Caleb moved over to give the padlock a sharp yank. It snapped easily under his grasp, as did the chain. A moment later, he was leading the way through a dark corridor that led to a rusted metal door that nearly collapsed when he pushed it open. The area it led to must have been huge because the beams from their flashlights didn’t even reveal any of the walls. Instead, all Caleb could make out were a low ceiling, cracked tile flooring, and a random support column.
It was sort of creepy.
“Tunnels,” Misty murmured. “It had to be tunnels. I never really had a position on the subject, but after this mission, it’s official. I absolutely hate tunnels.”
Caleb figured out soon enough that they’d come out right in the middle of the subway station. The unfinished rail beds to either side of the platform were a dead giveaway. In both directions, he could see the gaping holes in the walls where the rails would have been installed if the whole place hadn’t been abandoned. Flicking his flashlight toward the far side of the station, he could see more tunnel openings in that direction. It seemed like the openings had originally been blockaded with wooden planks and steel bars, but most of that had given way over time. Now, there was nothing keeping someone from crawling into any of those passages.
“I don’t suppose you can smell whether Julian is down here, can you?” Brielle asked, moving closer to Caleb. He could hear her heart thumping a mile a minute, and he wasn’t sure if it was the thought of finally finding her brother or simply being down here in the dark.
“Nothing but dirt and dust at this point,” he said after taking another long sniff. “Maybe a bit of grease and electrical discharge, too, but that’s fainter. You know my nose isn’t the greatest, so if Julian’s down here, we’ll have to track him by some other method than scent.”
Brielle nodded, leaning her head to the side and resting it against him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. When she was distraught or in pain, he couldn’t stop himself from trying to help her.
After making love last night, Caleb had planned it all out. First thing this morning, as soon as Brielle woke up in his arms, he was going to have that talk with her that Forrest suggested. He was going to honestly tell her how he felt about her and hope she felt the same. If that conversation went well, he would then try and tiptoe his way into the soul-mate thing.
Maybe.
Then stupid Julian had called, and that whole plan had gone to shit. Just another reason to hate the man, as far as Caleb was concerned.
“I’ve got some fresh scuff marks in the dust,” Hudson suddenly called out.
Caleb looked across the platform to see the CIA agent standing all the way over by the far end, pointing his flashlight toward the floor. Glancing at Brielle, he took her hand and led her over there, everyone else at their heels.
There were two sets of marks on the floor near where Hudson stood. From the looks of them, it was like whoever had made them had been running at the time. One set of prints was definitely smaller than the others, too.
“Take a look at this,” Hudson said, using his light to illuminate a rusted platform sign above their heads. The only word that could be seen clearly wasFourth. “It looks like Julian and whoever is with him were coming from the direction of the tunnel behind us when they called Brielle, then came up on the platform and saw the sign. But then they jumped back down to the rail bed for some reason and kept running that way.”
Caleb followed the direction of Hudson’s flashlight, seeing the tunnel entrance at that end of the platform.
“Julian said there was something down here with them,” Brielle murmured, falling into step beside Caleb as they all headed in that direction. “Do you think there was someone chasing them?”
Before Caleb could answer, a loud clanking sound erupted from the tunnel ahead of them. The noise was immediately followed by grunting and gunshots.
Caleb took off running in that direction, knowing he needed to move before Brielle did, because he had no doubt she would assume her brother was in the middle of whatever was going on up ahead. He tore through the few boards blocking the entrance to the tunnel, then tossed his flashlight aside. Drawing his weapon, he raced through the passage at full speed, trusting his werewolf instincts to warn him before he ran into trouble.
The sounds of fighting grew louder as he ran down the tunnel, the metallic clanking of a steel pipe smashing into something solid interspersed with random gunfire. He could hear the occasional grunt as someone got hit. Though whether they were getting hit with a bullet or the pipe, he didn’t know.
Then the smell assaulted him. It was a combination of old dirt and that distinctive oily musk that he’d smelled before, back in those tunnels in Turkey.
Caleb opened his mouth to warn Brielle and his teammates as he sprinted around a curve in the tunnel, but the sight in front of him stopped him cold.
Harrington’s daughter, Kiara, was on the ground, her back wedged against a wall. Blood soaked her blond hair from a wound along the left side of her head, and she looked a bit woozy. There was a rusted steel pipe on the ground beside her, but from the dazed look in her eyes, he doubted she’d be able to defend herself with it.
A dark-haired man stood in front of her, his body positioned protectively, another one of those rusted steel pipes in his hands. His light dress shirt and dark slacks were heavily smudged with dirt in some places, ripped and tattered in others. It only took a fraction of a second for Caleb to realize that some of the stains weren’t dirt. The guy was bleeding. Badly enough to soak through his clothes.
Yet no matter how badly the man might have been injured, he was still standing strong, facing off against an armed man wearing dark tactical gear and night-vision goggles as well as two of the baboon-sized creatures—aka “diggers”—they’d run up against under Incirlik. The man with the gun wasn’t supernatural, but the two creatures more than made up for anything the goon might lack.
Caleb got the sensation that the bad guy and both creatures were trying to get past the man with the pipe in order to reach the girl on the ground, but shockingly, they seemed leery about getting too close. Maybe because there was a dead man in matching tactical gear lying on the ground a little farther down the tunnel right beside a dead digger.
The first thought that hit Caleb was that this guy had apparently killed a digger with nothing but a steel pipe. The second was that this guy was probably Julian Fontaine. Caleb wondered if he should be impressed, but then decided he’d rather keep hating the man.
The matter became irrelevant when the sound of boots on gravel and the flickering glow of five moving flashlights alerted the bad guys that they weren’t alone anymore. The man in the tactical gear took a step to the side and lifted his weapon in Caleb’s general direction. Caleb wasn’t too concerned about getting shot, but the bullets from the guy’s assault rifle would hurt Brielle and his teammates a hell of a lot more than they would hurt him.
Caleb threw himself forward, closing the distance between him and the guy with the weapon, doing his best to keep his inner omega in check. He hated the idea of losing control with Brielle and his friends crushed into the tight confines of the tunnel. But containing his werewolf half was even harder to do than normal with Brielle in danger.
As soon as Caleb took down the man with the assault rifle, the two diggers retreated, crawling into holes that looked way too small for them to fit into. A second later, Brielle was at his side, her eyes catching his in the darkness. The gentle touch of her hand on his jaw calmed the omega immediately. Then, just that fast, Brielle was moving away, crossing the tunnel at a run to throw her arms around the guy with the steel pipe.
Caleb now had confirmation the guy was Julian—the fact that Brielle was calling out his name and asking him over and over if he was okay was kind of a dead giveaway.
