Christina felt the ground shift under her feet. This was a harsher, more violent movement than what she’d felt when she and Will had run headlong toward the first bomb.
But it was also the same. The feeling of it, the feeling of earth wrenching rather than rattling. The rolling of her gut told her it was coming up underneath her, not just down on top of her.
Steadying her hand on the wall to stay upright, she looked to Walter and GJ, both of whom had been asleep, curled into the dip of their inflatable mattresses.
Noah was missing, his bed clothes thrown toward the wall as though he’d rolled out before her. She’d thought nothing of it when she’d awakened all of a minute ago and stood up. But now? One of her agents was gone.
Walter—whose prosthetic leg and arm waited right beside the bed while she slept—was now already in the arm and starting to buckle the leg on.
Damn, she was fast, Christina thought. Not that that surprised her.
What she hadn't quite noticed before was that GJ also laid her clothes out at night, ready to jump into them at a moment’s notice. Christina had thought it was OCD or GJ’s inherent overachieving. No, she saw now, it was that GJ had slid into her own clothes and now stood beside Walter. And while Christina was still pulling on her shoes, GJ was dressed and ready, across the room, holding out Walter’s shirt in a way that allowed Walter to slip into it even before Christina had her shoes tied.
If the ground wasn't still vibrating from the shock, if she wasn't braced against the wall for another hit, she would have taken a moment to be stunned. She still remembered when these two had been new agents together. Even then, they'd worked well in tandem, but Christina hadn't quite attributed the level of teamwork they had.
Now, she realized with a twist of her heart, that she couldn't afford the time to miss what she no longer had. Still, she did miss it. Dearly.
“That one was much closer,” GJ stated the obvious, knowing that she was merely starting the conversation with something they all understood.
“Agreed,” Christina replied before they heard the shout from down the tunnel.
“Help!”
It was Wade's voice. Strong and clear, not panicked, but not okay either. “Noah’s down!”
Just in case she wasn't already vibrating at a high rate, Christina felt her system crank up another notch, and she ran down the tunnel that opened next to Noah’s bed. Her brain cranked possibilities. They were leaving on a mission and things went wrong. Wade was questioning Noah. Noah had wandered down the tunnel and Wade ran into him… she dismissed the last one.
She yanked her phone and popped the light on, letting it direct her to where Wade's voice had come from. They hadn’t gone far.
Noah was laid out on the floor with Wade standing over him. She would have asked but Wade was on top of the situation already announcing, “He hit his head. He’s breathing and his pulse is steady. I think he's just out.”
But as he looked up at her, Christina thought none of them were Donovan Heath, MD. Never mind that most of the former medical examiner’s patients were dead; he still had far more training than any of them. They were limited to assessing the situation with only the training than they'd received at Quantico and the occasional continuing education to help agents in the field. Like now.
They both put what skills they had to use.
“He's alive,” Christina declared, more than grateful to be able to make that statement.
Wade was feeling around Noah's skull. Then he pointed to the back of Noah’s head on his right. “I think he hit here.”
When he pulled his hand back, Christina saw the blood on his fingers. Not his. Son of a bitch.
She was both horrendously worried about Noah and concerned that the last thing they needed right now was an injured agent. Together, they checked his neck and spine as best they could, stepping back when GJ moved in.
She watched as they cleared space for her. “I’m an anthropologist, not a doctor,” she offered as a disclaimer. Still, she had the highest-rank understanding of what a human should be.
After a few moments assessing the newest agent, she declared, “No broken bones that I can tell without an x-ray. I think he's mostly okay. We need to move him.”
Though no one commented on it, Christina's concern was that Noah had made no noise up to this point. Not a groan or a peep, nothing to indicate he was coming around.
“Did he hit his head yesterday?” GJ was smart enough to ask.
“Good point.” A second hit to the head was far more dangerous than a first. She didn't want to think about it.
But Wade shook his head no. “He had his helmet on. And he was fine immediately after it went off.”
Thank God for small favors, Christina thought. “Then let's move him.”
It was Wade who scooped up Noah's limp form and carried him back to the inflatable mattress. As Wade gently set him down, one arm slid over the side, his fingers brushing the floor. The man she was beginning to think would wind up being her new partner was completely unresponsive.
“We've got him,” GJ announced, speaking for herself and Walter. “You guys go out and figure out what the hell just happened.”
Though it wasn't really GJ’s place to give orders, Christina realized she was right.
Tapping Wade on the shoulder, she interrupted where he was still examining Noah. Wade was opening the younger man’s eyelids, lifting and dropping his hand, and lightly slapping his cheek, as though any of these things were real medical tests.
Nothing was happening, so Christina tapped him one more time. “Come on. You and I need to go out. GJ’s right.”
For a moment, it appeared the words hadn't registered. But when she spoke the third time, Wade finally moved. Abandoning the unresponsive man to Walter and GJ, who were already in full action, he followed Christina.
She ran to the trap door, knowing Wade would be right behind her. In fact, she felt his hand reaching up to push at her foot, helping her launch onto the platform of the house floor above as she went through. As she turned around, his fingertips were already locking at the edge of the opening of the trap door, and he was hauling himself up. She stood carefully, wary of stray bullets or another bomb blast that might throw her backward.
The scene upstairs was chaos.
Wolves trotted through the grass, once again migrating homeward en masse. Some of them walked as wolves, dipping regularly to one side with an odd gait. That took only a second to translate as injuries. Others stood up, some probably nude, some in tanks and sweatpants, many holding others in their arms. Whether the limp forms were dead or just injured, she couldn't tell.
But she did know this: They were now completely outmatched.