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Neither of them argued. Ramon found the stairs, and they hurried down the floors, emerging with him leading the way into a brightly lit hallway four floors below where they’d entered. The light made her head pound, so glaring she had to blink against it.
“Go.” Bruce patted her shoulder, and they hurried down the hall in a line.
Overhead, a speaker system resounded with a loud alarm, a series of steady beeps. The lights flashed red, pulsating for a few seconds, before they turned back to the glaring white. Then, the alarm shut off.
“Incoming.”
Ramon had barely said that when someone stepped out of a room ahead of them and yelled. The man ran toward them, visibly unarmed. Young and wearing plain white clothes. Scrub pants and a Henley-type cream shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Hair in need of cutting and skin with a sheen of sweat.
Ramon shifted, so his weapon was out of the way when the man slammed into him. They went down just as several more people came out into the hall.
One of them yelled, “They’re down here already.”
They thought she and her friends were FBI. “We’re here to help you!”
The one who’d yelled had red hair and a lot of freckles on his face and arms. He was dressed similarly, with shoes that made barely any sound.
Ramon punched the guy on him in the head and shoved him off, standing up in time to cut off the one who ran at her. He slammed the guy against a wall so that his head bounced off. Ramon bent to go through the guy’s pockets.
Kenna turned back and saw Bruce grappling with two people, and she got in the middle of it. All the worry about what damage she might do to someone else—innocent or not—rolled through her head, and she pulled her punch.
The guy dropped to the floor anyway.
“I see computers.” Ramon ducked into a side room while sticking something in his pocket.
She and Bruce followed.
Bruce said, “I’ll barricade the door and get all this connected to Maizie. You guys do what you need to do.”
“Sure?”
He nodded. “I’ll be here until the feds come. Unless that doctor shows up.”
“And when I can’t find you later because you disappeared?”
“I’ll try not to get shot again.”
Not exactly what Kenna meant. Ramon grabbed her arm, though. “Come on.” They went to the door.
Kenna said, “Barricade the door.”
Bruce nodded.
“I’m counting on you to stay alive.”
He had his phone out already, held to his ear. “Yeah, Trouble. It’s me.”
She and Ramon stepped out into the hall, and he said, “Where now?”
Kenna checked her phone. “Turn left at the end, and the rooms are on the right.” They’d have to fight their way throughif they encountered any more resistance from people who lived here. “Hopefully, after that alarm, they’re all drawn to the front door up on the surface.”
“Then who is guarding the people that are held down here?”
Sure, they were making assumptions about what went on down here. Maybe everyone was here of their own free will, captured to make it look like they were victims, but in the end, they believed in what Buzard was doing.
But then, those two children…
Kenna couldn’t let go of the fact she had told them they were safe. That nothing would happen to them. That they’d done the right thing and could trust the police.