Page 55 of Rescued By the Operative

Ennis follows her, and I’m right behind him, along with Wylie.

Nelly and Carl shout at us not to follow.

“Don’t go back in there! The extraction team will get her out from the other end!”

But I’m not letting my brother out of my sight.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Nelly

The world seems to shrink as I watch Jake disappear into the blackness, he and his brother following the unhinged Floydene deeper into the tunnels.

I’m about to take off after them, but Carl physically drags me outside. “Not you. Don’t you dare go,” he says.

The old man is strong as I fight back. I can’t let Jake and Ennis die like this.

“Agent, that woman is definitely going to push that button and kill herself, and I won’t let…”

The sound of my voice is drowned out by the explosion.

Carl and I watch as the explosion takes out the silos one by one at the other end of the compound.

Olivia is beside herself. Carl hugs her to him.

It would be an eerily beautiful sight if I weren’t worried that people I care about could be hit by that explosion. It’s farenough away that any resulting fire may not have reached Jake. I can’t even think about it without wanting to scream and run in there to find him.

Carl orders everyone who’s still outside to take shelter in the barn and in the house, and takes Joaquin and Jefferson with him for crowd control.

While he’s busy, I go in. I can’t just stand here herding people and waiting to find out if Jake and his brothers are dead.

“I have to go in and get them out,” I say to Dani.

“I’m going with you,” she says.

“And me,” says a trembling Olivia. Jasmyn, Louisa, Goldie, and Georgeanne have also come outside after hearing the blast.

“We’re all going,” says Goldie.

And I know I can’t stop them.

Dani, I, and the others head toward the explosion, using the dim lights from our phones to guide us. We have no helmets, no gloves, no equipment. We could be heading straight into another explosion, depending on how well Ennis rigged everything.

But still, we do what we have to do.

The women with me form a brigade in the tunnel, clearing away rocks and rubble when we reach the inevitable cave-in caused by the concussion.

I work frantically at the head of the line, pulling and heaving and digging through the rubble as fast as I can.

I don’t care if I get crushed. If the brothers are dead, I don’t want to be alive on the outside of this tunnel.

I dig faster.

Suddenly, behind one of the rocks, I see movement.

A hand reaches out.

“Jake?”