Navy SEAL Noel. Liz Johnson
Читать онлайн книгу.
her.
Jess swallowed and blinked, fighting the urge to look away. “Nothing.” She didn’t wait for him to push her again, but stooped to collect the scattered debris.
The weight of the full box in her arms made each step through the dewy grass twice as hard, three times as slow. She was losing strength, her energy reserves depleting quickly from too much manual labor and too many nights with not enough sleep.
She wasn’t about to risk more than just the essential catnaps at night.
Someone had been poking around outside her room the night before.
She wasn’t going to be asleep if they managed to make it in.
Exhaustion was wearing her down, but she didn’t have a choice about setting up her lab, as ordered. Manuel seemed far too eager to use his gun, taking every opportunity to butt the barrel against her. Like a teenager given his first car, Manuel couldn’t wait to take it for a test drive.
When they reached one of the nondescript gray, cinder block buildings that seemed to multiply within the compound, Manuel went to work on the large, padlocked metal door. It squealed as he pushed it open and motioned for her to follow him in.
Jess stumbled over the four-inch step, her legs like overcooked fettuccine. With a clinking of glass, the box she’d been carrying landed on one of four black tables evenly spaced in the middle of the room. The table’s wooden legs slid on the cement floor as Jess fell against it.
Manuel grumbled and motioned for her to rearrange the furniture.
If they’d spoken the same language, she’d have told him that this high school chemistry class replica— complete with two full walls of counter space and one measly window—was more likely to cause them all to be killed than keep the Morsyni toxin safe until it was released.
At least, she assumed that’s what they wanted her to do. Really, it was all a guess at this point. Manuel’s monosyllabic grunts and broken English had barely hinted at why she’d been attacked, drugged and dragged to...wherever this was. But it wasn’t a far jump to guess that it had everything to do with her research on the Morsyni toxin. Before three men in black ski masks had abducted her from the Southern California State University lab, they’d forced her to retrieve her sample vial of the powder. She had just one gram of the ultrafine substance, but it contained more than a trillion lethal spores.
Which was enough to kill fifty million people. Or more.
Jess’s stomach lurched at the very thought. Her research had all been targeted at better understanding the Morsyni, hoping to one day find a cure. Or at least a way to minimize its effects. But whoever had brought her here just wanted to twist her expertise and use it against... Well, she didn’t know who. But someone was a target, and she had been set up to be the arrow.
Suddenly the humidity wasn’t the only thing making it hard to breathe. She pushed past Manuel and out the door, hoping that the narrow alley along the back of the cinder block barrack would provide enough air to lift the band around her chest.
They could have only one reason for taking her, too. They needed someone who knew how to release the toxin without killing everyone inside the compound.
Manuel shoved her shoulder, gesturing her back to the storage shed to get more supplies. “Move.” He locked the door and then resumed breathing on her neck. She shuddered at the stale odor, praying once again to be anywhere but confined by these compound walls with this man as her tail.
She’d nearly worn the winding path to the shed into a muddy trench, but she kept her head down as she trudged toward their destination.
They emerged into the courtyard, the afternoon sun steaming her skin through her cotton shirt. They had to be near the equator. Or possibly on the sun.
Jess was nearly all the way across the courtyard when her foot disappeared into a mud puddle, and she lurched to the ground, landing on all fours.
Manuel yelled at her, and she glared over her shoulder at him.
“Ocho días.” He rolled his eyes in a universal sign of displeasure. “Sólo ocho días.”
Eight days. Only eight days.
Even she, who’d passed high school Spanish only because of her best friend, could translate that. Manuel expected to have to put up with her for only eight more days. It was too much to hope that he’d simply be replaced by a different guard at the end of that time or that she’d be free to leave then.
Which could only mean one thing.
She’d have served her purpose. In eight days, she’d be expected to release the toxin.
And then she’d likely be killed.
Unless she escaped.
Something like fear and dread clawed at her insides, leaving a twisted trail of pain in its wake. She fought the sudden need to vomit, and gulped in great quantities of oxygen.
“Up!”
Pushing her hands into the mud, Jess made it to her feet, and her gaze fell squarely on a man in a tattered gray suit twenty yards away. Two armed guards held his elbows as he glowered at another one, who seemed to be in charge. The man in the gray suit turned a blank stare on her, his pale face cloaked in a five-o’clock shadow. And devoid of any recognition.
But she knew him.
She’d known him more than half her life, though she hadn’t seen him in years.
At least...at least it looked like Will.
Her heart leaped to her throat, lodging there as she tried to call out.
Manuel stepped into her line of sight, and by the time she’d scrambled to look around him, the familiar face had disappeared.
Maybe the heat and humidity were causing hallucinations. Maybe she’d simply imagined him, hoping someone would come for her.
But why would her mind conjure Will Gumble?
“Vámanos.” Manuel nudged her toward the giant house that took up nearly half of a security wall. Its golden stucco walls and clay-tile roof were out of place among the host of intentionally unremarkable buildings in its shadow. It had to be home to the man or men in charge, although she’d yet to see them.
She followed the path around the big house to the storage shed, pushing all thoughts of Will Gumble out of her mind. She had eight days—less, actually—to make it out of this place alive. And dwelling on her former best friend wasn’t going to rescue her. She had to find a way out on her own.
Jess huddled in the farthest corner of her cell, behind the bed where she’d managed to filch only a few hours of sleep the past few nights. The lumpy mattress and loose bedsprings stood like a sentinel between her and the doorway now, but they wouldn’t be much protection if anyone came in.
She grasped the foot-long wrench she’d stolen off a maintenance cart three days before, holding it vertical and ready to swing if her worst nightmare crashed through that door. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the windowless room enough that she could make out the rotting slats of the lower part of the door by the crack of light seeping beneath it.
Despite plenty of threatening noises every night since her arrival, no one had unlocked the bolt on the outside of the door. Not yet. But if someone did, she’d be ready for him.
She crouched for what felt like hours, unable to tell the exact passage of time, but the transition from screaming pain to a dull ache to numbness in her thighs was better than a clock.
In the loose haze between alertness and the siren call of sleep, her mind began to wander to the familiar face she’d seen that afternoon. Of course, it couldn’t possibly have been Will. She hadn’t seen him in ten years. She probably wouldn’t recognize him even if they sat face-to-face. The man had