No, he mouthed back instantly.
That was a relief. If I didn’t have him, I would have wanted someone to think of me. To save me.
I was so lucky he was here. This whole situation was so fucked, but it could have been a million times worse, and I was grateful, so damn grateful, even though none of this should have happened.
And it must have been the emotion, or the remnants of being sick, that made me reach out and grab the first thing I could—his pinkie finger. I gave it a light squeeze, half expecting him to shake me off. To ask me if my hand had gotten lost.
He didn’t.
All he did was turn and lead us forward. He didn’t make a single peep even on those big, bare feet. I hadn’t noticed or processed until now that he didn’t have shoes.
We moved, going in the same direction they had taken me. Suddenly, he stopped, and I barely managed not to bump into him. The Defender glanced at me over his shoulder and put his index finger against his mouth again.
I nodded.
A lot more gently than I would have expected, he slipped out of my hold, set his hands on my shoulders, and moved me to the side, halfway between two doors. He gestured for me to stay where I was, and I nodded again.Cover your ears and don’t move, he mouthed.
I gave him a thumbs-up, wondering what the hell was about to happen, then put my palms over my ears.
He pressed those same big hands against what seemed like a heavy door and pushed it.
I was too far off to the side to see what was in there, who was in there, but one second he was there, and in the next he was inside.
A loud crack made me flinch a moment before the wall by my shoulder shook. There was a thud and an even louder crack that had me jerking in place. He was fine. He had to be fine. Maybe a minute later, the door opened and Alex came out, a backpack over his shoulder. I dropped my hands.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, my eyes landing on the hole in the hoodie by his shoulder. A hole that hadn’t been there before he’d gone in.
Now I knew what that crack had been about.
He didn’t even glance at what should have been a gunshot wound… if his body couldn’t repel bullets. “Fine.”
What in the hell had happened in there?I wondered before deciding it didn’t fucking matter. Not when he held his hand out, a small white bottle in his palm. “Take two.”
I read the label. Generic painkillers. He’d gotten me painkillers.
I grabbed them and shook two out, swallowing them dry with a wince. Alexander watched me slip the bottle into my pocket before waving me to follow him again.
I did, turning down a hall I hadn’t seen before, then another. He’d said there were only two guards, but was that really it? Had both of them been in that other room? It was so quiet; I kept my eye on the walls, looking for cameras. Maybe some trapdoors or booby traps.
But there weren’t any. I guess everything could be hacked into, including security footage. Maybe that’s why they didn’t have any security?
The hallway abruptly ended at another heavy-looking door. Alexander did the same thing, placing his hand at the intersection where it met the frame and slowly pushed it. There was a sound right before it popped, and a sliver of weak light came in through the crack.
I tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you going to blow it up?”
Those purple eyes flicked toward me. “Blow what up?”
I tipped my head to the side. “The building,” I whispered.
His blink was so slow. “We don’t… do that.”
Oh. Duh.
He gave me another look out of the corner of his eye as he held out the backpack he’d taken from the office. “Get on my back. I bought us time, but we need to run,” he said, already moving on to the next step.
I hesitated as I slid my arms through the straps, holding back a groan at the weight and the feel against me once it was on. Running was what I’d been training for, for years. What I’d expected, but… there was no way. Not right now. Not any time this decade from the way my lungs were acting.
I was out of breath just walking, and this damn backpack felt like it was loaded up with bricks instead of whatever was inside of it. Fuck. “Are you sure your back is okay?” I asked him, ready to… ready to tell him to leave me behind. That I’d figure it out. He had already done more than enough.
