CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

 

Demetrius

She was going to get herself killed.

Ambrose and I were already outside of the building, in place waiting for the girls to come out of the tunnel that Blaze had already blown.

I took off running for the building.

Ambrose caught me by the shoulder, stopped me.

“What the hell?” I said, shoving him off.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I can’t let her do this on her own,” I said.

“Why the fuck not?” said Ambrose. “She knows what she’s doing, and she’s saving my wife. You don’t have to micromanage that girl.”

“If something happens to her—”

“Yeah, I know that feeling,” said Ambrose. “Because I’m scared to fucking death about Cass. But if I run off from what I’m supposed to be doing, this whole plan falls to hell, and that puts everyone in even more danger, including my wife. Don’t be a dick, Demetrius.”

“I don’t have time for this shit.” I started to run for the building again.

“You have to let go a little bit,” Ambrose yelled after me. “She’s a grown fucking woman!”

I didn’t listen. I just ran.

Now.

Getting back into the building.

I would have gone to the exit that we’d left from, but they all locked in place from the outside. The only way into the building was the main entrance. Except for the fact that Kiera had gotten one of the doors unlocked for us to enter, and that would probably be the place she’d enter from, and maybe she would have left it unlocked, because she would have had to set it before leaving her computers.

I headed for that door.

Yes.

Success.

It opened.

I threw the door wide and hurled myself inside. I was half-hoping to see Kiera inside, to be right on her heels.

But the hallway was empty. No Kiera anywhere.

Where the fuck would she go?

I hurried down the hall, trying to think through everything that I’d seen when I went over the building schematics. I’d spent weeks with them, and I knew this place inside out. If I just concentrated, I’d know exactly where she was heading.

But I couldn’t concentrate, because I just kept picturing all the things that could go wrong.

Kiera running into the security guards, who shot first and asked questions later. Her body lying face down, blood blooming onto the carpet beneath her.

No.

Kiera running into Nikolai himself, who recognized her—

Nikolai wasn’t here. He was in his office, and we’d picked this time of day because he would be alone in that building. When we blew it up, he would be the only one who died.

Kiera was not going to die.

I was going to find her, and I was going to protect her. I just needed to concentrate. To think, and then…

I stopped at the end of the hallway, clutching my forehead.

And then it came to me. I knew where she was. I knew where she’d go to try to reset the system.

* * *

 

Kiera

The main control room was really a closet. It housed all of the fuse boxes and the big panel that controlled all the electronics in the entire building. So, all I had to do now was figure out which buttons would control the elevator system.

Shouldn’t be too hard.

I pressed one of the buttons.

Nothing happened.

A message on a small screen running above the panel flashed, Enter passcode.

Seriously?

I so did not have the passcode, but that was all right, because I had a program that could probably crack it on a thumb drive that I’d brought with me.

I reached into my pocket. I had brought it with me, hadn’t I?

And then the door opened behind me.