Would the fire come now?
Would the screams?
Weak. She could do better than this.
She was a Lauderdale. Eve sequence aside, impossible odds was what they did.
“Put me down.” The order that came out of her mouth wasn’t as strong as she would have liked, but given the circumstances, she’d settle for shaken over struck dumb with terror.
In the near-perfect darkness, she couldn’t see his face.
Instead of answering, instead of even acknowledging her demand, he shifted her weight until an arm banded at her lower back, another trapped her legs at the knee. She flinched as pain pulsed through her left leg. “Ouch!”
“Are you hurt?”
Did he care? The flat way he asked it jerked her chin up, forced her to stiffen against his binding grip.
That he had suddenly become a line of warm, male muscle from knee to breast was something she didn’t want to explore too deeply while the dust settled around them. While her heart settled.
He rescued her. That earned him some leeway. Some.
“You’re hurting me,” she pointed out, just as evenly. “And I think I cut my leg.”
“Fuck.” His arms flexed underneath her, and the hand splayed over her ribs tightened. “Keep still, I’m going to get us out of here.”
Kayleigh had no choice but to hang on to his solid shoulders for the ride. “Let me go,” she pressed. “I can walk.”
“No.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What?”
“No.”
Not even an excuse, no apology. Just . . . no. In a taut, firm voice that held no tolerance for argument. No. And that was that. “Are you serious? Shawn!”
“Stop struggling, Doctor.”
Heart in her throat, she twisted; the corded steel at her ribs tightened, making it abundantly clear exactly who had the upper hand in this silent debate. She hissed. “In case you missed it, whatever exploded out there rocked this place down to the foundation. You need to let me go!”
“These things aren’t related,” came his terse rejoinder. “Hold still.”
Kayleigh shuddered, closing her eyes as something large and heavy clattered to the ground behind them. One of the conduits decorating the ceiling, maybe. Or the frame for the monitors she’d been studying before everything had gone topsy-turvy.
The dust billowed like a gritty wave and she felt smeared with it, coated by sweat and the cloud of decades of abandonment. As Shawn made his way through the old GeneCorp building, obeying some inner map she couldn’t imagine, Kayleigh tried hard not to let herself panic any more than she already had.
She was alive. He was alive. More or less unhurt. Things could have been so much worse.
Still, she wanted to stamp her foot. Aside from the fact that he wouldn’t put her down, she knew the action would net her the same thing it always had when she was younger: nothing. Not even disapproval.
She’d learned long ago not to bother.
Instead, she concentrated on breathing. Forced in air, filled her lungs, let it out again. Adrenaline, trapped in her skin with nowhere to go, burned a hole through her stomach.
Where was he taking her?
They’d started in the largest part of the facility, where the only working mainframe had somehow withstood the dual tests of violence and time. Damn it, she couldn’t even remember which way they’d come in. Where were they now?
“Shawn, are you hurt?” He ignored the question, and she glared at the faint outline of what she thought was his jaw. The angle was right. “That better be a no.”
There, a tilt of his head as he stepped carefully over something she couldn’t see. “I’m fine,” he said.
The relief filling her only compounded the surge of wayward adrenaline. Burying her face against his shoulder, she murmured, “I’m glad.”
A curse hissed over her head.
Trusting in her rescuer seemed easier than it should have been.
Being carried, drained to the point of exhaustion by the adrenaline now leaving her feeling battered and empty, proved even more an obstacle to good judgment than nervous anticipation. The intense heat of the man who carried her, his body warmth cutting through her clothes to combat the chill of shock, stole the rest of whatever protest she might have had left.
She was tired. Suddenly so very tired. And his arms were strong, his chest firm.
To her consternation, her lashes lowered, eyelids suddenly heavy. Impossibly heavy. As her cheek nestled against his shoulder, as her brain struggled to comprehend the shock turning her limbs to lead, she could have sworn that he murmured something else over her head. Something much gentler.
Her heart throbbed in her ears as pain lanced a fiery hole through her stomach lining.
When the first whisper of what passed for fresh air in New Seattle’s lower industrial district wafted across her face, she sucked it in gratefully.
An exit. Thank God.
She didn’t expect to be carried across the border into hell. A vicious haze wrapped around her head as her vision blurred; that corona that always signaled the beginning of one of her stress episodes.
She closed her eyes.
The destruction of the old witch factory wasn’t part of the plan.
Shawn stepped out of the encompassing dark, grateful to see the incandescent glow of lights overhead as he broke cover from the teetering building. New Seattle soared high above, just as it always did, with its sky full of neon lights and humming electrical grid. The layers of each subsequent tier hadn’t toppled from the tremors. Hell, he couldn’t even tell if they’d noticed.
He couldn’t say the same for the old industrial center.
The mysterious rumbling had torn apart already cracking pavement, crumbled the warehouse directly across the lot into a skeletal foundation. Dust billowed from the lot; the air smelled of damp rot disturbed and the constant acrid note associated with New Seattle’s acid rain.
He turned, Kayleigh’s light weight shifting in his arms as he studied the mutilated façade of the abandoned building. It listed dangerously, fractured down the middle.
What the hell had caused it?
One moment, he’d been poking around in the back rooms off the main lab he’d left her in, the next, the whole place tried to come down around them. His chin dropped, brow furrowing tightly as he studied her pale, strained features.
Whatever she’d been looking for in this place, he doubted this was it.
She opened her eyes. The color still surprised him: a blue edging more to cloudy sky than true blue. It took her a moment, but when her gaze focused on their surroundings, her gasp echoed his silent, grim dismay. “Oh, my God.” The same thing she’d uttered in the car. Softly feminine in a way he intrinsically recognized, hot-blooded male to female.
His chest kicked hard. “We are damned lucky to be alive,” was all he managed. “I take it you didn’t find your information?
The dismay in the blue-gray eyes meeting his told him everything he needed to know, but his jaw tightened when her lower lip quivered, then firmed deliberately. “Put me down, please.”
If he needed a sign from beyond, this had to be it. No data, no luck for either of them. Or for May.
This was it. Now or never.
The hard slash of his mouth curved up. It wasn’t a nice smile, and he didn’t soften it as he dropped her legs, keeping one arm tight around her back. She slid against his chest until she found her balance. Hectic color appeared high on her cheeks, combating the sickly pallor painting the rest of her.
The drag of her against him, the feel of her hands on his shoulders, almost made him reconsider.
He’d already watched her come apart once. It had to be enough. She’d never forgive him after this.
Not that he demanded forgiveness from a Lauderdale.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he located the tube he’d placed inside, relieved to find it hadn’t cracked. He didn’t strictly need it, but beating Kayleigh Lauderdale
to within an inch of consciousness factored right up there with fingering her to an orgasm. He’d managed one, despite himself; he wasn’t the kind of man who could justify the other.
This is where he proved how badly he wanted the end goal.
“Was that an earthquake?” she asked breathlessly. Her hands, braced against his chest, shook. “Or did something blow up down here?” When he said nothing, her eyes darkened. Her hands went taut against his chest. “Shawn?”
With his thumb, he flicked the cap off the needle. It hit the gravel lot, a faint click she picked out from the ambient noise—the sirens in the distance, the constant thrum of millions of volts of electricity crackling through the metropolis. Her own rapid heartbeat, obvious at the pulse hammering in the base of her throat. Her gaze flicked to the discarded blue plastic.
Sharp ears. Good sense of awareness.
Too late.
She stiffened. “You— Shawn, what are you doing?” Her fingers dug into his chest. Curled, then slammed into his sternum. “Let me go!” He grunted, twisting her arm to force her into an awkward arch. To pin her in place. Her feet scrabbled in the gravel lot, whimper cracking as she wrenched at his grip.
Lauderdale should have invested in a few self-defense courses for his daughter. Not that it would have helped much in the long run—maybe her pride.
Shawn reversed the syringe in his palm and slid the needle through her lightweight blazer, into the fleshy part of her upper arm. She cried out, fear and shock twisting her features. Betrayal.
Just the first of many.
His teeth ground. “Good night, Dr. Lauderdale.”
Another fisted wallop knotted his right pectoral. He blew out a wincing breath, dragged her tighter against him as he depressed the plunger the rest of the way. Her hips turned into his, gouged into the soft flesh between his legs, and he hissed a curse, wrenching the needle out of her arm before she managed any other accidental feats of useless bravado.
The sedative wouldn’t take long. Already, he could see the wild light in her eyes begin to dim. Her lips peeled back, bared her teeth as her nails dug into his upper arm, but he’d worn synth-leather on purpose. Aside from New Seattle Riot Force flak jackets, nothing beat synth-leather for casual personal protection on the streets.
He’d learned that lesson the hard way. All because of her family.
Women like Kayleigh Lauderdale didn’t belong down here with the scrappers. Pampered, spoiled by topside living, she would have made easy pickings for anyone else. He couldn’t imagine what she would have done if he hadn’t been there to escort her down here.
Lucky for her, the resistance got her first.
Now he’d take her even from them.
The tension in her legs, heels dug in to the gritty lot, abruptly eased. Instead of falling back against his arm, she swayed forward, head lolling. She collided with his chest, hands sliding between the flaps of his jacket, tangling in his shirt and pulling the worn fabric uncomfortably tight across his back. “Why,” she whispered thickly. Her mouth tightened, curved down as she struggled to fight, to stay awake. “Why . . . Shawn?”
He dropped the syringe and said nothing.
Her lashes fluttered closed, and with a soft exhale, her hands loosened. Her cheek fell against his chest. Just over the too-calm beat of his heart.
Shawn held her in silence.
In the chilled autumn damp, she was something warm and alive in his arms. He already knew how she’d respond to him—how she would have, before all this.
Her breath saturated his shirt, sank into his skin.
His scowl tightened. Sympathy pangs had no place here.
Breathing was fine. She needed that. Two fingers notched against her throat, but no satisfaction filled him at the knock of her pulse, steady and slower with sleep.
She looked innocent in sleep. Artlessly sweet, like a child. Hers was not a face used to the strain of survival. And why would it be?
Even smeared liberally with dust and grime, her soft, pink lips slack, Shawn couldn’t deny her physical appeal.
He smoothed back her hair from her face with a rough hand, peeled open one eyelid to find her pupils wide in a thin band of misty blue, her breathing steady.
Her skin burned into the nerves at the ends of his fingers.
“Stop it,” he muttered between clenched teeth, curling them into a fist. That was over. All over.
He’d done what he needed to do to ensure her trust. That’s it.
That’s all he could tell himself.
Turning roughly, he pulled her over his shoulder with less grace than he could have and no more than she deserved.
Kayleigh Lauderdale was the enemy. It didn’t matter how soft her skin was, or how prettily she came under his touch. Any touch. She was a monster, descended from monsters.
Soon, she’d be the ticket to freedom for people a thousand times better than her.
And his ticket to revenge.
As if on cue, the comm in his inner pocket thrummed. Shawn cursed under his breath. It took a moment, but he managed to fish out the unit with one hand to scan the frequency number.
Jennifer. Checking on the status of the operation, no doubt.
His smile thin, Shawn banded an arm across Kayleigh’s ass, securing her over his shoulder. He took his time turning the unit on. “Yup.”
“What the hell was that?”
“Near as I can tell,” he replied, “an earthquake.”
“One that only hit a single district? Impossible.”
“Either that,” he replied, shifting his grip on the doctor, “or something exploded. I’m busy, what do you want?”
She cleared his throat, the sound uneven on the comm. “Did this mess up the plan?”
Not even in the slightest. “I found her. She’s sleeping like a baby.” Balancing the doctor’s dead weight, he strode for the car still in the lot.
“Great.” The relief in her voice was palpable. “Jim and Donald are already out to the rendezvous point. Did she find anything?”
“No, place is clean.”
“All right. Hopefully she’ll have some info for us at the base.”
“Mm-hm.” It wasn’t a confirmation. But he wasn’t any less of a dick for it, so he added, “Should see you in fifteen.”
Her sleek car huddled under a broken security light. Dust and debris scattered across the glossy paint, but it didn’t look like the shakedown had affected much else.
“Great,” Jennifer said, relief again displaying more of her softer side than she should. Shawn shook his head. “Drive safe.”
“Yup,” was all he bothered to say, and closed the comm unit with a sharp click. He’d have forty-five minutes before they assumed the worst. If he was lucky, he’d have even longer to make a clean getaway.
Whatever it was that rocked the lower streets of New Seattle, it hadn’t hit a district wildly populated with people. Squatters would get up and move. Abandoned, unused factories and warehouses would crumble.
New Seattle had moved on a long time ago.
It was time he did the same. Before the rest of the resistance came looking.
Chapter Six
Something had crawled into her mouth and died. There could be no other excuse for a taste this bad, her throat dry as sandpaper.
When her eyes fluttered open, two flickering lamps glared down at her in twin warning. Kayleigh groaned, squinting beneath the double-halo surrounding each one, and raised a hand to rub at her gritty sockets.
Her shoulder popped, but her hand didn’t move.
She tried again, willed her muscles to clench, her tendons to leverage her arm up to her own face.
She couldn’t move.
Her spine snapped straight. All thoughts of sleep—of lethargy, and what felt suspiciously like a hangover—fled. The two lamps to her left jerked, then merged into a single burning corona, forcing another groan from her chest as she realized two things simultaneously.
Her leg throbbed in time with the pre
ssure building in her head and stomach, a long line of pain, and she was tied down.
Tied. Down.
Fear dried what little saliva had pooled in her mouth.
“Oh, God,” she rasped, staring at the restraints. Her forearms fastened to the stiff arms of a chair, her ankles to the legs. The unforgiving light, a lantern of some kind powered by batteries, picked out other details to add to her waking nightmare—the metal floor coated with grime, the bare walls surrounding her, and overhead?
Sweat bloomed on her skin, a shuddering sweep of ice and fear.
Nothing but black. No roof of any kind that she could see. A tall room? Vaulted ceiling?
The light didn’t reach that far, and as her heart pounded, as she twisted and pulled her immobilized limbs in every way she could, Kayleigh couldn’t keep a sound of raw dismay locked behind her teeth.
“Don’t bother. You’ll break before it does.” The masculine voice pierced the gap behind her, a void in her spatial awareness she desperately needed to fill. She tried to turn but only succeeded in cracking the fine bones of her neck. Her wince fractured on a gasp of echoed pain from nape to tailbone. “Warned you,” he added.
Only shadows filled her peripheral sight, but she remembered that voice. “Shawn! What’s going on?” she demanded, her throat closing around the words.
Alone. In a dark place. With a man who was, in the end, just a stranger. A stranger who she’d . . . that she’d . . .
Oh, God. She was tied down. Helpless.
Her fingers curled into fists, nails tight against her palm and knuckles bruising against the metal. “If that’s even your name,” she added, snarling her hurt.
“My name is Shawn Lowe, but I don’t expect you to know or care why it matters.” His voice, richly hued with all the deep resonance of masculinity, managed a level of even chill that sent gooseflesh rippling down her arms. “Despite appearances, you aren’t exactly the one I want, Dr. Lauderdale.”
Every fine hair on her nape rose. The way he said her surname, with a cold menace only thinly leashed, slammed her heart into overdrive.
Bad. This was so bad.
Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05] Page 6
