“You’re bleeding!” Brielle said, tugging at her brother’s shirt. “Were you shot?”
Caleb stepped closer as Julian quickly hugged his sister, then started extricating himself from her grasp. “No, I wasn’t shot. It was those damn ghouls. They clawed the hell out of me.”
“Ghouls?” Forrest asked curiously, dropping down beside Kiara to check on her. She still seemed out of it but was reaching for Julian all the same.
“Yeah. That’s what we call those things,” Julian said, pointing to the dead baboon-shaped digger a few feet away.
Julian moved across the tunnel and knelt beside Kiara, murmuring softly to her that it was going to be okay. Even as unobservant as Caleb normally was, he could tell that Julian had a thing for Kiara Harrington.
“Careful,” Forrest warned. “She probably has a concussion, maybe a neck injury, too. We should wait to move her until the support team can get a medic down here to look at her.”
Julian stared first at his sister, then at Caleb. Then he slowly scanned the rest of the team. Caleb had built an image of Brielle’s brother in his head based on what she’d told him. He had to admit, the reality wasn’t matching up to the preconceived notion. Caleb had pegged him as juvenile and selfish, but given how hard he’d fought to protect Kiara and how attentive he was being to her right now, he guessed those assumptions might not apply to the man in front of him.
“I’m assuming you people are all from STAT,” Julian finally said. “And any other time, I’d be more than willing to defer to your expertise in a situation like this, especially since you saved our lives. But after being herded for the last few hours, I don’t think staying here would be a very good idea. We need to get out of these tunnels, the faster the better.”
Caleb frowned. “What do you mean, herded?” He scanned the part of the tunnel that was drenched in darkness, just out of reach of the flashlights. “The ghouls we saw weren’t the only ones after you?”
“Oui,” Julian said. “There are more of them out there, cutting us off every time we got close to escaping. I swear it was like they knew exactly where we were going. If it wasn’t for them closing in around us, we never would have come into this abandoned part of the subway system. But we didn’t have a choice. I assume they steered us this way so they could attack without anyone hearing anything. I doubt they’re going to give up simply because you arrived. Harrington isn’t the kind to let anything important out of his grasp. And Kiara is very important to him.”
While Caleb didn’t know much about Xavier Harrington, something told him Julian was right. About everything.
“We’re getting out of here,” he announced.
Julian didn’t need to be told twice. Ignoring his own injuries, he immediately bent down to tenderly scoop Kiara up in his arms, cradling her like she was the most precious thing in the world to him.
They’d barely gone twenty feet before Caleb’s ears and nose let him know that a handful of bad guys and as many ghouls were closing in around them.Shit. It looked like Julian had been right about being herded into an ambush. The few attackers he’d been trying to hold off were probably intended to slow him and Kiara down and stop them from getting away while everyone else moved into position.
“We’re being surrounded,” Caleb said. “Move!”
The next few minutes were insane as they ran back to the Fourth Street Station as fast as they could. He thought they just might make it all the way to the platform and the basement stairs that led to the surface when three ghouls stepped out of the darkness, teeth bared and claws at the ready as they blocked their escape. At the same time, two of Harrington’s goons closed in on them from the rear. Only they weren’t regular humans. They were the pale-skinned supernaturals they’d gone up against in Russia.
Caleb didn’t pause to think. He simply holstered his .45 automatic, let himself shift as far as he could, and then slammed his body into the ghouls, driving them away from the exit and the way out. He punched, clawed, and snapped his jaws, picking up one of the ghouls by the leg and using it like a club to bludgeon the other two, then turning his attention on the pair of supernaturals. He must have moved them back twenty or thirty feet when he heard Brielle yelling at him to follow. Normally he would have ignored anyone trying to call him away from a fight like this, but the sound of her voice broke through the fog of rage around him, and within seconds, he turned and headed after his team.
He raced up the stairs, hearing the sounds of claws and boots behind him. A few gunshots smashed into bricks around him, but none found their targets. Seconds later, he was through the front door of the apartment building. Sliding to a stop on the curb outside, he drew his weapon and turned to point it back at the door he’d just come out of. All around him, his teammates had their guns out as well, ready to shoot whoever and whatever came out of the building as early-morning sunlight flooded the street.
But no one and nothing came after them.
Holstering his weapon, Caleb finally turned and glanced at Brielle, needing to make sure she was okay. She was standing beside Julian, unharmed. His gaze shifted to her brother and the woman passed out cold in his arms.
“I’m worried about that head wound,” Caleb said. “She’s going to need medical attention.”
Julian frowned down at Kiara, his face filled with concern. “I know, but I doubt there’s any emergency room Harrington can’t get into. Is there somewhere safer to take her?”
Caleb threw a look at Misty, who was already on the radio with the support people.
“They have a complete med team ready and waiting at the safe house for us,” she said. “They can take care of her there.”
“All right. That’s the plan, then,” Caleb said. “Let’s get off the street.”
He looked at Brielle’s brother again, thinking once more about how the guy wasn’t anything like Caleb thought he’d be. And if the expression on her face was any indication, it seemed that Brielle had been caught a little off guard as well.
Chapter 17
“I know this probably isn’t the best time, but maybe you could explain how you ended up in an abandoned New York City subway tunnel with Kiara Harrington?”
Brielle folded her arms and leaned her shoulder against the wall of the second-floor hallway, half her attention focused on her brother, who was sitting on the carpeted floor near her, and the other half on the pretty blond woman in the bedroom directly across from them. Nathan McKay had arrived at the safe house a few minutes ago, and through the open door, Brielle could see him and Jake trying to interrogate Kiara at the same time that the STAT medical team was checking her out. Kiara seemed to be doing her best to answer their questions.
Brielle turned her gaze on Julian again. “Considering you were the one who helped her father steal twenty nuclear weapons from the United States military, I mean,” she added in case her idiot brother had forgotten what put them all in this situation.
