by Jami Alden
He sped across campus to the new Clark Building, where Eugene did his PhD research. As he walked through the entrance, he could feel the rage building at the prospect of seeing the man he was now certain had kidnapped the woman he loved.
He forced it back, reminding himself he needed to treat this like any other mission. Keep a cool head. Don’t miss any details. Do not let emotions take over and make you fuck up.
The facility was immense, and it took him a few minutes to find the lab. He walked in, and a small Asian woman looked up, startled, from her microscope.
Jack did a quick scan of the room. There was a main work area with tables full of high-tech machinery he didn’t recognize, and beyond that were several cubicles. “I’m looking for Eugene Kuusik. Is he here?”
She shook her head.
“Do you know where he is?”
Another head shake.
He nodded at the cubicles behind her. “Show me his desk.”
She jumped at his harsh tone and looked him up and down warily. She gave him a wide berth as she walked back into the cubicles and pointed at the one in the corner. Jack followed her. The desk was dominated by a large computer monitor, and folders stuffed with paper were piled high.
He picked up the first file folder and started sifting through the papers, but found nothing but a set of lab notes.
“Hey, you can’t just go through his stuff,” the girl said. “This is proprietary research.”
Jack ignored her and grabbed another folder. Inside were a series of pictures from what looked like the 1950s or ’60s of men in lab coats working in rooms full of giant computers and pages of what looked like building plans for a lab facility.
Something about it made the back of his neck prickle. “What is this?” he asked the girl.
She squinted at the page, started to shrug, then caught sight of something on the bottom right-hand corner. “It’s pictures from the old particle accelerator, before they built SLAC.”
At Jack’s questioning stare, she said, “SLAC, you know, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.”
“I’m familiar,” Jack said impatiently, “but what does that have to do with this?” He gestured with the drawing.
“Back in the forties, before they built SLAC, the university built a particle accelerator underground. Gene is always talking about how crazy it is that they used to smash atoms underneath the physics tank.”
Holy shit. That was it. Underground. Concrete. Close. “Where’s the physics tank?”
She looked at him like he’d grown a horn in the middle of his forehead. “It doesn’t exist anymore. It was leveled ten years ago so they could build the new Bio-X facility.”
The building where Jack was presently standing. His mind racing, he used Gene’s computer to pull up a browser and did a search on “Stanford Underground Accelerators.”
Hundreds of results popped up, but the one that caught his eye read, “Stanford Underground: A Guide to the Campus’s Most Hidden Spots.” He clicked on it and, hallelujah, the page included a map of the tunnel system underneath the university. Including an access point yards away from the back entrance of this building.
Jack stared at the diagram for several seconds, committing it to memory, then sprinted for his car. He popped the trunk, took his Glock from its case, and checked the magazine before tucking it into his waistband. He took his knife and tucked it inside his boot. He riffled through his equipment, cursing when he realized he didn’t have his night-vision goggles in the car. He’d have to make do with the Maglite.
He shut the trunk and called Ben. “I know where they are. I’m going in.”
She was losing her. Talia sat propped against the cold concrete, Rosie’s head in her lap. Her voice was hoarse from talking and singing into the thick darkness. She told stories from their childhood and sang every song she knew from the radio, but Rosie had stopped responding hours ago.
Talia knew she was alive because she could feel Rosie’s chest rising up and down. But she wouldn’t speak, hadn’t moved even an inch for hours. Worse, the last two times Eugene had come to check on them, Rosie had refused water.
Though she loathed the dark, the sight of Rosie in the harsh light had shaken her to her core. She was draped across Talia’s lap, her skin chalk white, her full lips cracked and peeling. Her dark eyes were open in unseeing slits, and if she hadn’t felt her sister breathe, Talia would have thought she was dead.
If someone didn’t find them soon, Talia knew they soon would be.
Every time Eugene came in, she feared this would be it. Though her wound wasn’t healed, she could feel Eugene’s excitement growing, his control slipping away. This morning when he had come, he had pushed Talia onto her back and run his knife along her belly while he squeezed her breasts hard enough to leave bruises. Then the knife slid lower, catching the waistband of her underpants with the tip, dragging them down far enough to expose her.
Hours later, the memory brought a surge of bile to her throat. The coldness of the blade against her most vulnerable part. The shortness of his breath and the gleam in his eyes as she braced herself for the first cut.
Instead, as he had each time, he’d withdrawn. But she knew the end was coming soon.
It would be so easy, Talia thought, to close her eyes and drift away just like Rosie had done. Retreat to that deep dark place inside her that no one had ever been able to reach. But she couldn’t. If she had any hope of surviving this, she had to stay strong.
But goddamn it, it was hard, especially when she hadn’t eaten in days and she was lost in a darkness so consuming there were moments she wasn’t sure if she was awake or in the middle of a horrific nightmare.
“Please, Rosie, please don’t leave me alone in here.” At her sister’s lack of response, Talia started to sob. She tried to remind herself that as long as they were alive there was hope, but as the hours and days ticked by, she had to accept that this time Jack Brooks wasn’t going to come riding to her rescue.
Her sobs choked in her throat at a sharp boom, like a gunshot outside the room. Then the scraping sound as the door opened and she braced herself for the burst of light that would blind her.
And the rest…
To her shock, instead of the overhead light, her eyes locked on the beam of a flashlight. Heavy footsteps, and then a voice whispering into the darkness.
“Talia?”
“Jack?” This had to be a hallucination.
But then the flashlight beam hit her and within seconds hard, muscled arms wrapped around her and a desperate mouth found hers in the darkness.
“Thank God, thank God,” he murmured, covering her face with kisses she eagerly returned. One last, hard kiss to her mouth and he knelt down beside her. “Let’s get you two the hell out of here.”
Eugene barely spared Molly a glance as he walked through the lab. In his hand was a bag full of additional first-aid supplies, including some vitamin E oil the woman at the pharmacy had assured him would help Talia’s cut heal faster.
It had to heal. He couldn’t wait much longer. He was starting to get that itchy feeling like his skin was too tight for his body. His entire being hummed with anticipation. He couldn’t wait to watch her face when he fucked her precious little sister in front of her and cut her skin to ribbons.
And then, finally, he would have Talia. He almost came in his pants just thinking about it. He threw his head back against his chair and his hand started to reach down with a will of its own.
At the last second he realized Molly was talking to him. “What?” he asked sharply.
“Some guy was here looking for you,” she said.
“What guy?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t tell me his name. He was kind of big and mean looking.”
Gene’s blood ran cold. Jack was supposed to be in jail. Gene had seen news of the arrest himself.
Idiot, you never checked to see if he’d made bail.
He mentally kicked himself. God, how many times had he told himself not to let h
is excitement get in the way of staying on top of every detail? But in his near delirium over having Talia under his control at last, he’d lost track of Jack.
He took a deep breath, warned himself not to panic. Just because he’d been here, looking for him didn’t mean he knew what he’d done.
Even if he suspected, how would he ever figure out where they were? Still, he needed to go check on them, now. He pushed up from his chair, and that’s when he saw the diagram that had been called up on his computer screen.
You can’t take him. You’re an idiot, a weakling, his mother’s voice taunted him beyond the grave.
The beast roared back at her reminding him of how long he’d waited, how hard he’d worked for this. There was no way he was going to let Jack Brooks ruin his perfect moment. He picked up his bag, did a mental inventory of the contents.
Confidence surged through him. There was nothing to be afraid of. He had everything he needed.
Jack thought he was going to start bawling like a baby when he heard Talia’s voice answer him in the darkness. As certain as he’d been that Eugene had taken them to the former lab facility when he shot the lock from the door and shoved it opened, he’d known it was likely he was going to find Talia’s and Rosie’s bodies.
He found them with the beam of his flashlight, anger surging to mingle with his relief as he saw their bound bodies, only partially dressed. He couldn’t dwell on what might have happened and how he was going to exact personal, painful revenge on Eugene.
Now he had to get them out of this hellhole. He tucked his gun into his waistband and gathered her into his arms. He’d never felt anything better than Talia in his arms, the feel of her mouth under his as she half laughed, half sobbed in relief. He made a mental vow. Now that he had her, he was never letting her go, and he didn’t give a good goddamn whether she liked it or not.
“Let’s get you out of here.”
Positioning the light so he could see, he slipped the knife from his boot and cut through her bonds, then Rosie’s.
Talia shook out her hands and gave Rosie a little shake. “Rosie, come on. Jack’s here. We’re safe now.”
But Rosie didn’t move. He shined the light over her face. She didn’t look good.
“How long has she been like this?”
“Hours, a day?” Talia said, stress raising the pitch of her voice. She tried to pull Rosie to a seated position but she kept flopping around like a rag doll. “I don’t even know what day it is anymore.”
“It’s Tuesday,” Jack said.
“He didn’t give us any food, and barely any water,” Talia said. “He kept her longer than me. Is she dying?”
“She’s gone into a catatonic state, and the lack of food and dehydration aren’t helping. Our first priority is get her out of here and get some fluids into her.”
“Okay.”
The catch in Talia’s voice broke his heart.
“You hold this,” he said, and handed her the flashlight and lifted Rosie’s limp form from the ground. He laid her over his shoulder, fireman style, and slipped his Glock from his waistband. “You okay to walk?”
“For miles if I have to.”
Jack smiled. “Once we get of here, it’s only a few dozen meters. But watch your step. There are a lot of things to trip on. And stay right beside me. There are a couple of forks before we get to the exit.”
“Where are we, anyway?” Talia asked as she followed him out the door. She curled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt and pointed the flashlight in front of them.
“There’s a system of tunnels and lab sites underneath campus. Eugene was keeping you in part of what used to be an underground particle accelerator.”
He felt Talia shiver next to him. “I thought we were going to die down here.”
“Don’t think about that. You’re sa—” He felt the air near his head stir a split second before the pipe made impact, stunning him. His head exploded with pain and he sank to his knees even as a voice in his head urged him to keep his feet and fight.
But Rosie’s weight kept him off balance. He heard Talia scream and saw the flashlight beam go tumbling. He fumbled for his gun, desperately trying to get his bearings.
He tried to tune out the pain and stop his head from swimming as he honed in on the sound of heavy breathing and started to raise the gun.
“Drop it, or I’ll cut her throat.”
Talia, Jack thought. The small whimper in the darkness sent ice coursing through his veins.
But the flashlight flared to life again and lit on Eugene, the top half of his face covered by what Jack knew were night-vision goggles. He had his hand fisted in Rosie’s hair, the blade of a knife pressed against her carotid.
“Do it, Jack,” Talia’s terrified whisper called from a few feet behind him.
To prove his point, Eugene dragged the tip of the knife across Rosie’s throat. A thin line of crimson appeared against her pale skin.
“Please, Jack,” Talia cried frantically. “Please just do what he says.”
Jack dropped it and kicked it in Gene’s direction. He heard a scuffing sound and then the metallic skitter of his gun disappearing in the darkness.
“Get the light off me,” Gene barked.
The light shining in his face would make the NVGs useless. It was something they could use to their advantage….
“Bring it over here.”
Jack sighed inwardly as Talia obeyed immediately.
“Back to the room.”
They felt their way through the darkness, Eugene taking up the rear as he dragged Rosario with him. It would be easy to turn and charge Eugene and overpower him, but not when he had the advantage of sight and he had a knife to Rosie’s throat.
He walked as slowly as he could back to the chamber, weighing his options with every step. When they entered the room, Eugene barked at them to go stand in the corner. As soon as they did, light from an overhead fixture flooded the room. Jack blinked against the brightness, trying not to let his satisfaction show.
Eugene had just given up his greatest advantage and he didn’t even realize it.
He was sweating, Jack saw, and his hands shook as he pulled something from his pocket. He tossed them at Talia. “You, sit down,” he said to Jack. To Talia, he said, “Tie him up, hands behind his back.”
Talia’s frantic gaze met Jack’s and he gave her a subtle nod as he sank to the floor. She took the ties and tied his wrists behind his back. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” Jack said, and flashed a cocky grin for Eugene’s benefit. “I’ve gotten out of jams a lot worse than this. No way this little punk is going to take us down.”
“You, shut up!”
Jack could see a vein pop out on Eugene’s forehead. Good. Get him angry, get him careless.
“Legs too,” Eugene demanded to Talia.
Talia crouched down in front of him and started to wind the flex ties around his ankles. “My boot,” Jack breathed so only Talia could hear. He bent his right leg so his pant leg pulled up just enough for her to catch a glimpse of the knife handle.
Talia met his eyes and, making a big show of pulling the bindings tight, managed to slip the knife into the waistband of her underwear. When she stood up, the oversized T-shirt hid it from view.
“Now come here,” Eugene said, running the tip of the knife teasingly along Rosie’s cheek.
Talia obeyed, crossing to him on shaking legs as she wondered how they were going to get out of this. With Jack secured, Eugene let Rosie slump to the floor. Relief flooded her veins. With Rosie out of the way and Jack’s knife in her possession, she might actually have a chance of taking him down.
Eugene circled her. “You know I never wanted to fuck with an audience,” he said as casually as if he were discussing the weather. “But fucking you in front of your boyfriend, I think that will be fun.”
He lunged for her, and she heard Jack’s roar of anger as Eugene knocked her to the ground and put his knee into
her chest as he fumbled for another set of ties. She knew if he tied her up again, she was finished. She squirmed out from under him enough, adrenaline surging through her. She caught him with a knee to his chest with enough force to knock the breath out of him.
He staggered back and she surged to her feet. Without hesitation, she reached under the shirt, grabbed Jack’s knife, and charged full speed ahead.
At the last second, Eugene ducked and dodged, his hand chopping down on her forearm with blinding force. The knife slipped from her numb fingers and clattered to the ground.
Eugene snatched it from the floor before Talia could make a move. “You stupid bitch. You think I wouldn’t know he had another weapon hidden on him?” He chuckled and launched himself at her. Weak from the days without water and food, Talia wasn’t fast enough to avoid being tackled to the floor.
Her head hit the concrete with enough force to make her see stars. She could hear Jack’s voice but it sounded very far away. She saw Eugene’s mouth, open, snarling in rage. His knees dug into her biceps, pinning her to the ground. He gripped the knife in two hands and raised it high above his head. Though she bucked and strained with all of her strength, she knew it wouldn’t be enough.
The knife started its descent and there was an inhuman roar and suddenly Eugene’s weight was gone. She rolled to the side and saw Eugene flailing with the knife as Jack somehow maneuvered his bound legs around Eugene’s neck.
The knife sank deep into Jack’s upper thigh but he didn’t even flinch as he flipped Eugene’s body over onto the floor. A snapping sound echoed through the chamber and Eugene went completely still.
“Is he dead?” she whispered.
“He should be, since I snapped his neck,” Jack said, grunting as he pulled the knife out of his leg and handed it to Talia.
Talia reached out with a shaking hand and cut the ties around Jack’s feet and hands.
“Oh my God, your leg.” Blood was pumping from the wound at an alarming rate and Jack’s face was pale as he looked down to assess the damage.
“Shit. Looks like he nicked an artery.” He took off his shirt and pressed it to the wound. “Gotta stop the bleeding.”
