Liam finished for him. “Above ground.”
“Exactly. It’s the one place none of us would expect them to be. With the supplies, equipment, and especially the air purifiers, they could easily build such a place. It would be hard to find it to because of all the radiation.”
Liam paced back and forth. “It would have to be close enough to walk to. They wouldn’t be able to survive walking long distances in the radiation.”
“Unless they took body suits to protect them,” Quinn muttered.
“But we haven’t had missing suits reported, and we’ve made a rule to not keep extras around while working the tunnels,” Liam responded.
Warrior Davens approached and Corey introduced him to the other three men. “Warrior Davens has been extremely helpful in the search for Nix...Lieutenant Saber.”
“The above ground transport is here and ready to go.”
“Great, have the warriors you sent ahead caught sight of them yet?”
“No, but they are keeping track of their coordinates in case the storm comes back this way and clears out their tracks. The heat signatures are no longer showing up aboveground.”
“What about the blood trail?”
“They reported that they have not found any new traces of Lieutenant Saber’s blood.”
Damn, he hoped they found her soon. The longer she was in the hands of this guy, the worse the chances were of them getting her back unharmed. He would get her back alive; he wouldn’t settle for anything else.
As they went up the stairway to exit the subway station, Liam pulled him to the side, away from the others. “Corey, how did this happen? How did she get taken? Why weren’t you with her?”
“I take full blame. I should have been with her. Nix insisted on talking to the medics about treating one of the guys that had attacked us the first day. She wanted me to talk to the tribe leader to get a feel for anything unusual. We split up.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t immediately notify us that you were attacked.”
“We had been attacked while above ground and were out in the open when a radiation storm came through. Nix had just sent the shuttle to a different location to keep anyone from stealing it when the attack began. The storm interfered with our communicators. We also lost our only computer during the storm. We had to walk to the city when the storm was over.”
“Why didn’t you go to the dome?”
“There was a chance that our attackers were watching the domes, expecting us to show up there for aid. We decided we couldn’t risk it, so we headed for a different end of the tunnels than we had planned to visit. We felt that we should try to continue on with our mission while keeping our eyes and ears open for any information about the resistance attack. We lucked out that someone reported hearing about a man seeking healers for injuries similar to those that of one of our attackers. We went immediately to question the man. The rest you know.”
“One more question.”
“What?” Corey asked, impatient. He wanted to get back on the road to tracking down Nix.
“What the hell happened between you and Nix? I can smell her all over you.”
Well, fuck! He’d forgotten about the heightened Drastan sense of smell. He hadn’t planned on exposing their relationship just yet. Not until he was actually sure that he and Nix were on the same page about what they had. He wanted a real relationship, but did she? Did Nix want him too? He couldn’t afford to think about any of that until they found her, though.
“We’ve been attracted to each other for a while. Something did happen, but that’s between me and Nix, and it can definitely wait until we get her back.”
“Here’s a warning, then, Nash: I won’t allow you to hurt her. She’s family to me, like a sister.”
“I don’t want to hurt her, but I’m not about to tell you my feelings for her before I have a chance to tell them to her.”
Liam growled, clearly not completely satisfied with Corey’s response, but he nodded sharply and moved toward the transport waiting for them. Corey worried that Nix would try to escape, or worse, take on the men who had her. So far, their sensors read eight heat signatures. Nix was a great fighter, but there was no way she could take on seven men on her own.
He whispered low, “Hold on, babe, we’re coming for you. Please be careful.”
