Page 32 of Conquered Betrayal
With a section of the fence cut on two angles, Alina bent back the wire. I squeezed through first; she followed. Taking a breath, I gave her a quick glance, then we sprinted across the grassy twelve-foot space, not stopping until we’d pressed ourselves against the building, hidden in shadows.
My breaths left my lips in short bursts, and I mentally talked myself down from the adrenaline rush. Alina looked as calm as ever. Having been deployed overseas for two years, she knew how to deal with these situations. I might have been in the infantry, but my entire military career had been spent in Canada, not anywhere close to combat.
Even so, this whole operation energized me more than intimidated. If I’d been allowed to, I would have stayed enlisted. Emerson hadn’t permitted it, and I understood why. His reach hadn’t extended to the military, and I’d been away from his influence too long—he’d been right to worry.
I took a breath and nodded to Alina. While I kept a lookout, she crouched by the door and used a lock picker to crack open the mechanism. This door appeared similar to the ones Emerson had used in the Alaskan compound, but with the keypad dead on the side, Alina was able to get it open. We sneaked into a hallway crammed with boxes. They towered in stacks like someone was moving in—or moving out. My mind returned to those trucks.
Alina closed the door behind us with a click. We waited, listening. When we heard no one nearby, we continued forward. The first two rooms were empty office spaces, the third a storage closet, the next a bathroom. The last door on the right was locked. We glanced at each other. I kept watch while she crouched to pick the lock.
Click.We were in. I shut the door quietly behind us and scanned the space. It was exactly what we were looking for, a working computer where we could download as much data as possible onto a USB drive, and a connection to Emerson’s servers where we’d leave one of Marley’s invasive viruses as a parting gift.
While Alina looked around, I sat at the desk and plugged in the thumb drive. The monitor lit up, and I propped my goggles on my head. The computer whirred—a soft noise, but it sounded loud when we were trying to be so quiet. Time ticked by slowly. Alina pressed herself against the wall by the door, listening.
Fingers tapping on the desk, I waited for the prompt on the screen to signal completion. The white message popped up, and I slipped the drive out of the slot, swapping it for the one that would deploy Marley’s virus. A minute later, I yanked it out, and slid it in my pocket with the other.
Joining Alina by the door, she glanced at me, and I nodded that we were good. Soundlessly, she turned the knob, hesitated, then stepped out into the hallway. I made sure the door closed completely, that we left no evidence of our presence.
We started back the way we’d come. Voices from far-off made tension crawl up my spine. I spun around to stare down the long hallway. Flashlights cut through the black, blinding through the lens of my goggles.
People were headed this way. I turned, ready to run to the exit, when one voice rose above the others.
“It doesn’t matter. We won’t need it anymore.”
Emerson’s words splashed over me like arctic water. I froze, unable to move.He’s found me.Blood pumped in my ears. Every horrible thing I’d imagined him doing to me cascaded through my mind. My chest squeezed so tight, I couldn’t take a breath.
A strong hand gripped my arm. I flinched, ready to lash out against my brother, to fight for my life.
But it was Alina. She pulled me into the empty office, closed the door, and locked it. My chest heaved up and down. Alina held her fingers up to her lips, a message for me to be silent, but I couldn’t seem to breathe any quieter—not when it felt like I sipped air through a straw.
The closer the voices came, the more panic traveled up my spine. Emerson was talking to someone, snippets of their words reaching us. His tone remained even, calm.
He doesn’t know I’m here.This sounded like a routine inspection, or something like it. But why in the middle of the night?
If I’d known he’d be here, I never would have come. My eyes went to Alina. Thank God she’d kept her cool enough to get us hidden, but now we were trapped. If she were discovered with me…there was no predicting what my brother would do. I couldn’t allow him to find us. I’d kill everyone here before I’d let him get his hands on her.
The voices became louder, like they were right outside the door. My gun tight in my hand, I took a step back, out of direct line of sight if it opened. Alina did the same on the other side.
The doorknob rattled.
“Don’t bother,” said a different man’s voice. “That one’s already empty, everything’s in the hallway here. I can take you back to…” The words faded, the light from the flashlights becoming dimmer. Slowly, my heart rate lowered. I took a proper breath, but kept my eyes on the door.
Titty fucker, I was mad at myself. I was a trained soldier, and I fell apart as soon as I heard my brother speak. My hand tightened on my gun. He didn’t have power over me anymore. I couldn’t let this happen again. I wouldn’t break down, wouldn’t freeze.
Even when we couldn’t hear the voices anymore, Alina and I stayed put. Then Marley’s voice came through the comm. “I have chatter on the power company’s radios. Looks like they’re close to fixing their end.”
Not looking at Alina, not wanting to see judgment there, I placed a hand on the knob and opened it a smidgen. All was quiet. I opened it wider and crept out, listening for Alina behind me. When we got to the exit, this time she cracked it open, listened, then nodded that we were clear.
We paused briefly in the shadows for the guards to move farther off, then sprinted to the space we’d cut in the chain-link fence. One after the other, we shimmied through, then ran into the trees.
Akerclunkechoed through the air. Propping my goggles on my head, I turned to see the electricity on, floodlights blazing to erase the shadows we’d found so useful.
My chest squeezed. Emerson stood near the entrance, his arms crossed and strawberry-blond hair glinting in the glare of the floodlights. And he stared right at me.
My heart leaped into my throat.There’s no way he can see me from there.But that didn’t stop me from spinning around and running to our van as fast as my legs could carry me.
PARTII
A TASTE OF FREEDOM
