Tasha had finished transferring the peanuts from jars to baggies, and was now storing them in the daypack he’d grabbed from the utility room. But her eyes lit up as she literally did that math. “Andthatmeans the escape hatch’s door to the surface is going to be far away from the pod’s main door.”
Where the hostiles were hunkered down, waiting for them to emerge.
“In theory, yeah.” Thomas nodded. With luck and stealth, he and Tasha would be able to sneak out without being detected.
“Which means they won’t know we’ve left, so they won’t follow us,” Tasha concluded. “Which is great. We’re not trapped anymore. But after we’re out of here...”
“Thenwhat?” He finished for her, seeing her pensive concern and raising it an acknowledged grim reality as he gestured for her to follow him out of the kitchen, toward the utility room. “It’ll take us days to hike down to the airfield where we flew in, but we don’t want to go there, since someone—helo maintenance crew or car rental agency—is absolutely working with the team who’s hunting us. But okay, there’s a town nearby. If we bypass the airfield and find a warm place to hide—someone’s basement, maybe? Then we find a phone.” Assuming landlines weren’t down.
Assuming they could survive the days and nights it would take to descend the mountain.
The temperature had dropped considerably since they’d spent their first night together in that hide he’d built. It was no longer in the balmy fifties. And although they now had access to blankets to layer for warmth, the fleece was bulky and would make it harder for them to move undetected through the mountainous terrain.
Tasha followed him to the back of the little concrete-walled utility room. “FYI, I’ve explored every inch of this place, and I haven’t found anything remotely like an escape hatch.”
He motioned to the metal shelving unit that held a tool kit and other maintenance supplies. The wall behind it had a small, cast-iron door—like an entrance to an old-time coal room—just big enough for a man of his size to squeeze through.
“That?” Tash asked as he started clearing off the shelves to make them easier to move. “No, it’s barely even a closet. It’s only about four inches deep.”
“You already opened it?” he asked.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “One of the times you were out checking for messages. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a secret passageway to Narnia.”
“So you moved this shelf?” he asked. “All by yourself?”
“Yup,” she told him, already starting to help him clear the shelves, carrying a pile of rags to the work counter over by the gun locker. “It’s not that heavy once it’s empty, and it seemed pretty obvious to me that either that little door led to nowhere, or the shelf was in front of it for a capital-R Reason. Like it contained a stash of jewels or burner cell phones or the recipe to the Queen’s Secret Sauce. But it was empty. Although you should definitely look, in case I’m wrong and it’s got—I don’t know—some kind of false back...?”
“I hope it does.” Thomas nodded as he lugged a heavy tool kit across the room. “A door like that, yet the interior’s only four inches deep...? God, I hope it’s the hatch. If it’s not, we’ll have to spend the next few hours banging on the walls.”
“Ooh, fun,” she said, grabbing an armload of umbrellas. “Oh, wait, no, you meant actually banging, as in knocking and listening for a covered-up door. Boo.”
Thomas shot her a look. “Now you’re just being evil.”
“I don’t get why we need to leave the pod if the power goes out. We have flashlights and plenty of candles. And yeah, the toilet situation will get unhappy, although we can schedule a few pressure flushes.” She held up the ancient metal bucket she was moving across the room. “I bet we have at least a couple of buckets of gin.”
She was right about that. The pressure from a bucket of water—or gin—would force the contents of the toilet down the sewage pipe. But...
“Toilet’s the least of my worries,” Thomas told her. “See, if the power goes out, that means the hostiles found the underground power lines. And yeah, that might be due to luck, but it most likely means they’ve dug into public records and found the construction plans for the shelter. And once they havethatinfo, it’s over for us. They’ll know about the escape hatch—and at the least they’ll set up guards at that exit. At worst, they’ll try to use it to breach the shelter. Of course, they won’t really need to do that, because if they have the plans, they can mess with the ventilation system and force us out—or just plain suffocate us, if their goal is to kill you—us.”
“No, you were right the first time.” As Tasha turned to look at him, all sense of play and teasing was gone from her face. “You’re just the bodyguard—I’m the one they’re after. Without me, this all goes away.”
“That may have been true at the start,” he said. “But not anymore. They now know better than to keep me alive. So don’t be thinking—”
“I don’t want you to die because of me,” she said. “I mean, I don’t want you to die, period, but—”
“I have no intention of dying anytime soon.”
“Said everyone, always,” Tasha pointed out, “even those who were moments from their unintentional death.” She took a deep breath. “If this is an escape hatch, I want you to use it. Without me.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tasha could tell from the expression on Thomas’s face that he’d misunderstood her. He thought she was making some kind of weird, selfless sacrifice.
“I mean that you should use it to go get help,” she explained. “Without me slowing you down. You know,yougo find a phone. In town. WhileIwait. Here. For you to come back and save me. I’m not insane.”
Thomas smiled briefly at that. “I know.”
“I think you’re still learning that,” she countered, stepping forward to help him move the shelf before he waved her back.
