It had been playing the last time she remembered waking up. She’d been too weak to move, to speak. All she remembered was that song and the general’s large, square-shaped hand trailing down her cheek.
The man ripped around the corner, the sharp jolt of movement sending the blood rushing to her head. She blacked out for a moment but quickly regained consciousness.
The tiles blurred beneath her as the man raced down the hallway. She bounced uselessly off his back, but for some reason she didn’t have any doubt he was strong enough to carry her out without her help.
She didn’t need to look to know Dr. Winters was plodding along in front of them. She could hear the steady staccato of her heels click-click-clicking down the tiled hallway. Every jostle, every shift in the man’s body sent a fresh wave of blood pounding into her head until her brain felt like a giant pressure bomb swishing around inside her skull.
The blood that had pounded in her ears earlier shifted mercilessly into a dull, sharp-edged roar like a saw cutting through a thick board. God, this shouldn’t hurt so bad. It shouldn’t be so painful.
Click-click-click. She swayed, strung out and helpless. She had awoken to this terrible reality, not knowing where she was or who had her, only that she needed to get out. And now this man, this warrior, had rescued her like she was some modern-day princess.
Amidst the pain and the sensations flooding her psyche, Caroline was aware of every inch of hard-packed muscle shifting under her tummy. He was so strong, her avenging angel.
Click-click-click. God she hated that sound. It rattled through her head, and memories starting surfacing from her foggy past. How her eyelids had always felt like someone had tied ten-ton weights to them. Paralyzing terror had pinned her to her gurney as she screamed and screamed in her head, not strong enough to open up her mouth.
All the while, Dr. Winters’s bespectacled face had floated above hers, studying her reactions, staring at her as if she were a lab rat.
She remembered seeing the doctor inject her with IVs. But even more gruesome, she remembered the long red tube running from her left arm and the huge bag filling with her blood. They’d leeched her; they’d taken her blood without asking, forcing her to give up part of herself that she’d never wanted to give.
Click-click-click.
Caroline shoved her palms into her temples, trying to stanch out the piercing pain in her head. She wanted to scream at Winters to take off her shoes, but she was too busy fighting back vomit.
Suddenly, heavy, pounding footsteps rushed up from behind them. Men shouted. Gunshots erupted. Her world tilted, and then she was on the ground with her savior crouched in front of her, firing off rounds like a machine. Unflinching and unblinking, he just reacted. Pop. Pop. Pop. The hallway had become a war zone, full of unbearable noise as bullets blasted apart the walls.
She heard the crinkle of material and tilted her head to see Winters curling up into a tiny ball a few feet behind them.
Her warrior never stopped or even paused as he returned fire. Not one bullet had pierced Caroline’s flesh, yet each and every one of the men who’d followed them dropped like flies.
“Caroline, are you all right?”
Caroline kept her hands cupped over her ears and blinked up at him, mute. Was she all right? She didn’t know. They had used her as a damn permanent blood donor against her will, and now her skin felt like it was on fire, her head screamed with pain, and her heart was pistoning in her chest like it had been fueled with nitrous oxide.
He took her shoulders in his hands and the dull roar instantly quieted.
“Caroline, were you shot?” The words, spoken slowly, calmly, penetrated the fog surrounding her mind.
She concentrated, trying to remember how to make her lips form the right shape. “No.”
“All right, I can tell that you can’t stand, so I’m going to carry you again.” His voice was full of command, not that she would’ve questioned him in the first place. He was a professional—the sight of the bodies strewn down the hallway confirmed that.
His arm was gentle as it slid around her waist, but the movement still hurt. And then he was easing her over his shoulder and the bile she’d been fighting burst from her throat, burning up the back of her mouth. She squirmed and pounded on his back, and sensing her urgency, he sat her down.
Kneeling, she bent at the waist and heaved the contents of her stomach, the man’s strong arms holding her up. Oh, God, she was dying. She had to be.
His fingers wrapped around her hair, holding it back from her face. That small comforting gesture brought tears to her eyes. No one had cared about her in so long. She’d grown up with such a loving father, but for days or months or whatever, they’d kept her prisoner. Using her as equipment. A blood bag. Not telling her anything. It had left her empty and hollow.
When she finished, she swiped a shaky hand over her mouth and panted. She wanted to tell him thank you, she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and hug him. She did nothing.
The man scooped her into his arms, cradling her against the massive solid chest, and she let her head come to rest on his shoulder. She took a deep breath, immersing herself in his raw masculine scent. He smelled like a man should. Like guns and grit and glory. She knew logically she wouldn’t be safe until they left this lab, but he made her feel protected—a feeling she cherished.
“Get up. I know you’re not hurt.”
Caroline heard Dr. Winters rise to her feet. She was breathing hard and fast, probably as shocked by the full-out battle as Caroline was.
“You don’t need me anymore. You know the way out.”
“Move.” The man’s chest rumbled beneath her and the vibrations traveled straight through her bones. As they pounded down the hall, Caroline fisted his shirt, trying to keep as still as possible so she wouldn’t distract him. A blast filled the air, the sound sending a fresh wave of pain through her head, as a bullet pinged off the corner right next to Caroline’s head. Concrete shrapnel showered down on them. The man shoved his shoulder forward, shielding her from whomever was firing at them down the hall. He took aim and fired and the barrage of bullets instantly stopped.
They traveled the maze of hallways in silence for the next few seconds before the man came to a stop in front of a single metal door. She had no idea where they were, but she could sense the dense pressure overhead and knew they had traveled deeper into the earth. Why wasn’t he taking her up and out? There was no way this would lead away from the lab.
The man lifted his gun and pressed it into the back of Winters’s head. Caroline watched her flinch with a small measure of satisfaction. It was about time that woman was prodded with something. She’d been poking and sticking her for who knew how long.
“Open the door.”
Winters licked her lips, her normally perfect hair askew and her glasses perched at an odd angle on her nose. “Captain Reaper, you don’t have to do this.”
Caroline glanced up at her savior in shock. He was United States military? And now she finally had a name to put with that savagely beautiful face and muscular body. Reaper. It fit him so well. He was her own personal angel of death.
Right now, all of his vengeful fury was focused on Winters. “I don’t need you alive to open the door.”
Winters’s lips flatlined and she pressed an invisible button on the wall. A panel slid to the left, revealing what looked to be some sort of scanner. Winters placed her hand on the largest panel, closer to the bottom, and leaned her eyes in toward a small scope just above it. Two sets of green lights flashed and the door buzzed open.
They entered a small, windowless room. It was dark but for the light spilling in from the hallway.
The air shifted and Caroline shivered.
She sensed a change in Reaper.
As if in slow motion, Dr. Winters turned to face them, her flat gray eyes free of fear or anger. “You’re making a mistake. You need me. I’m the only one who knows the formula and there’s not enough serum left t
o maintain your team.”
“Shut up,” Reaper said in a quiet, dangerous voice.
Dr. Winters kept going, completely ignoring the threat. “You volunteered. Your team and yourself. You chose this.”
Caroline could practically feel him trembling beneath her, although when she looked up at his face there was no hint of emotion whatsoever.
“I signed up for something completely different than what you doled out. You changed us. You killed one of my men. Do you remember that day? Do you remember what I said I would do to you?”
Winters’s eyes widened a fraction and Caroline gulped. Something terrible had occurred between these two. Whatever had happened to Reaper’s team sounded far worse than what Caroline herself had experienced. Her heart reached out to him. She wanted to soothe him, but she sensed the absolute fury in him.
Obviously, Dr. Winters did not sense it, because she continued in a scathing tone, “You signed yourselves over to us. Your team member was too weak to handle the change. That’s not on me. It’s your fault. And now you can’t exist without me.”
Without warning, Reaper put his gun to her forehead and fired.
Caroline jerked and buried her face in his neck, wrapping her arms around his throat. Oh God. Oh God.
He’d shot her. Winters dropped like a stone, her glasses flying off her face.
Caroline’s already skittering heart pounded and she trembled in his grip.
“She deserved to die for what she did to my men.”
Too shocked to process the information, Caroline huddled against him, seeking comfort from the death dealer as her mind fought to cope with the situation.
Winters had basically held her hostage and tortured her. Caroline should be ecstatic the woman was dead. But the horrifying image of the black hole forming in the center of the doctor’s forehead played on a broken reel in her mind.
Too much. It was too much. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was a United States senator’s daughter, for crying out loud. Before the kidnapping, the scariest thing she’d ever done was take Taekwondo.
Mercilessly Reaper pried her fingers from around his neck and forced her to lean back and look at him. Tears flowed down her face unchecked, but she had no control over that, Caroline realized she had no control over anything.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, but I’m not sorry she’s dead.”
Her lip trembled, but she firmed up her chin and nodded. The look in Reaper’s eyes left her with no doubt he believed in what he’d done. And after bearing personal witness to Dr. Winters’s evil nature, Caroline had no trouble believing it was true. “I-I’m not sorry you killed her,” she stammered out uncertainly, “I was just shocked to see it happen.”
He stared at her with that hard expression on his face. His jaw could’ve been chiseled from granite, his nose as hard, his eyes black as the shadows that double-crossed his jaw.
He was so handsome it hurt to look at him.
“There’s a tunnel above our heads. I need to lift you up into it. Do you think you can climb out?” As he spoke, he reached above them and grabbed a handle, turning it and pulling open a small, round porthole she hadn’t noticed.
The dimly lit tunnel would be barely wide enough for Reaper to fit inside. She could see the first few feet up, but the rest faded into darkness. Caroline paused. Small spaces had never been her thing. “How far?”
He shifted her in his arms until he was holding her in front of him, her feet hanging straight down. “As far as it takes for you to get out of here.” There was no compassion in his tone this time, just a cold slap of reality. Part of her recoiled from his ferocity, but she sucked it up. If he started treating her with kid gloves right now, she’d probably fall completely apart.
Besides, he was telling her the truth. If she wanted out of this mess, she’d have to enter the tunnel. “Yes, lift me up.” She tried to insert a little bravado in her voice but couldn’t tell if she actually accomplished it.
Whatever she sounded like, Reaper lifted her like she weighed nothing. As soon as her shoulders crossed the threshold, she reached up and grabbed the first metal rung she could feel. The ladder was maybe a foot wide with evenly spaced metal bars disappearing up and overhead. She tried to pull herself up with the strength of her arms but failed miserably. Then Reaper wrapped his hands around her feet and hoisted her higher, communicating his strength in a quick, easy move that left Caroline scrambling to grab the new bars she now faced.
“Lift up one foot and put it on the ladder. I won’t let go until you’re secure,” he said.
His palms felt rough against the bottoms of her feet, but they held her steady. Biting her lip, she lifted her right foot and blindly searched for the ladder. The end of her toe made contact with the bar and she let out a whelp of pain.
“Caroline, you’ve got to move it. They’ll figure out our location before long,” Reaper said.
Caroline wriggled her toe to make sure she hadn’t broken it, and then, biting down on her inner cheek, planted her foot firmly on the ladder. As soon as she levered herself upward, Reaper let go. The pounding in her skull returned instantly. She was bombarded with sounds and could actually feel the weight of the earth pressing in around her. What was wrong with her?
She just felt different. Her skin went hot and clammy and her heart continued to race. And then Dr. Winters’s words drifted back to her and she remembered the adrenaline.
She wasn’t a scientist or a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, but she knew that adrenaline would pump her full of energy. Maybe Dr. Winters had given her so much it was causing all these other side effects.
Caroline gritted her teeth, fighting off the nauseating sensations as she concentrated on lifting one foot over the other. She had managed to climb up four rungs when she heard a thud and felt the ladder vibrate. A quick downward glance revealed that Reaper was hanging directly beneath her. He had jumped from the floor through the ceiling, and the ceiling had to be over ten feet tall. Dear God, the man was strong.
“Come on, climb up. I’m right behind you.”
“How did you do that?”
His brow furrowed and annoyance was clearly written across his face. “I jumped.”
“But that ceiling was over ten feet high!”
“Do you really want to stand there discussing my workout routine?” His gaze flicked from her face to her body and then back to her face. She’d swear his pupils were dilated.
Once more Caroline came to the realization that she was completely exposed in her hospital gown. He expected her to just crawl above him the entire time with her private parts available for his viewing pleasure?
Her body flushed hot with embarrassment and something else. Something warm and tingling. Reaper’s nostrils flared and Caroline tore her gaze from his, staring up into the darkness overhead. She didn’t know how he knew, but he could sense her arousal. She could sense his too. What the hell was wrong with her?
“If you don’t move, I’m going to carry you out on top of my shoulders.”
Her thighs clenched, but his words spurred her into action and she immediately began climbing, ignoring how the darkness grew deeper, colder. And then Reaper pulled the door shut beneath them and any traces of light vanished. Panic wrapped around her throat, thick and viscous, sucking out the oxygen. She couldn’t breathe. The walls closed in, the earth pressed down, everything tightening around her.
How far was it? She didn’t know, and it was impossible to care. She couldn’t move. Her heart drummed so fast she couldn’t even detect a pause between the beats anymore. The scraping and scratching sounds around her rose to a crescendo and her ears started to ring and buzz. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
She’d couldn’t do this. There was no way she’d be able to climb up this ladder. She was going to die here, encased in a tomb underground, and she would never get to see her father again.
Reaper’s hand closed around her ankle. The sounds immediately lessened, but her fear was as sharp-edged
as ever. “Reaper, I can’t—” Her throat closed, choking off her words.
“Do you want to die?” Reaper growled.
No, she didn’t. This man was her godsend, and she was letting a useless and completely stupid phobia control her. Resolutely, she reached for the next bar.
“Good girl. Don’t think about the darkness. Don’t think about anything but my voice. I’m right here with you. We’ll get through this together.”
His words wrapped around her shoulders like a warm blanket. She’d borne witness to his lightning-fast reflexes and deadly accuracy; she’d felt his unbelievable strength. With him behind her, she could conquer her fear. With him behind her, she could conquer the world.
4
Good girl? Had he really just said that? He should have started pushing her up the ladder, her legs around his shoulders, like he’d promised—anything to get them out of this godforsaken place sooner.
But part of him wanted, no, needed, to soothe and comfort her. Running down the hallway after the shootout, he’d carried her in his arms. He should’ve thrown her over his shoulder again, but her fear and pain had become a living, breathing thing inside him. Plus, her skin was buttery soft and he hadn’t wanted to stop touching her.
Worse than that, he could smell her arousal and knew that for whatever reason she was attracted to him. And his body was rock hard and aching as he attended to her everything.
Her breaths were coming out in short pants, her heart skidding around inside her chest, still out of control. “Caroline, I’ve got you. Break it down. It’s just a ladder. You know how to climb a ladder, right?”
Her voice trembled when she answered, “Yes.” She moved up another rung. He moved with her, keeping his hand on her ankle, reassuring her of his presence.
“That’s it, keep going. We’ll be out of here before you know it.”
“Reaper?” She kept moving at a slow, yet steady, pace. It was better than no progress, but he felt a tremendous need for speed. There was no way the cameras in the hallway hadn’t tracked them back to that room. It was possible that Gen. Rainier hadn’t had time to locate the secret exit built into the lab—possible, but not likely.
Mayhem's Warrior: Operation Mayhem Page 5
