CHAPTER Thirteen
“What did they say?”
Nate jolted.
Emily was looking at him. She had such a penetrating stare. Similar to that of her brother.
Nate had never had a woman penetrate him in such a manner, where it felt like a fusion of minds, a place where empathy and tenderness lived−a land where he could believe in a future.
It scared the hell out of him.
“Stable condition.”
“No more details?” she probed.
In the glow of the dashboard, he saw the strain at the corners of her lips, and a frown he had come to know so well. He had also grown accustomed to her habit of swiping her hand at bangs that were never really in her eyes to begin with.
“Bruised sternum. At least he had his seat belt on. Broken fibula, potential neck trauma. They got him out before the fire consumed the car. He’s going to be okay.”
He could feel the dull throb of his own injuries, as if his body cried out in sympathy for his friend. Funny, he had never really associated the word friend with Phil. Now that he tested the title out, he thought it truly fit. That revelation bewildered him. It was the first sign that he was becoming a civilian.
In the Navy he never had the opportunity for camaraderie. He was never part of a team. He was always the lone agent on assignment. Friends and trust were the worst vices a man could bear.
“Thank God for that.” Emily seemed to breathe easier herself, but he heard her breath falter as she turned down the back lane that would ultimately lead them to NMD.
“How about you?” The tension crept into his blood. Aside from acknowledging his newfound friendship, he was harboring fantasies of something permanent with Emily.
How could he have been fortunate enough to find two people he cared about at this stage in his life?
And how could he have been so negligent with both? Barcuda would not take them from him. That determining thought thumped through his bloodstream, taking everything down to slow motion.
“I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I mean it Nate, I feel awful that your friend was injured because of me.”
“It wasn’t because of you, Em. It was because I wasn’t thinking. I need to be a step ahead of Barcuda. I’ll give him the past two days because I was still catching up on the facts−but from here on out, George Barcuda no longer calls the shots.”
Emily raised an eyebrow. “God knows what motivates that man. I looked in his eyes once. There was nothing there. No emotion. It was like looking into the eyes of a stone statue. Or the eyes of a vampire. You know, light’s on, but I’m still in my crypt.”
His smile was forced, but he knew what she meant. He wanted to offer some words of comfort, but they were only two blocks away from NMD.
“Pull over, Em. I’m driving in.”
Her mouth opened to protest, but he halted it with one look. She pulled the car to the side of the road and they exchanged sides.
Rolling down the residential trail with the Impala’s headlights switched off, the forbidding gate to the NMD compound loomed ahead like the entrance to a prison.
On the surface, the complex was staid, with a bank of brick buildings forming an L-shaped wall around a gated parking lot. Acres of snow-covered lawns flanked the facility, the back lot tapering down to a high cliff that overlooked Connecticut’s Thames River.
“I’m coming in with you,” she whispered.
To the casual observer, the families that lined this suburban road in their colonial houses−no one would ever imagine that deep underground, beneath their swing sets and deck chairs sat the most sophisticated nautical technology.
“Are you going to make me point out that I know the layout of this complex much better than you? Surveillance is my job—this facility is my desk.”
Nate had pulled over to the curb and cut the engine. In only a matter of seconds, the cold assaulted the interior.
“Are you going to make me point out that I was able to slip through your scrupulous security system and steal classified data right from under your nose?”
Damn. Score a point for the hottie.
“When this is over,” he said, “we’re going to sit down and have a long talk about that.”
Emily rubbed her hands together to induce warmth. “Nate,” She looked through the window, which was now frosting up. “He’s my brother.”
The gruff plea said it all. She would sacrifice everything to protect Colin.
Nate recognized that guilt was the root of Emily’s motives. Yes, she loved her brother. There was absolutely no doubt about that. But this remorse stemmed directly from the anger and jealousy she harbored the moments before her parents died. He would never be able to negotiate with that type of pain.
The hazy glow of a streetlight bathed a portion of Emily’s face, revealing earnest eyes and a tense, heart-shaped jaw. No matter how much he threatened her, he would never be able to make her stay behind.
“Dammit, woman.”
It was as if those words were admission enough. Emily grabbed the door handle and wrenched it open.
Nate lurched across the seat and clamped down on her arm before she could get out.
“If you go in there, you have to listen to me. You have to trust me, Em.”
With the streetlight behind her, her hair ruffling in the slight breeze—he found his angel again. In that eclipsed glow he saw that same ethereal, but weary smile, and wished desperately that he were anywhere else in the world with this woman.
“You know I will, but are you going to trust me?”
Nate released her arm, only to reach up into that soft haven of hair and cup his hand around the back of her neck. In slow motion, as if they had all the time in the world, he drew her towards him, and whispered against her lips, “I just might.” And then his mouth closed over hers.
It was a solemn kiss, a slow exchange that pained them both, but at the same time, offered a glimpse at stronger emotions still unspoken. When he drew back, their eyes locked, and neither breathed.
“Nate?” she whispered.
It was painful and poignant to come to the conclusion that he was falling in love with this woman.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He wrenched his gaze away from hers, up to the hazy streetlight above. With a brisk cough into his clenched fist, he lurched out of the car and avoided Emily’s gaze across the roof.
He had no choice though. He had to keep her near.
“Come over here.” His hand was out.
Emily circled the car and reached for it. That connection warmed more than his hand, but the frigid air permeated his lungs and brought the reality of their predicament back into vivid focus.
“There are cameras atop those two poles. They have a 360-degree range, but it takes twenty-five seconds for them to complete a rotation. If the gate is opened it will trigger a signal to the security station, so the guard will be looking. When that camera starts to cycle away from us, we’ve got twenty seconds to climb over.”
He reached for her shoulders. “This is your last chance, Em. I’m asking you to stay behind. Please.”
She smiled and reached up to touch his jaw.
“Dammit, Emily. Don’t look at me like that,” he uttered, hoarse. “I can’t handle these feelings right now. I need to stay sharp. We need to stay sharp.”
She jolted and her eyes shot up to his. “Of course I’m coming with you. Maybe you have the advantage of knowing the ins and outs of NMD, but don’t forget we’re here to find my brother. I know the way he thinks.”
Nate relaxed into a smirk. “Yeah, I’ll definitely concede that point to you.”
His gaze shifted to the miniature cameras mounted atop the black rusted shafts, the muted hum of their motors blending with the whisper of the evergreens.
“Next rotation. We go up together. You have to make it up in three steps, roll over the top, drop and jump behind the base of that brick stand…all in about twenty seconds.” He let go of her shoulders. “Can you do it, Em?”
“Piece of cake.” she boasted with a waver in her voice.
Wishing there was another way, but with no time to come up with a plan, he emerged from the shadows. “Okay, get ready—”
***
Emily hit the ground on her feet, but the frigid dirt sent shockwaves of pain up her ankles and calves. There was no time to dwell on it. She could sense rather than hear Nate drop beside her and tuck his long body against the brick base of the gate. Grateful that her ankles cooperated, she mimicked his actions and sucked in her breath as the hum of the camera continued its rotation.
“Good job,” Nate commended from the dark.
“Shhh.”
“There’s no audio recording, you can sing if you want to—they’re not going to hear.”
“I don’t sing.”
Nate waited the count of the next rotation, nodded and then in three crouched steps, progressed further down the brick embankment. He motioned her to follow.
“Okay, now it starts to get tricky,” he whispered as she joined him. “We’ve got exactly twelve seconds−half the rotation to sprint to that bank of dumpsters.”
Emily followed his finger toward a concrete stockade over a hundred yards away, accommodating four garbage dumpsters.
Was it already fifteen years ago that she ran a hundred-yard dash in eleven seconds in high school? One of the jocks from the varsity football team refused to believe that a girl could top his time and had challenged her to a race. She lost, but barely.
“No problem,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
Age cramped up muscles that used to move so fluidly. But if it meant the difference between being caught or not, she could sprint as fast as Mercury.
Nate touched her, and she jumped. He squeezed for encouragement, and then began the countdown.
“Now!”
Again, she didn’t beat the varsity jock, although she came in right on his heels and lunged behind the dumpster.
“Whew,” her lungs pumped, but she felt remarkably alive. “That’s tough in the cold.”
They were plastered against a wall of cinderblocks, hunkered down, and out of sight. Beside her, Nate barely sounded winded. She heard him shift and then felt his palms against her cheeks, his fingers gliding into her hair. To her astonishment, she then felt his lips possess hers. They were cold for a moment, but they warmed, and tasted of life and passion, and she smiled against them because the act had been such a pleasant shock.
He drew back, his forehead still propped against hers. “You never cease to amaze me.”
“You’re—” she choked. “You just kissed me. In the middle of all this. You never cease to amaze me.”
“You just impressed the hell out of me. I had to.” He turned and motioned her to follow as he inched along the base of the dumpster.
Emily rested her palm against his shoulder, using it as leverage. “If women who crawl around on their hands and knees around garbage dumpsters impress you, I’m not so sure that I’m flattered.”
A floodlight switched on above, exposing them. Emily gasped and flung the back of her hand over her eyes, stung by the shrill beam, waiting for the hit squad to open fire.
“Shit.” Nate pitched around the corner of the dumpster, dragging her along with him. In the shadows she heard his gruff litany. “Damn motion detector. Usually the deer trip it off.”
Emily scanned the frozen blacktop. “There are no deer around.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “Well, the good news is that it’s not me or Phil in there manning the monitors right now. If it were, that door would have slammed open already and you’d be staring down the barrel of an AK-47.”
She gaped at him. “And that’s supposed to reassure me?”
“Yeah.”
Crouching, he continued to advance through the dumpsters, his fingers on the sleeve of her jacket, ensuring she was with him every step of the way.
In the ghostly silence of winter, Emily strained to hear any sign of pursuit. She was ready for the door to slam open just as Nate had illustrated, but all she could distinguish was the rustle of his coat as he released her hand long enough to fish in his pocket.
“W−what are you doing?”
“Storm door,” He flattened back allowing her to peek over his shoulder at the heavy metal panels imbedded in the snow. “It’s used by maintenance for electrical care, but there’s access to NMD from in there.” With a twist of the key and a wrench of his wrist, Nate lifted the panel high enough to reveal a black chamber.
A doorway into oblivion.
For a second—for just the span of a vaporous breath, Emily wondered if she were walking into a trap. Blindly she had followed Nate. For one so traditionally cynical, she had extended her faith—and extended her heart.
In the dark he reached for her hand, his fingers linking with hers. Their quick squeeze of assurance helped to dispel some of the uncertainty. In that warm connection lie the truth. She had felt it that night on a frozen highway, when she touched the hand of a stranger and sensed something remarkable in the connection. It was a foretelling of their union. Or was it a glimpse of a past from a different lifetime?
It was a simple truth. She wanted to be with him. The mystery of entering this abyss was tantamount to their fate as a couple.
With a shuddering breath, Emily followed him into obscurity.
***
This was a world that she was not familiar with. Emily knew she was within the bowels of NMD, recognizing the stilted air and the churning rumble of the heating system. But the extensive, narrow corridors with their string of halogen bulbs, and the somber echo of their own footfalls created a surreal parallel to the establishment she knew.
“Where are we?” Though she whispered, she started at the resonance.
Before her, Nate’s broad shoulders filled the tight passage, and his grave voice drifted back. “There are a series of corridors designed for emergency evacuation,” he hesitated, and then added, “although, there were never any signs posted inside to alert the personnel of that.”
“Anyway,” he reached before him to brush aside a cobweb, “they’re almost never used.”
For a claustrophobic, these narrow walls could launch someone into a state of paranoia. Emily fixed on the back of Nate’s jacket. She could tell by his carriage that the extent of his injuries and fatigue were beginning to take their toll.
She needed to find Colin and bring this disaster to a conclusion. Think. Think. If she concentrated enough maybe she could telepathically determine his location.
“Well Em,” Nate drew to a halt. She could see nothing beyond his wide back. “Now it gets dicey.”
His tone set her teeth to chattering.
“So, what you’re saying is that thus far we’ve had it easy.”
“Hell yeah.”
Her pensive nod went undetected. “I was afraid so.”
Nate stooped to hoist open a two-foot wide airlock entrance in the floor. Frigid air poured from the breach, along with the scent of dead earth. Whatever this doorway was—it hadn’t been opened in ages, but it now was propped ajar and the shaft seemed bottomless.
“We-we’re going in there?” Her words echoed back at her from the hollow tomb.
Nate stood up and gripped her upper arms. “If I thought there was another way, I wouldn’t put you at risk like this.”
“Damn, you could have responded with something assuring. Something like, that shaft is only a few feet deep. Something like, this isn’t dangerous. It isn’t risky.” Her glance jerked from the ominous entrance to meet his. “You could have said something like that.”
“I could have,” he agreed, “but it would have been the first time I lied to you.”
Her shoulders slumped in his grasp. She stepped up to the panel and poked her toe along the edge and calculated the distance to the first rung of the ladder. About a foot. Frigid air slapped her face, nearly propelling her back into Nate’s arms. She crouched and peered down the narrow shaft.
A murky halo of light formed at receding intervals, enhancing the fathomless depth of the passage. It was a tight cylinder that seemed to descend to the Earth’s very core. The metal rungs of the ladder dropped from view as vertigo brought on nausea. Emily put a hand on her stomach and settled back against her heels.
“It’s this,” Nate said, “or we go back outside and wait until I can come up with another plan.”
She acknowledged the assessment and agreed that this was the most viable option. With a quick gulp of air, she slapped her palm against the wall and stood up, “Let’s get this over with then.”
***
Their boots reverberated off each rung, sounding like a pick chiseling coal.
Emily descended with a blind trust in the man beneath her. Perhaps that thought was scarier than the pit below. Perhaps relinquishing control for the first time in her life was the cause of the sudden bout of dizziness.
Her foot slipped, and so did a curse from her lips.
“You okay?”
Nate’s voice was deep, a point of focus in this murky shaft.
“Wonderful.”
“Two more floors to go,” he whispered, though there was a sharp clarity to his tone caused by the metal walls.
“Hold up, Em.”
Emily locked her arm around a rung and drew in a breath of stale air.
Don’t look down.
Why did the mind never heed sensible warnings like that? She tipped her head and followed the muted glow of the last bulb. Each story they descended was marked by a solitary light bulb encased in wire mesh.
Nate’s broad shoulders eclipsed the light, but she caught a glimpse of the void beneath him.
“My God,” she choked. “How far down does this go?”
“Your brother said it best. South of Hell.”
“What floor are we on?” She had lost track. Had they passed by six bulbs? Seven?
“Eighth floor. We’re below the Pit.” He shifted. “Okay, I want you to step down two rungs and then shift your foot to the right. You’ll feel a ledge. I’m already on it so just squeeze between me and the wall.”
“Okay.” Emily obeyed eager for an end to the monotony of the descent.
Her boot clipped the next rung of the ladder, and she would have slipped entirely were it not for her death grip on the icy metal.
“Em?” Nate boomed with concern.
“Shhh,” she hissed. “I’m fine.”
Two more steps and she felt the narrow ledge, a six-inch metal lip that circled the shaft. She dragged in a deep breath and held it as she touched her foot to his boot. Making herself as flat as possible, she sandwiched between Nate’s hard body and the bleak cinder-block wall. A rock in a hard place.
She felt safe in this warm pocket, though.
“Now what?”
Nate dipped his head close to her ear. His breath dusted the sensitive flesh with a warm dose. “The door is four feet to our right—just five more steps and we’re there.”
“Why the hell didn’t they put this ladder by the door?”
He chuckled. “Who can figure out the mind of an engineer?”
Indeed.
“We should do this one at a time,” she observed. “You can’t stay wrapped around me—you’ll fall.”
“I won’t fall, and I like staying wrapped around you. Now stop arguing and take a step to your right.”
Emboldened by his solid length against her, Emily moved in tandem. When she felt Nate’s thigh shift to the right, so did hers. Obediently she answered his body’s command to halt. She felt the sweep of his arm as it released the metal grid to seek out the handle of the access panel.
For one suspended moment, the safety of two people depended on the strength of Nate’s single-handed grip on the metal frame. But, in an instant the door was wrenched open and she was swept through it.
Ceiling-wide fluorescent bulbs stung her eyes. Instinctively she crouched, intent on concealing herself. The room was naked save for a copying machine that looked like Watson, IBM’s grand computer, and a paper shredder that could destroy the Library of Congress collection.
Emily squinted up at the corners of the ceiling, but detected no omnipresent cameras.
“Where to now?” she whispered as Nate climbed through and joined her. The impulse to hug him and satisfy that he was safe had her stumbling for more words.
“We keep going down.”
“Down?” She stared at the abyss beyond the shadowed doorway.
“No, not that way. We’re far enough that it’s safe to proceed from the inside.” Nate rubbed at his ribs and winced. “Well—safe being a relative term.”
“Wonderful,” she quipped. “Why down? I would figure Colin is in the Pit.” She frowned. “It’s what he knows. It’s where he would be comfortable.”
“No,” Nate reached for her hand. “I have a pretty good idea where your brother is right now.” He evaded her glance in favor of the next doorway. “Come on, there’s something I need to show you.”
***
It was too quiet.
Nate knew there was a limited amount of security personnel at this hour, but that by no means indicated the compound was vulnerable. The hi-tech nerve center commanded by he and Phil had replaced the need for physical intervention. Their bevy of video links and motion detectors were the first alert of any foreign presence, and then accordingly, security was deployed.
But Phil was in the hospital. And as for himself, he was maneuvering them in such a manner to dodge those mechanical eyes. He had picked this floor to enter the building, knowing that the cameras were fixed in the recesses of the ceiling, whereas on the levels above, they revolved in a random sequence making it impossible to evade their pursuit.
“Stay close behind me.”
Emily jogged the two steps it took to catch up with him, and practically molded herself to his frame. A quick grin tugged at his lips, but he put a gruff inflection in his voice. “Not that close.”
When she would have eased away, he reached out for her hand. His free grip was clutched around the 9mm. It seemed little defense, knowing that the guards in NMD toted AK-47’s that could destroy them with one spray.
Emily’s fingers trembled in his, as he tried for an encouraging squeeze. In the past, he was responsible for one person. The surveillance he executed was too rigorous to risk a large group, or any form of backup. Now there was a risk. A risk that was so important to him. His sole thought was to get her through this unharmed. He wanted the chance at a future with her. What that future would be—well, all he wanted was a chance.
“Nate.”
His head snapped as he cursed himself for falling so deep into thought. He cleared his throat. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought I heard something.”
Above the ubiquitous hum of generators he strained to perceive any sound—the scuff of a telltale shoe, or the click of a door. But there was nothing, and the stairwell they had just alighted from was void of life. Regardless, he held his tongue and used hand gestures to prompt Emily to follow.
Her eyes locked on his. He saw blind trust and unmitigated faith. The weight of that confidence worried him.
Admiral Walter Morrison, his father, had been responsible for an entire ship. Because of his accountability, he was one of the last men to try and leave the flagging destroyer. He never made it.
Nate attended the Naval Academy because his fate had been ordained from youth, but after watching his father’s command of so many, he vowed to work alone. His surveillance missions saved as many lives as Walter Morrison’s contribution to the Navy. But in Nate’s case, only he was jeopardized.
Growing up, he did not get to see his father often, but when he did the man wove tales of battles and life at sea. He made it sound like an epic war of Gods across a mythical ocean. In those times together, Nate sat in awe of his father’s tales, and after his death, being a part of Naval Intelligence was all that remained of that bond. His decision to leave it behind was a tough one. His misconceived death played a heavy factor, but the ensuing resurrection was an even greater reason.
They were quick to want to send him back into the subterfuge under a new name. Captain Herman Kolchek spoke to Nate with the earnest advice of a surrogate father. He feared that Nate would not be satisfied until he met his father’s fate. Until someone had voiced that thought out loud, Nate never acknowledged how close to the truth it was.
But not anymore.
Under the weight of Emily’s panicked stare, Nate realized that he didn’t want to work alone anymore. He wanted to share his life with someone. That someone had a face. An angelic face.
He was willing to risk it all for a chance at a normal life with this woman.
Click.
It was such a soft sound−as innocent as an air vent switching on. But Nate knew that the source was man-made. His grip tightened on both the 9mm and Emily’s hand. Inclining his head, he motioned her back into a doorway, mutely cheering on her efforts to tread silently.
As soon as they were within the storage chamber, he moved to the edge of the doorframe, his gun aloft. In mere seconds the shadowed figures descended the stairwell. Men in black, approaching like the crew that advanced on him on that beach in the Gulf. Then, as now, it was their scent that divulged their progress−a rank blend of sweat and synthetic cloth.
Above their nimble approach, he heard Emily’s small breaths coming shorter in sequence, as if between each one she held in her lungs for as long as possible.
The guards were outside the door now. He couldn’t see them, but sensed three unique aromas. One, a hint of garlic, another, the musky scent of Old Spice deodorant, and lastly, the decaying whiff of trepidation.
They hesitated and Nate was prepared to take out at least two of them before he went down, but miraculously they continued past. Not until the final tainted scent of perspiration left the hall, did he start to relax.
He turned and offered Emily an encouraging nod. Wide eyes traced his every move, and he tried to smile, but she just stared at him.
“This way.” He gestured.
Emily shuddered. “Shhh.”
“They’re at least three floors down by now, if not more. And we can get where we need to go through here, we don’t have to use the stairs.”
“Three floors down?” she gasped. “Seriously, how far down does NMD go?”
Nate touched a button undetected by her, and watched as a panel slid open to reveal a utility room. “When the floor turns molten we’ve reached the bottom.”
Emily’s eyebrows arched.
He crossed the linoleum in three brisk strides and cast a wary glance up at the corner of the ceiling. “The bottom two floors are warehouses.”
“I’m going to guess that the only reason you would keep a warehouse twelve stories below ground is because you want to hide something,” she said.
“You’d be correct,” he answered, distracted by the illuminated panel on the wall. Nimbly his fingers pecked off a sequence of numbers. “Phil and I have override codes for all the doors down here,” he explained. “No one knows that. I never thought we would have a need for them, but I was trained to be thorough.”
For a moment, he hesitated on the threshold. He turned around and found Emily busily trying to yank the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands to induce warmth. She seemed skittish in one breath, and impatient the next. She was a blend of contradictions.
“Em.”
Fawn lashes lifted.
“Look,” he continued, “before we go in here, let me just clear something up.”
The fumbling with her hands stopped. He wanted to reach for them, but she studied him with the intense curiosity of an animal in the wild.
“When I tracked you down to the cabin in Lake George, I wanted to believe that you were a criminal. I wanted to believe you were deceitful, manipulative, anything to erase the memory I had of the stranger that I was attracted to—” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to condemn you, because I hurt.”
Emily’s lips parted to speak, but he shook his head. “I’m so damned used to being alone, and it’s easier for me to go on the attack rather than acknowledge the alternative.”
This time she would not be deterred. “And what is the alternative?”
Nate felt the sting of cool air emanating from the chamber behind him. Down here, the dull drone of the generators was barely distinguishable. It was almost an afterthought−a hint of vibration churning his blood. He felt the tremor in Emily’s fingers and stared down at their joined hands.
“That with you−for the first time in my life, I feel vulnerable.”
Her eyes shifted, and just like that, his insecurity burgeoned anew. The silence grew deafening until he drew away from her and tried to concentrate on the bleak entrance.
Emily reached for him. There was a grave certainty to her expression as she whispered softly. “Vulnerable?” She shook her head. “For the first time in ten years I have relinquished control of my fate to someone else. Nate, we have known each other barely a week, and yet, there is something between us—something−”
Oh, he knew exactly what it was. It was like kinetic energy, and a kind of kismet. He didn’t believe in all that bullshit, but now he had to reconsider his cynicism. There was a comforting familiarity in this woman.
“You are very much in control of your destiny, Em,” he answered hoarsely. “You are too strong for it to be any other way.”
“Strong?” Her voice sounded shrill as she sucked it in and cast a worried glimpse over her shoulder. “I’m terrified,” she whispered. “Of this—of losing my brother. Nate, I can’t—”
“Hey.” In his grasp, he felt her shoulders quake. “We’ll find him. I will do whatever it takes to make it okay.”
“Why?” she croaked.
With an affecting smile, he released her. “I’m pretty sure you know why. When this is over—”
In the stillness their eyes locked and held, and the shadows and the resuscitation of NMD itself abated.
“Okay,” he asserted, “let’s do this.”
***
Emily swiped impatiently at her eye, and nodded. She felt like a wreck, as if she were on the verge of a mental breakdown, but somewhere beneath her chaotic thoughts, Nate’s solemn words warmed her.
I think you know why.
With no time to contemplate his statement, they stepped into the black chamber, the panel snapping shut behind them with a malevolent click. Trapped in obscurity, Emily choked down panic and reached in the dark for Nate. She located his arm and gripped it with manacle-like fingers.
“W-where are we?” Her voice was no more than a breathy whisper, but there was a daunting echo to it.
The darkness consumed her to the point that she could not even detect her own hand before her face. As useless as her eyes were, her senses picked up on a feeling of vast space. It was as if she were rooted in a giant underground cave where she imagined bats hanging upside down and stalagmites dripping brackish beads into pools of obsidian water. Or maybe on the stage of a colossal auditorium with all the lights turned out.
She homed in on the brawny man at her side, touching the length of her body to his to make contact with something secure.
“Well Alice,” Nate murmured. “Welcome to Wonderland.”