Just to be on the safe side, she and Jayson avoided the main staircase in the center of the building as well as the elevator and kept searching until they found a set of steps leading to the basement in the far corner of the building. It turned out that there were actually three floors beneath the main one. They passed by first two and headed to the very bottom.
“If they’re keeping people prisoner in here, they’d want to keep them as far away from everyone else as possible,” Jayson said.
Layla silently agreed.
When they got to the door at the bottom of the stairwell, she opened it a crack to take a peek and quickly closed it again.Crap.
“There are two soldiers in the hallway,” she told Jayson softly.
He cursed. “How far away?”
“About fifteen feet maybe. They’re standing side by side, one a little closer to us than the other.”
“They’re standing guard,” Jayson murmured. “That has to be where they’re holding Anya.”
“How are we going to deal with them without bringing everyone else down here?” she whispered. “One gunshot and we’re done.”
Jayson didn’t say anything right away; then his mouth curved up as an idea came to him.
“What?” she prompted.
“Do you think you can distract them for a little while?” he asked.
She frowned. “How?”
He chucked softly. “These are guys we’re talking about here. If you do this right, you won’t need to say a word. Trust me.”
Layla resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she figured out what her part in the plan was. She supposed she couldn’t fault his logic. They each brought a certain set of skills to the team, and using her feminine wiles to distract a guy—or two—was definitely in her wheelhouse.
She went up on tiptoe and gave Jayson a kiss. “Don’t do anything crazy.”
“You either,” he said. “Be careful. And don’t worry—I’ve got you covered.”
* * *
The urge to follow Layla when she opened the door and walked out of the stairwell a few moments later was nearly overwhelming. Layla might have some special weapons of her own—namely claws, fangs, and strength way beyond a person of her size—but she’d be the first to admit she didn’t have a lot of experience with hand-to-hand combat.
She moved so silently that she was almost upon the soldiers before they even realized she was there. They both jumped, clearly startled by her presence.
“Kak dyela?” she said in the sexiest Russian accent he’d ever heard.
Jayson didn’t know what she’d said, but whatever it was, the soldiers relaxed. One of them said something in reply, making his buddy chuckle. Layla laughed too, moving around in front of them so the soldier closest to Jayson had to turn his back to the stairwell to look at her.
Jayson was out the door and moving down the hallway fast, pistol at the ready. Layla was smiling at the two soldiers, nodding at something they were saying. The men were playing it cool, their rifles still slung over their shoulders. Jayson couldn’t see their faces, but he had no doubt they had big grins pasted on them. And Layla had been worried she wouldn’t be able to distract them. What a joke. She had them eating out of the palm of her hand.
The soldier closest to Jayson must have sensed him coming at the last second because he turned his head to look over his shoulder. It was too late for the guy to do anything by then though. Jayson transferred his pistol to his left hand and quickly laid the man out with a single blow of his fist to the side of the temple.
The other guard muttered something in Russian and reached for his weapon, but Layla grabbed him by the front of his tactical harness and shoved him back against the wall so hard the man’s head bounced.
Jayson looked around, praying the noise wouldn’t bring the rest of the soldiers in the RSA down on them. He didn’t hear anything but waited while Layla closed her eyes and listened. When she opened them and showed off that beautiful, green glow her eyes got when she was really in the zone, she gave a quick shake of her head.
“We’re good,” she said.
He handed her pistol back to her, then opened the door the soldiers had been guarding, ready to take out any others they might find on the other side. But there weren’t any. There were cells filled with prisoners though—a hell of a lot of them. The people in them stared at him and Layla in surprise. Layla threw him a look, then hurried over to the first cell while he focused on dragging the two unconscious soldiers out of the hallway and into the room where the prisoners were being kept. Undoing the laces on their boots, he used them to tie the men up, then grabbed one of the assault rifles and all the ammo he could find on them, as well as the two hand grenades they were carrying just in case he needed the extra firepower on the way out.
By the time he got to his feet, Layla had already found the keys to the cells and was unlocking them. She called Anya’s name over and over as she opened each door, but no one answered. Jayson didn’t know if it was because they were too scared to talk or simply too weak. These people hadn’t simply been imprisoned but beaten as well. While there were a half dozen women in the group, none were young enough to be Dylan’s girlfriend.
“Anya isn’t here,” Layla said. “There aren’t any teenaged girls at all.”
