were moving cautiously toward the glowing wreckage of the transport.
“Let’s head away from the fire,” Jimmy suggested prudently. “Maybe we can find another door or something that will get us out of this garage.” Jax didn’t acknowledge him verbally, but he started to hurry across the room in the opposite direction of the flaming wreckage. Jimmy swallowed a curse and darted after his brother. Hopefully, his brother didn’t rush headlong back into the hands of their captors.
It seemed to take eons to reach a door, but when Jax had a goal in mind, he worked toward it with dogged focus. They eventually reached the side of the warehouse-sized garage, and Jax pressed forward single-mindedly until they reached another set of silver doors wide enough to be a cargo delivery point. Jimmy groaned when he saw the access pad; without the code they would not be able to get the door open. Jax didn’t seem worried, though. Jimmy’s brother wholly focused on the access panel, his fingers nimbly entering codes for who-knew-what. Jimmy groaned. Jax was going to trip security, permanently locking the door and probably alerting their kidnappers to their location.
“Mr. James,” croaked a voice from behind.
Jimmy startled, cursing himself for not watching their backs carefully enough, and twisted around to see Grier crawling up to them. Jimmy swung his arm up, adrenaline jolting his mind clear, training his weapon on the traitor. Grier halted when he saw the gun.
“You’re in terrible danger,” Grier rasped.
“Really,” Jimmy answered drily. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“The plan has gone awry. Another boss is attacking the building. I’ve got to get both of you out of here.”
“Sounds like a great idea. Somehow I don’t trust you, though, seeing as you brought us in here in the first place.” Jimmy scanned the smoke-filled room for other threats. Was it a ploy? Get him talking and distracted while soldiers moved in from a different direction? From the corner of his eye, he noted that Jax hadn’t even turned from the access pad. He was still tapping away.
“It was Mr. Quintan’s plan. He needed to get at Mr. Zane’s supplier. Your brother was the only thing they wanted, the only way in. The security officers have the building surrounded. They were just waiting for you to be taken to the real boss before they moved in. But another crew attacked. I don’t know if they want your brother too or if they have some other motive.”
Jimmy listened to him skeptically. If this was true, Quintan was an arrogant bastard. He was playing roulette with Jimmy and Jax’s lives. There was no way to guarantee their safety through all this.
“The code word is squill,” Grier finished with a cough.
Jimmy swore. The code was from his father. It was his way of letting Jimmy know that the rescue attempt was legitimate.
“I’m going to kill Quintan,” he muttered. “After you get us out of this alive.”
Suddenly the doors slid open. Jax turned to Jimmy, “I opened it, Jimmy,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he hadn’t just pulled a code-breaking stunt that most expert burglars couldn’t do without computerized help.
“I see,” Jimmy wheezed. His brother would never cease to amaze him. “You can tell me how later. Now let’s get going!”
Outside the loading dock door, Jimmy ran straight into the back of Jax, who had frozen midstep. They stood on a dock facing a street that was in complete uproar. There was a transport on fire, people screamed and ran for cover, scattered reports of gunfire echoed loudly, and shouts and cries and crashes came from all directions. It was if they had stepped out into the middle of a war zone. Even for the Red Zone, this was bad.
“No way was this just a botched kidnapping,” Jimmy observed, his voice coming out more calmly than it should have, considering the way his stomach twisted painfully and his heart hammered. He could hear his brother’s breathing escalate. Jax was going to panic in a second. Would it be better to go back into the warehouse? Or was there somewhere they could sneak inside close by?
Jimmy was already scanning the building across the street, trying to spot a door or window, when Grier spoke, interrupting his thoughts. “I have them,” he stated tersely, presumably into an embedded comm chip somewhere. “West side of the building at the loading dock.” Within moments an armored transport hurtled around the corner and ground to a halt at the dock. The door slid open, and Jax darted inside without even waiting for Grier. Jimmy stumbled in behind, Grier bringing up the rear. The transport sped away before they even had a chance to strap themselves in.
“We’ll get you straight back to the QE,” Grier said, “and get your brother home in his lab. He’ll be safe enough there. Mr. Zane’s access was allowed only for this operation. By now, he should be in custody and detoxing. Everything will be fine.” Jimmy glanced at his brother, who had his eyes squeezed shut tightly and held his ears as if he could block out his surroundings. His agoraphobia would be making this whole trip agonizing for him. But in the end, Jax would probably be all right.
Would Jenna? Had Quintan really planned this so well that he now had Zane taken care of and Jenna safe? But judging by the unexpected attack at the warehouse, Jimmy wasn’t ready to bet on it. The first thing he was going to do at the Tower was race up to the lab and make sure Jenna was OK. Before they reached Quintan Tower though, the transport screeched to a halt, and then the men in front started debating in terse whispers. Jimmy leaned around the partition trying to see ahead.
The sight shocked him more than anything else that had happened that night. The Quintan Edge was under siege.
19. Marah Again
Sensation returned slowly. At first Jenna became aware of cold metal beneath her knees and hands. The metal vibrated gently, thrumming through her palms. Her ears buzzed with a vaguely musical humming. She opened her eyes to stare at the metal floor, then raised her gaze to stare blankly at a brightly lit room with two techs standing frozen in openmouthed amazement.
One of them looked vaguely familiar.
“Ms. Donnell?” she asked hesitantly.
“Mmmm,” Jenna mumbled. Her stomach lurched uncontrollably.
The man standing next to her rushed forward. “Are you OK?” He put an arm around her and helped her to stand. She was grateful for the arm. She felt a bit wobbly, and her jumpy stomach was morphing into full-blown nausea.
“What are you doing here?” the woman demanded, her voice gaining strength seemingly in proportion to Jenna’s physical recovery. “Where is the package Mr. Quintan was sending us?”
“Zane Quintan sent me through,” Jenna managed through chattering teeth. This room was freezing also.
“What in the name of all the holy saints was he thinking?” the man exclaimed, leading Jenna carefully down the steps. “We haven’t tested the gate on anything living yet!”
The woman seemed only partly mollified by Jenna’s short explanation. She still stared suspiciously at her. “Why in blazes would Mr. Quintan tell us he had an important test package to send us, but then jaunt over a nearly naked tramp?” she said skeptically. Jenna’s cheeks burned. She was quite aware that her shift didn’t cover much.
“Ahna!” the man rebuked. Suddenly Jenna placed her. She had shared a bunkroom with Ahna for those nights she had been in Marah. They had eaten breakfast together.
The woman threw Jenna one last suspicious glance before hurrying to the terminal. She tapped
hurriedly at the screen.
“Mr. Quintan?” she said breathlessly. Jenna turned nervously in Ahna’s direction, straining to hear what Zane was saying. But of course she couldn’t hear a word from his end.
“Mr. Quintan?” she tried again. She shot another frown at Jenna and then turned back to her panel. “Something’s not right. I can’t seem to reach the Edge Gate lab.”
“Are—are you sure?” the other man said doubtfully. “We just spoke to Evers only a short while ago.”
“You need to call for help,” Jenna interrupted decidedly. “Zane Quintan is not in his right mind. He dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and forced me at gunpoint into the gate. I think he’s on nanospeed. Plus, a guard rushed in to tell us that the Tower was under attack. Something terrible is going on tonight, and Zane’s at the center of it.”
“Says the industrial spy,” scoffed Ahna. “Oh yes, we all saw you on the security footage, sneaking around and trying to find out about the gate. Ignore her, Brennan.”
Jenna didn’t get the opportunity to try to explain before the gate’s humming suddenly raised in pitch at least an octave. The streamers of webbing fluttered madly, and the engineer holding onto Jenna’s arm hastily tugged her away from the gate. Ahna raced for a panel in the far wall, presumably a monitoring panel for the power generation. A loud crack split the humming, and suddenly Zane stood on the gate’s platform.
A second later he collapsed.
“Mr. Quintan!” squeaked Ahna. Brennan dropped Jenna’s arm and darted to Zane’s sprawling form. Jenna still hung back. Either it had worked or it hadn’t, but either way, she wanted to stay clear of Zane.
“He’s alive,” Brennan sighed in relief. “Just passed out for some reason. This is absolute madness, trying the gate on people before we’ve even made sure it is safe!”
“I’ve summoned the doctor,” Ahna announced, her voice shaky. She still stood motionless at the power terminal, though. Jenna tried to take a step toward the door, but her nausea overwhelmed her. She rushed for a nearby wastebasket and heaved for several minutes, though there was very little in her stomach to come back up. By the time she had forced her stomach into a temporary truce, she could hear Brennan’s low voice telling Zane to just lie still for a moment. She pushed her sweaty hair away from her forehead and stood shakily. Ahna was suddenly there, brusquely shoving a cup of water into her hands. Jenna gratefully swished the lukewarm water around in her mouth and spat into the wastebasket before turning warily in Zane’s direction.
He lay on the floor, his legs now stretched out straight, with somebody’s jacket pillowed beneath his head. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling, but he wasn’t moving otherwise. Jenna studied him intently for any sign that the nanobots were no longer in control. While on the other side of the gate, she had remembered that deep-space pilots could not use nanospeed for their trips because as soon as they went through an interstellar gate, the nanobots suddenly deactivated. It wasn’t just nanospeed either; any person using nanomed technology for a health problem couldn’t travel off-planet. There were several theories about why this happened, but it had been proven conclusively that for whatever reason, it did happen.
Was Jaxon’s gate the same? Did it deactivate nanobots of all kinds, like those in nanospeed? Was Zane suffering from some unknown side effect of local gate travel, or was he reacting to the sudden, shocking detox to his system?
How much difference would it make? Even without nanospeed to warp his perception, he would surely be furious that Jenna had secretly married Jimmy. He probably would feel used, and he might even still think she had been a spy of some kind.
The door slid open, and Jenna jumped in alarm. It was a medical team rushing to Zane’s side. A doctor knelt quickly and pressed a probe to his arm. Zane flinched at the prick, and the doctor stared at the readout on her handheld scanner. Brennan plucked at the arm of an assistant and nodded in Jenna’s direction, and soon they poked and prodded her as well.
“We need to transfer both to the infirmary,” the doctor ordered sternly. “We have no idea what the possible long-term consequences might be after passing through the gate. They need to be monitored.”
“No,” Zane croaked. He pushed away the doctor’s arm and struggled into a sitting position. “I need to contact my father. The QE is under attack.”
“Mr. Quintan, you can barely move. We need to get you to where I have better facilities to treat you,” the doctor contradicted.
“With all due respect, doctor, you work for me, not the other way around. There are lives at stake. I must contact my father. The QE security has been compromised. Our communications system was inoperative, and I could not send any comms from the Edge gate. I had no choice but to come here to get help for the QE,” Zane said, his voice firmer. He stood up, holding to the med assistant next to him for support. “Brennan, set up a secure link to my father’s cruiser from here.” His eyes flicked at Jenna.
“And someone please take care of Ms. Donnell. She should be checked to make sure she is well. Ahna, find her some clean clothes. I’m afraid I dragged her away from her home in a rush.”
Jenna let out a long slow breath. It wasn’t exactly an apology, but clearly Zane was running the show again, not the nanobots. He didn’t seem ready to hand her over to security for torture and death. Yet.
“Please come this way, Ms. Donnell,” a med assistant requested kindly. He gestured toward the door, and Jenna started to follow him across the room when it suddenly slid open again and two burly, armored security officers blocked the opening.
“We have been ordered to take Mr. Zane Quintan into custody,” a deep baritone voice echoed through the gate chamber. “Please stand aside and do not interfere, or you will be considered in direct violation of your contract with Quintan-Forrest Enterprises,” he continued.
“No, wait!” Zane protested. “I just need to contact my father first. Then you can lock me up, I promise.” The men did not appear to even hear Zane’s words. They advanced into the room, and the medical staff pressed backward. The assistant holding to Jenna’s arm dragged her away from the center of the room, leaving a clear path straight to Zane.
Zane still tried to argue. “I have information my father has to have! I just need a few moments, I promise!” The guards were inexorable; they had him in custody, shackled with heavy manacles, in moments. Clearly they were prepared to deal with a man unreasonably strengthened by nanospeed.
“Did you just receive these orders?” Zane demanded. “Have you spoken to my father? Does he know of the attack on the QE?”
“Don’t waste your breath,” responded the other officer dismissively. “Mr. Quintan is staging his own attack on a rival facility today and instructed that if you made an appearance here you were to be immediately confined, no matter what story you concocted for us.”
Zane’s eyes went wide. “He knew,” he gasped. “He knew, and he let me . . .” his voice trailed off for a second. Jenna frowned. Lev Quintan had known what Zane was up to tonight? Had allowed Jaxon to be mistreated and harassed, and Jenna nearly killed? To what purpose? She swallowed hard. Had Lev found out about her secret marriage as well? Was this his own way of taking care of two betrayals? One by Zane and one by Jenna?
The security officers marched Zane out without even glancing at the others in the room, his voice still carrying through the hall as he tried to persuade them that he did have information his father needed, no matter what. Jenna listened to him in growing dread; she had never heard that pleading tone from him before. Zane sounded terrified.
The QE was truly in danger, then. Jenna swallowed, thinking of Lilah and all the other employees of the QE who might be caught in the crossfire. Not to mention Jimmy and Jax, if they were still in there too.
The room was utterly silent for only a moment. Then the medical team started to bustle back out of the room. The assistant at Jenna’s
side turned to her again. “Shall we go get you checked out, then, Ms. Donnell?” His cheerful tone was forced. Jenna almost let him lead her out of the room, figuring that Mr. Quintan surely had things in hand. But what if he didn’t? Who would he believe? Not Ahna or Brennan. He would just assume that they were repeating Zane’s “wild stories.” However, if he truly had some idea of what Zane had planned tonight, then he would know that Jenna would have been dragged into it against her will. There was a chance he would believe her.
“Not yet,” she said determinedly. “First, we have to warn Mr. Quintan about the QE.”
“But surely Mr. Quintan has things well in hand,” protested Brennan. “I have never known him to be caught by surprise. You might just interrupt him when he needs it least.”
Jenna shook her head. “There’s a first time for everything. Zane thinks that his father needs to be warned. Are you willing to bet the future of both resorts—the future of the local gate itself—on the assumption that he does not?” Everyone in the room stared at her without moving. Brennan frowned thoughtfully. Finally, Ahna turned to her terminal and started coding in an address.
“I’m going to bring him up for you here,” Ahna explained. She pointed at the holocam ring. “Stand there so he can see you. I’ll code it priority; if he is available at all, he will answer quickly, since it’s the address to the Marah gate lab.” Jenna hurried to the circle and tried to quell her nausea. She still wanted to throw up, but now was the worst possible time for queasiness to get the better of her. She felt a drape of fabric over her shoulders and looked back in surprise. The med assistant had removed his coat and hung it over her shoulders. He nodded at her and stepped back. She slipped her arms in the sleeves and pulled it close over her shift just as the hologram sprang to life in front of her.
The Quintan Edge (Roran Curse Book 2) Page 22
