Page 24

Our first order of business was getting Chan to the air vent so he could set up the chloroform. I just had to say, gas masks were more uncomfortable than a push-up bra. Especially these, which were more like helmets, fully enclosed and heavy.

Chan settled mine over my head, adjusting the straps so everything was airtight. I blinked at him through the tinted lenses. Things were already dark down here, so the added hue made me feel like I was walking through a marsh. That, combined with the fact that I hadn’t slept in almost twenty hours, was making this whole expedition take on a dreamlike quality.

“You good?” he asked once I was in and had the audio communication adjusted to the correct frequency. Earlier, he’d explained that it worked similar to the way pilots communicated in a cockpit, so we wouldn’t have to shout to be heard since our ears were enclosed in the helmet. Anyone not tuned in to our frequency wouldn’t be able to hear us talking outside of our helmets, which was an added perk. But because Chan wasn’t wearing his gas mask yet, he wasn’t speaking into the mic, and I had to read his lips.

I nodded, adjusting to the weight but feeling a bit like a bobblehead. Chan smiled, then kissed the top of my helmet, giving my hand another squeeze before he put his own over his face. I could have sworn I saw Mila give a knowing grin, but because her gas mask was already in place, it could have just as easily been a shadow from the overhead light.

“Follow closely,” Chan said. “The main vent is this way.”

Mila gave Chan her key fob, and we took the first right out of the lab, leading back to the cafeteria. It was getting closer to morning now, and every part of me was on high alert. I walked between Chan and Mila because I had the least combat experience, but I couldn’t help but feel like a guarded prisoner. Our steps echoed in the empty hallway despite our attempts to quiet them, and my heartbeat was in my ears.

“I’m usually the first one awake to make food,” Mila whispered. “The cafeteria should be empty.”

Hearing that didn’t make me feel any better. Expectation and reality were two different things, after all. Still, we made our way to the cafeteria, pausing at each door while we used the key fob and waited to see whether the noise alerted anyone to our presence. There wasn’t anything we could do about the loud beep except experience a healthy dose of adrenaline every time it went off, so I tried to remind myself Mila usually got up around this time and people were used to her moving through the tunnels at this hour.

We made it to the vent, and Chan stood on top of a table to lift himself into it. I was only distracted a little bit by the small strip of skin that got exposed when he did said lifting. I wasn’t sure how he planned to direct the airflow, but Mila and I kept watch below while he did his thing. Well, correction, Mila kept watch. I hid in the kitchen so that if anyone saw Mila, they’d at least have a reason for her being out and about. Me, she couldn’t explain. And no, I had no idea how she planned to explain the gas mask. Some things were better left unasked.

Thankfully, no one came, and she didn’t need to think of an excuse. Chan came back down from the vent, wiping his hands on his pants when he landed on the floor. I came out of hiding, and we replaced the tables the way they were, so hopefully no one would notice we’d ever been here. Out of sight, out of mind.

We slunk out of the cafeteria one by one, like a line of ants. Awkward ants. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing with my hands. Should I keep them up in case someone came at me? At my sides so I appeared more normal? Scratch that, there was nothing normal about gas masks. We really did look like insects with oversized eyes, and heads that were too large for our bodies. I almost laughed at the mental image before catching myself. Now was not the time to let anxiety and nerves get the best of me. Not when we were this close.

All we had to do was stick to the plan.

Of course, that was when we rounded a corner and saw everything had not gone according to plan.

Because the guards were still very much awake.

Chan whipped back around the corner, pulling me with him. Mila ran into me from behind, and there was a moment where we all waited to see if the guards had noticed our not-so-subtle entrance and subsequent exit.

Chan swore under his breath. “I must have miscalculated the air vents,” he muttered. “Instead of putting this half of the tunnels out, I directed the airflow to the back half.”

I blinked while I processed this news. So, the bright side was, we wouldn’t have to worry about Holt or the side of the catacombs Holt used as rooms and bunk beds. The downside was these men were wide awake, guarding the exit route, and they had almost as much ammunition as we did.

Great.

Mila shifted one of the guns on her shoulder so that the handle rested in her palm. “Well,” she said into her internal mic. “It looks like Louis and Blanca are on guard duty tonight. Blanca isn’t half-bad, and I hate to take out the only other woman down here, but I don’t see that we have any other choice, and I never did like Louis, so we might as well get this over with.” She shook her head, her gas mask swaying to and fro like a cattail in the wind. “I only wish I could have found silencers. We’re so far underground Holt never thought they were necessary, but he didn’t ever need to hide a gunshot from his own people either.”

I held a hand out to stop her as she tried to go around me. It was astonishing how much someone could change when their back was up against a wall. I was guessing that four months ago, she never could have pictured herself shooting someone—especially someone she knew. But when given the chance to escape, she hadn’t thought twice about the consequences. Not that I blamed her, but it made me mourn the person Mila had once been, while simultaneously wondering what exactly she was so desperate to leave behind here that she’d be willing to kill for it.

“I’m guessing there’s no way out of this situation without making noise?” I asked. I’d been hoping to save my dirty little secret for later when times were especially dire, but it looked like those times were now.

Chan looked at me and I tried to decipher his expression through his gas mask. After a moment, he slowly shook his head.

I took in a deep breath. “Then it looks like we’ll be needing these.”

I pulled the stun grenades I’d made earlier from my sleeves. But my big reveal was wasted because neither Mila nor Chan knew what they were. Granted, they didn’t look like much, and I hurried to explain.

“These are stun grenades. You know, flash-bangs, thunderflashes, sound bombs, or whatever other nicknames you might have for what is otherwise a simple sound firework. Law enforcement often uses them to break up riots that get out of hand. We’ll light it up and send it their way.” I pulled out the matches I’d stored in my pocket. I hurried on, aware that we were running out of time even as I continued to talk.

“As long as we close our eyes, we shouldn’t be affected. This is where our gas masks come in handy, because they’ll buffer the sound for us, plus the lids are tinted even if we happen to open our eyes too early. But the guards won’t be prepared, and they’ll be completely disoriented. Stun grenades cause temporary blindness, deafness, and can even affect their balance for a few seconds. You can both use that opportunity to knock them out so we can get past them without having to use—” I looked at them both, heavily weighed down with weapons that I knew they only wore to protect us all. I wasn’t judging them. Just providing them with another option.

Luckily Chan seemed to understand, because he nodded.

“What if they see something coming at them and close their eyes?” Mila asked. “Will it still be effective?”

I gave her a wry smile. “In movies, the coolest characters never look directly at an explosion. They always walk away like they’ve seen it all before. But trust me, in real life, everybody looks.”

Chan adjusted his helmet. “No time to waste,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He took a match from my hand and scraped it along the limestone brick walls. The flame burst to life. He lit the stun grenade in my hand and I lobbed it around the corner at the guards. Chan, Mila, and I closed our eyes, and a second later I heard the muted bang through my helmet.

We rushed around the corner to be met with chaos. The guards, Louis and Blanca, stumbled around like they were drunk, and Chan took full advantage of the opportunity. Using the butt of the gun he was holding, Chan hit Louis on the back of his head so he fell forward, crashing into the wall and tripping Blanca in the process. Blanca put up more of a fight once she realized what was happening, but she was no match for Chan, who knocked her out with his elbow as quickly as he had the first guard. Both of them slumped to the ground next to the door, and I rooted around in Blanca’s pockets until I found the key fob that would open it. The exterior fobs were different than all the others, which was something we hadn’t realized until Mila’s blinked red instead of green.

Now the door clicked open and a rush of warm air greeted us, opening to a familiar tunnel that sloped upward. We took it at a run, closing the door behind us and taking both of their key fobs with us. It likely wouldn’t slow any of our pursuers down, but if it gave us even a second more of an advantage, we’d take it.

“They won’t stay out for long,” Chan said. “A few minutes at most.”

“That’s it?” Mila replied. “Why do movies lie so much?”

I heard Chan’s low rumble of a laugh through my headset. It was a miracle that he could laugh in a situation like this. My heart felt like it was beating through my rib cage, and adrenaline was tearing through my veins, but Chan acted like this was just another day at the office. Which, granted, he’d previously pointed out it kind of was for him. But did he have to rub it in?

I was beginning to regret all those times I’d eaten Mila’s cookies and watched him during his workouts in our room rather than joining in, but let’s be honest, at the time it had seemed like a much better option. Especially when he’d been shirtless. Crunches had never been my forte, but watching Chan do them made my time down here seem almost worth it.

Running up this ramp made me regret all my life’s choices. Especially when the side cramp kicked in. But I didn’t complain. Because up ahead, I saw the truck that Xander had brought us here in, and the empty garage room where I’d first met Holt.

Except it wasn’t empty.

There were two more of his employees stationed up here. And they’d heard the noise from down below and were prepared for us.

As soon as our heads became visible above the rise, gunshots flew in our direction. A bit premature, I thought, since they honestly couldn’t tell who we were under the gas masks. But it didn’t stop them from throwing everything they had our way.

Chan pushed me up against the side of the tunnel, using his body as a shield. Mila followed suit, her back hitting the side of the tunnel with a smack so hard I practically felt it. We all sank low to the ground, using the meager advantage we had. But it wasn’t much. We had the lower ground and had lost the element of surprise.

“Andee, any day now.” Chan’s voice was in my ear, and it took me way too long to decipher his meaning. Because of course we had another advantage. I’d made four stun grenades, after all. I quickly lit another one and handed it to Chan for him to throw since this one had to go farther.

We all closed our eyes until we heard the bang. Then we charged up the rest of the ramp at full speed. I’d already used up all my energy, so I was the last one to reach the crest, which honestly was a good thing. I didn’t have any weapons and didn’t know what to do in a fight either. But the bullets had stopped, so I was free to trail after Chan and Mila like I was one of Charlie’s Angels.

The stun grenade had worked to disorient them, but not as well as it had on Louis and Blanca, who’d had zero warning. These guards on the upper level were still fighting back, even if they were staggering and obviously dazed. They’d each paired off with Mila and Chan, so I was left standing around like a third wheel.

But I quickly realized that wasn’t going to cut it. Not only did I not like the idea of watching as Chan took an uppercut to the jaw, but we didn’t have time to waste either. One of us needed to find a way out of this garage, and that started with locating the keys to the truck.

They weren’t in the ignition. Or under the mat.

“Mila, did Xander ever tell you where he kept the truck keys?” I asked in a panic, looking up in time to see her take a blow to the stomach. Even a staggering drunk could land a lucky punch. It probably didn’t help that I’d distracted her either.

“No,” she replied, recovering and stepping forward like she was in a dance. She used the momentum to bring her elbows up and block another attack from reaching her face, and I decided then and there it was best if I let her focus on staying alive.

“Use the guns if you need to,” Chan said, “but at this close range, and with your boxing training—”

He didn’t finish his sentence, instead wrapping his arm around the neck of his assailant and bringing the man’s face down to meet his knee. I couldn’t hear the crunch through my helmet, but I saw it when his nose broke and blood spurted out in a gush.

I brought my attention to the walls of the garage, searching for a key hook or nail where a ring might be stored. Nothing. But there was a small cabinet close to the rolling metal door that was still locked at the bottom. I hurried over to it, pulling open random drawers until I found a set of keys.

I took it to the big garage door first. But none of the keys fit.

My stomach clenched. If we couldn’t get the main garage door open, it didn’t matter whether I found the keys to the truck. We still wouldn’t be able to get out of here. Everything we’d done up to this point would be for nothing.

I lurched over to the truck anyway, carrying the keys with trembling fingers and fumbling as I inserted the one that looked like it might work.

I turned the key. The truck choked to life while I choked back a sob. Then Chan was in the cab of the truck with me, and Mila opened the door on the other side.

“I couldn’t find the key to the garage door,” I said, tears swimming in front of my vision. My hands were clutched around the steering wheel, and Chan gently uncurled my fingers.

“Scoot over,” he said.

My brain hadn’t caught up yet with what was happening. They must have taken care of the guards, leaving them knocked out behind us like the ones in the hallway below. We were short on time. We had to find the key. So why was Chan getting in the truck?

“Why?” I asked, frozen behind the steering wheel.

Chan put his hands on my waist and easily picked me up like I weighed nothing. He moved me into the center of the bench.

“Because I have a feeling you won’t like this,” he replied.

Then the truck doors closed, and I had a front-row seat to exactly what Chan had in mind.

Which was rolling down the windows, pointing a gun at the hinges, and opening fire like we were in some kind of Mafia movie. When Chan emptied all the bullets in the chamber, he threw the gun to the seat behind us and said two words that, honestly, I probably should have expected.

“Buckle up.”

He pushed the pedal to the floor and rammed the gate. My head whipped back, and I grasped the edge of the seat. The truck made a crunching noise so loud I heard it through my mask, but at least the door buckled at the hinges. Chan backed up and rammed it again. This time, the door crashed down in a cacophony of clanging metal and sparks.

I guessed noise was no longer a concern.

Wheeling the truck over the remnants of the garage door, Chan drove onto the streets of Paris, past a startled bystander who had spilled coffee on her shirt. Something told me Holt wouldn’t cover her dry cleaning.

“There’s most likely a tracker in this truck,” Chan said, voice sounding grim. “And the guards won’t be knocked out for long, so we can count on them following even if the chloroform keeps Holt under.”

He took off his gas mask, throwing it in the seat behind us. Following his lead, Mila and I took ours off too. I guessed we were now safely past the point where we’d need to communicate without someone overhearing, and we wouldn’t likely need any more flash grenades.

Chan pursed his lips and shook his head, seeming to read my mind.

“This isn’t over yet.”