When the elevator doors opened on the twenty-ninth floor, he darted his head out for a quick peek, then jogged down the empty hall to the fire alarm on the wall.
“Here comes that distraction,” he said as he yanked on the handle.
The clang of the alarm pierced the silence of the empty building, echoing in his ears as he hauled ass to the stairwell and raced up the steps. He’d just made it to the landing on the thirtieth when the door flew open.
Braden darted behind it, using it as cover as he squeezed into the corner of the stairwell. Two security guards ran down the steps. It would have been nice if all three guards had gone downstairs, but the odds were still better against one than three.
When they disappeared from sight, he came out from behind the door and hurried down the hallway to the corner office where Dreya was trapped.
“Dreya?” he said into his mic, hoping she could hear him over the fire alarm.
No answer.
Dammit!
Braden ran faster. He got to the corner office in time to see the security guard jerk open the door to the washroom and point his gun in that direction.
“Stay right where you are, and don’t move!” the man ordered Dreya. “You’re under arrest.”
“I was only looking for a clean restroom,” Dreya said. “Is that a crime in Miami?”
Braden would have laughed if he wasn’t so terrified for her. She was definitely quick on her feet.
He didn’t know whether the security guard heard him or simply sensed someone behind him, because he spun around and aimed his gun in Braden’s direction.
Braden knocked the man’s arm aside before he could line up a shot, then punched him in the jaw. He quickly followed that haymaker up with another one, then he grabbed hold of the lapels on the man’s suit jacket and shoved him backward, slamming him hard into the big mirror over the sink. The guard’s head bounced off the glass, breaking it and knocking him out cold. Braden let the guy collapse to the floor, then took the weapon from his limp hand and dropped it in the toilet.
He turned to find Dreya standing there with a shocked look on her face.
“What?” he asked.
“You came to get me,” she said.
“I’m getting the feeling that’s going to be my role in this partnership,” he said, grabbing her hand and heading for the door. “You steal things, and I come get your sexy ass out of trouble.”
She caught up to him as he led her to the stairwell and headed down the steps. He hoped they didn’t run into any more guards on the way out of there. They might work for a drug cartel, but he’d still rather not shoot them.
“Speaking of getting your ass out of trouble, we need to come to an agreement of some kind,” he said as they hurried downstairs. “If I tell you the situation is bad and that you need to bail, you need to listen to me, okay?”
Dreya didn’t answer.
Braden ground his jaw. If they were going to be partners, they needed to agree on how they were going to do things.
He glanced at her to see her grinning.
“What?” he asked.
“You think I have a sexy ass?”
Braden stifled a groan. Being her partner was going to kill him—or drive him nuts. Tommy was probably laughing so hard, Braden was surprised he couldn’t hear the sound coming all the way down from heaven.
* * *
It would have been a lot easier to track the hybrid who escaped from Stillwater if there weren’t so many other people running around the woods at the same time, Ivy thought as she and Landon slowed down to avoid running over the clueless hospital orderly stumbling along the nearly pitch-black trail ahead of them.
She and Landon had been hiding in the woods outside the psychiatric facility in case Trevor needed help and was able to get a signal out to them, when the insane hybrid scream had torn through the still night. A few minutes later, they’d heard a crash and the sound of glass breaking. Next thing they knew, a hybrid had come hurtling through the trees.
She and Landon had hesitated, torn between checking on Trevor and going after the hybrid. In the end, the decision had been simple. Trevor was a trained operative who could take care of himself. The people who lived in the rural area near Stillwater, on the other hand, weren’t trained to deal with a hybrid. After seeing firsthand what innocent people who’d been turned into hybrids had to deal with, Ivy hoped they’d be able to capture the kid, but one way or the other, they needed to get him out of these woods before he killed someone.
