Page 66 of The Spy
I pulled her hands completely away from the metal casing, swearing a blue streak into our comms unit. "Have a medic on standby at Rogues."
"What the fuck happened?" Saff came over the line.
"Tabatha’s been electrocuted. There was a secondary security measure. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
I scooped her up in one arm, reset everything, and we were out the door. That was dangerous. Anyone could be in the hall, and I hadn't even checked the cameras.
Tabatha was like a dead weight, twitching in my arms as I dragged her across the hall into the closet again.
"Hang on, butterfly. Stay with me now. Do you hear? Don't you dare leave me. Not when I have to pay you back for shooting me in the arse.”
"What the fuck? Why is there a secondary security measure on that cabinet?" I heard Saff bellow out.
"I don't know. There were no cameras in there for sure."
Tabatha was still shaking. I pulled out a penlight and checked her eyes. Pupils dilated. She'd had the shock of her life.
Her teeth chattered, and her hair, slicked back in a bun, now made a frizzy halo around her head, but she was coming back to me. "My hands. My fucking hands."
"Let me look at your hands, butterfly."
They were red. Mild burns. When I touched them, she winced and bit her lip, holding back the pain.
"There's something in that cabinet that Tate doesn't want anyone to touch. We have to figure out what it is. In the meantime, we need to get you the hell out of here."
Saff chimed in "The question is, did it set off an alarm that we don't even know about?"
"I don't know. Right now, my only concern is getting Tabatha the fuck out of here and getting her medical attention."
"I'm sorry. I'm fucking sorry. I didn't know," Tabatha muttered.
My heart thundered against my chest for a completely different reason than before. Was she okay? Could she continue meeting with Tate tomorrow? I had to get her back to campus and have her checked out and back to her flat before that happened. Otherwise, I was going to have to find a different way to put this mission together.
I wasn't putting her at risk anymore. Not like this. I wouldn't risk losing her.
22
Tabatha
I woke up in bed with my hands burning. Fuck. What had happened?
I knew what happened. I’d been bloody electrocuted. So it seemed to solidify that Tate was a problem. But what was he hiding and what was so important in that cabinet?
I glanced down at my hands. Both of them were bright red on the palms. They didn't look like major burns, but boy did they sting.
I tried to get up, but a deep voice stopped me in my tracks. "No, lie down."
The sense of calm, quickly followed by a tingling in other parts of my body, was unwelcome. "What are you doing here?"
"You went down in front of me. What do you mean, what am I doing here?" His voice was like granite.
"I figured you'd be off briefing teams, listening to intel."
His brow furrowed. "You thought I wouldn't be here when you woke up?"
"Aren't there more important things to do right now?"
He ignored the question, and his frown deepened. "How are you feeling?"
