Page 61 of A Touch of Treachery (Section 47 #3)
DESMOND
I staggered from one corridor to the next, following the sounds of the gunshots.
I kept one hand on the wall for balance, even as I greedily gobbled up all the electricity I could sense.
The lights flickered as I passed underneath them, and several exploded as I poured their energy into my body, trying to heal myself as much as possible.
The crash and tinkle of breaking glass trailed after me like a symphony announcing my presence, but I didn’t care.
All that mattered was finding Charlotte.
I kept going, healing myself in spurts. It took several corridors, an ocean of electricity, and dozens of broken lights, but my breaths came easier, and my legs grew steadier.
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack!
These gunshots were closer than before, and I quickened my pace and peered around a corner. Up ahead, two men were firing at a wooden desk that had been shoved up against a wall, slowly but surely shooting it to pieces.
Charlotte popped up from behind the desk, but instead of shooting at the two men in front of me, she whipped around and started firing at three more men running up the corridor behind her. The men stopped and scattered.
“Move!” one of the guards on my end of the corridor yelled. “Now! While she’s distracted!”
The two men quickly reloaded and aimed their guns at Charlotte. I was still clutching the bloody knife Bryce had stabbed me with, and I threw it at the man closest to me.
The blade zipped through the air and sank into his back.
The guard yelped, but he didn’t go down, so I hurried forward and rammed my shoulder into his.
Then I churned my feet, driving him across the corridor and into the other guard.
The second man hit the wall, bounced off, and slammed into his buddy, who in turn ping-ponged back into me, and all three of us went down in a heap on the floor.
The second guard snarled and raised his gun to shoot me, but I yanked the knife out of the back of the first man and lashed out with it. The blade sliced across the second guard’s forearm, and he hissed and dropped his weapon.
The first man tried to get up, but I threw myself forward and planted my knee into his back, knocking him back down to the floor. Then I used his body as a springboard to launch myself at the second guard, the bloody blade in my hand whistling through the air again.
The second guard tried to scoot out of the way, but I buried the knife in his chest. The man screamed, but I ignored his sharp cry and flailing fists and twisted the blade in deeper.
He was not shooting at Charlotte again. The guard let out another scream, but it was softer and shorter than before, and his body went limp underneath mine—
A hand dug into my hair and wrenched my head back.
My hand slipped off the knife that was still stuck in the dead guard’s body.
The first man yanked me back against his chest and locked his arm around my throat.
He was an enduro with enhanced strength, and he was slowly but surely cutting off my air.
Gray spots exploded like fireworks at the edges of my vision, and if I didn’t find a way to break his grip, I would be unconscious in a minute and dead shortly thereafter.
Desperate, I stretched out with my hands, searching for a weapon. My fingers brushed up against the gun the other guard had dropped. I scooped it up, shoved it against the right thigh of the man behind me, and pulled the trigger.
Crack!
He yelped, and his arm fell away from my throat. Wheezing for air, I whirled around on my knees and shot him in the chest three times. He toppled onto his back, blood pooling underneath his body.
I crouched there a moment, still wheezing for air, then forced myself to hobble to my feet. I had to help Charlotte.
Crack! Crack!
Charlotte fired her gun, and one of the three guys rushing up the opposite end of the corridor dropped.
Once again, the other men stopped and scattered.
Charlotte scuttled around to the opposite side of the desk, putting it between her and the two guards.
Her head whipped in my direction, and her eyes widened.
“Desmond! Behind you!”
I turned around. Two more guards were running toward me. Unlike Charlotte, I had no cover and was completely exposed in the middle of the corridor, but I lifted my gun. The guards might kill me, but they weren’t going to hurt Charlotte.
Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack!
The guard on the left dropped, quickly followed by the man on the right.
Farther down the corridor, a smoky shadow detached itself from the wall and morphed into the form of a man.
Gabriel winked at me. I whipped back around to Charlotte and took aim at the two men once again advancing on her position.
Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Before I could fire, those men dropped as well, and Joan appeared in the distance, a gun clutched in her hand, hurrying in our direction. I hissed out a breath and glanced up and down the corridor, searching for more enemies.
Gabriel stepped up beside me, grinning wide. “That’s twice now I’ve saved your life, Slick. And yes, I am totally keeping count—”
I leaned to the side, raised my gun, and pulled the trigger.
Crack!
A third guard farther down the corridor screamed and tumbled forward. Gabriel whirled around, but the man was already bleeding out on the floor.
“And that’s twice now that I’ve repaid the favor,” I rasped. “So I would say we’re even—again.”
“I suppose you’re right. At least until the next time you get into trouble.” Gabriel eyed the burns on my hands, arms, and face. “You look like death warmed over.”
“Nice to see you too, Gaby,” I drawled.
“Desmond! Desmond, are you okay?”
Charlotte sprinted over and skidded to a stop beside us.
She reached for me, but at the last second, she bit her lip and lowered her arm, as if she didn’t want to exacerbate my injuries by hugging me.
I stepped forward and cupped her cheek with my hand, stroking my swollen, shiny red fingers over her smooth skin.
Charlotte shuddered out a breath and laid her fingers over mine, giving them a gentle squeeze. “What happened?” she asked in a low, strained voice. “What did Henrika do to you?”
“She injected me with her newest weapon—Redburn poison.”
Horror flared in Charlotte’s eyes, but it was quickly replaced by fury, and her sapphire aura spit, hissed, and crackled with the same emotion. “I’m going to kill Henrika for hurting you again.”
“Not if I find her first,” Joan chimed in.
Her voice was just as low and furious as Charlotte’s, and even Gabriel looked angry and disgusted on my behalf.
Charlotte looked past me. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I killed Bryce and escaped from the lab, but Henrika had already left. You didn’t see her?”
All three of them shook their heads.
“Take us to the lab,” Charlotte said. “Maybe she left some clue behind about where she’s going.”
“Or how we can get out of this maze,” Gabriel muttered.
I jerked my head to the side. “It’s back this way.”
Gabriel and Joan moved in that direction, their guns up and ready to deal with any more guards.
Charlotte stepped closer to me. “Oh, Desmond, I’m so sorry we didn’t get here sooner.
If I had just realized Henrika had never left the area and that the whole point of inviting us to the resort was to kidnap you .
. .” Her voice trailed off, guilt tightened her face, and tears gleamed in her eyes.
“Maybe none of this would have happened.”
I stroked my thumb over her cheek again. “There’s no need to apologize. We both know how smart Henrika is.” A crooked smile curved my lips. “Lucky for me, you’re even smarter.”
Charlotte returned my smile, but it quickly faded away, and her gaze swept over my burned skin again.
“Where is my father? And the strike teams?” I asked, looking past her. “They should have reached our position by now.”
Charlotte winced. “They’re not here.”
“Why not?”
“Take me to the lab, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
I nodded. Charlotte put her arm around my waist. I leaned on her, and together we left the dead guards behind and headed toward Henrika’s lab.
C harlotte told me the whole story, including how the General had blamed her for my kidnapping and suspended her from Section 47.
I sighed. “He’s just pissed Henrika got the better of him again, and he took his anger out on you.”
Charlotte shrugged. “He’s not wrong. I’m the one Henrika baited into coming to the resort. I waltzed right into her trap, and I dragged you along with me.”
I shook my head. “No, absolutely not. You didn’t drag me into anything. Where you go, I go. Simple as that.”
Now and for always. The words whispered through my mind, but I didn’t say them out loud. Safety first, sentiment later.
Despite the electricity I’d used to heal the worst of my wounds, my fight with the guards had taken its toll. My steps slowed down, and I found myself leaning on Charlotte more and more the farther we walked. By the time we reached the lab, Gabriel and Joan were already exploring the space.
Gabriel turned around in a slow circle and let out a low whistle. “Being a supervillain pays better than I imagined. Henrika’s got millions of dollars of equipment in here.”
Joan’s lips curled back in disgust. “Everything you would need to figure out the best and most painful ways to kill people.”
I thought about what Henrika had said about how long she had tried to heal people instead of hurt them.
Some genuine regret had been threaded through her words, and it raised a painful truth.
Despite all the awful things she’d done to me, I understood Henrika’s point of view far better than she’d realized.
How many times had I been sent to kill someone on Section’s orders when the General might have found another way, a more peaceful, diplomatic solution, if only he’d looked for it long and hard enough?
And how many times had I carried out those orders without question because killing someone was the quickest and easiest thing to do?
My gaze flicked to Bryce’s body on the floor. In my own way, I had just as much blood on my hands as Henrika Hyde.
“What are we going to do with all this stuff?” Charlotte asked.
Joan frowned. “What do you mean? Now that Desmond is safe, we can finally call in a strike team. After they clear the facility, the Section techs will analyze everything like usual.”
Charlotte looked at me, and Joan glanced back and forth between the two of us.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice growing sharper and more suspicious with every word. “Why are the two of you looking at each other like that?”
“You tell her,” Charlotte said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
She nodded. “Joan’s come this far with us. She deserves to know the truth. So does Gabriel.”
“What truth ?” Joan snapped.
I faced her. “Charlotte and I found some vials of Redburn during the Tannenbaum mission. The mercenaries were going to use the explosives to blow up the castle.”
Joan’s eyes narrowed. “I reviewed all the after-action reports about the Tannenbaum mission. You didn’t turn any explosives over to Section.”
“No, we didn’t.”
All weapons, drugs, cash, and evidence, magical and otherwise, was supposed to be handed over to Section 47 to be analyzed, processed, and stored.
Joan’s eyes narrowed a little more, but she didn’t ask why we had ignored protocol.
She knew exactly what Section leaders did with the weapons agents recovered: studied them so the techs could create better, even deadlier versions of such weapons.
Joan’s gaze traced over the burns on my skin. A shadow passed over her face, and her pale aura dimmed. I knew she was thinking about Graham and how his body had been burned even worse than mine.
“Screw it,” Joan snarled, her voice vibrating with anger. “You’re the one who was tortured, so you decide what to do, Dez.”
“Thank you.”
She nodded, and the gleam of tears filled her eyes. “No one deserves to suffer like you and Graham did. Not even our enemies.”
Gabriel tilted his head to the side, as if he’d just learned something important about the liaison.
Beside me, Charlotte suddenly stiffened. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong.
A clock showing fifteen minutes appeared on one of the monitors. It flashed red for several seconds—and then it started counting down.