Page 8 of Pressure Point (Lantern Beach Blackout: Detonation #2)

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Atlas had finished his phone call and was halfway down the clinic’s main corridor when he heard the woman scream his name.

The terror in her voice cut through him like a blade.

He sprinted toward her room.

His training kicked in as he approached the doorway, every sense heightened.

Atlas burst through the door and found the woman pressed against the far wall. Blood gushed from a cut on her arm, while a masked figure advanced on her with a knife. Medical instruments lay scattered across the floor like fallen stars.

“Get away from her!” Atlas roared.

The attacker spun toward him, and Atlas caught a glimpse of dark eyes through the ski mask—cold, professional, utterly without mercy.

For a split second, the three of them stared at each other. Then the man seemed to calculate his odds against Atlas’s considerable size.

He chose flight.

The man hurled the knife toward the woman’s chest. As he did, the woman dove sideways.

The blade embedded itself into the wall where the woman had just been standing.

That had been close.

If her instincts hadn’t been so good . . .

Atlas shoved that thought aside.

The man darted toward the open window and leapt outside.

Atlas swept his gaze over the woman’s face. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, though her eyes were wide with shock and adrenaline. “I’m okay. Go! Don’t let him get away!”

Atlas hesitated for a fraction of a second. Every instinct screamed at him not to leave her alone again.

But she was right.

They needed answers, and the would-be killer was their only lead.

Atlas launched himself through the window, landing hard on the clinic’s landscaped grounds.

The masked figure was already sprinting across the parking lot toward a dark sedan with tinted windows.

Atlas pushed himself harder, his longer strides closing the distance.

He was maybe twenty feet away when the man reached the car, yanked open the door, and dove into the passenger seat.

The sedan’s engine roared to life, and Atlas caught a glimpse of the license plate as the vehicle peeled out of the parking lot: North Carolina tags ending in 847.

He pulled out his phone and called Cassidy.

“We need an APB,” he said the moment she answered. “Dark blue sedan, NC plates . . .” He rattled off the partial number. “Armed intruder who just tried to kill the woman from the woods.”

“What? Is she?—”

“She’s alive. But Cassidy, whoever she is, someone wants her dead badly enough to send a killer after her.”

“I’m on it.”

Atlas was already jogging back toward the clinic. “I’d like to take her to Blackout headquarters. It’s the most secure location on the island.”

There was a pause. “Atlas, you remember what happened the last time we thought headquarters was secure? Sigma got in. They compromised your systems.”

The reminder hit him like a cold slap.

Two months ago, Sigma operatives had breached Blackout’s security, stolen classified information, and nearly killed Raven Newton with a pressure-sensitive bomb on the grounds.

Raven was a historical authentication specialist for the International Cultural Heritage Protection Agency and one of the leading experts in historical artifacts and weaponry in the US. She specialized in warfare artifacts from WWII through the Cold War era.

She’d been called in to investigate a supposed WWII bomb relic that she discovered was actually a modern fake. She and Jake Laudner, Atlas’s team leader, had rekindled their former relationship while working together to expose Sigma.

Atlas’s jaw hardened with determination. “That won’t happen again. Not on my watch.”

He ended the call and stomped inside, headed back to the woman’s room. He found her sitting on the edge of the bed. A nurse had come in to treat her, and the woman now held gauze to her arm. Blood flowed from a cut the man had made.

Her face was pale but composed, and Atlas noticed she’d positioned herself with clear sightlines to both the door and window.

Like someone trained in tactical awareness.

Was he reading too much into this?

He wasn’t sure.

But he needed to be on guard, just in case.