CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It all happened so fast. One second, Lennox was standing there as calm as anything, the next a loud gunshot echoed around the cargo hold. Before Talia could understand what was going on, Keller was falling on top of her. She hit the metal deck so hard that it knocked most of the air out of her lungs. Then Keller’s elbow slammed into her stomach and there went the rest of the air as black dots began filling her vision.
Keller tumbled off her as gunshots sounded all around them. Talia tried to push herself upright, wanting to see what was happening. It took a few seconds for her vision to clear but by then all she could see were people running everywhere, some hitting the deck to avoid being shot while others went down because they’d already been shot. Talia shook her head, trying to find Lennox and make sense of what she was seeing.
She’d thought there had only been seven bad guys including Keller a few moments ago. Now, there had to be at least twenty. And Lennox was in the midst of them, spinning and twisting as he fired at one man after another.
A moment later, he was at her side, an arm around her waist moving her forward before she was even aware of what was happening. Two stumbling steps later, Bogdan and Maria joined them.
“This way!” Lennox shouted, urging Talia in the direction he wanted them to go, pushing Maria and her father ahead of them.
Armed men came charging at them out of the chaos and Talia expected someone to shoot them any second. But every time one of the men got close, they’d immediately tumble to the deck and not get back up. It took her a few seconds to realize Lennox’s Teammates must be inside of the cargo hold somewhere, covering them as they made their escape. Resisting the urge to crane her head around in an attempt to see where they were, she kept moving, praying there were enough SEALs to get them out of this ship alive.
“Go left! Between the containers!” Lennox yelled, pausing for a moment to turn and fire back at several men who were right on their tail. “Don’t stop! Keep going!”
Behind Talia, Lennox jogged backwards, shooting at the same time. Ahead of her, Bogdan led Maria to the left down a dimly lit passageway between two towering stacks of cargo containers. Talia moved to follow but bullets slamming into the container not more than a foot from her head stopped her cold. She probably would have gotten shot a dozen times over if Lennox hadn’t pushed her to the deck and covered her body with his.
Before she could catch her breath, he tugged her to her feet, a hand on her back forcing her to stay low as she ran. But even with him putting his body between her and the incoming bullets, there was no way she could make that left hand turn after Maria and her father. She sobbed in panic as Lennox guided her to the right instead.
“Don’t worry,” Lennox said, pulling her faster and faster down the narrow passageway. “We’ll find them.”
Talia didn’t know how that would be possible since the majority of the cargo hold was a maze of containers and crates.Within seconds she was so turned around that finding her way back to the main cargo ramp would have been all but impossible.
Running through the labyrinth was like something out of a nightmare. There were endless series of confusing turns, dead ends, people chasing them, and the occasional bullet smacking into the deck and walls around them. The crazy thing—beyond the people behind them shooting, of course—was that there wasn’t another soul on the ship that she could see. It was like the whole place had been evacuated.
Just when it seemed like the nightmare might never end, Talia and Lennox found themselves in a wider passageway off the cargo hold. Somehow, they’d stumbled through one of the exits. Or maybe he’d led her this way on purpose?
“What about Maria and her father? We can’t leave them!” Talia asked once they stopped long enough for her to catch her breath. The sound of gunfire was muted but could still be heard echoing occasionally through the ship. “Anna is around here somewhere too. I saw her.”
“We’re not leaving anybody,” Lennox promised. “With how fixated Keller seems to be with me, I’m hoping us running out like we did will draw the heat away from Bogdan and Maria so they can get away. Then we can look for Anna. But right now, we have to worry about Keller. He was following when we left the cargo hold.”
He was?
“Is he still back there?” she asked in alarm, craning her head that way to see if there was anyone coming behind them.
“Yes,” Lennox said calmly. “But I think we’ve lost him for the moment, so if you need more time to catch your breath, take it.”
Talia nodded, forcing herself to calm down as much as she could, taking long slow breaths as she felt her heart continue to thump like a drum in her chest.
“I know this is probably the worst time to have this conversation but after everything that’s happened the past couple days, I wanted to tell you that I completely understand why you want to stop seeing me,” Lennox said softly. “I wish it’d worked out differently, but I get why you were planning to break up with me last night.”
Talia stood there, too baffled to say a word as she tried to comprehend everything he’d just unloaded on her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “I wasn’t going to break up with you. If anything, I thoughtyouwere going to break up with me. When you were so late, I thought you’d decided not to bother telling me face to face. I mean, I know I come with a lot of baggage, but I thought I rated more than a Dear Jane text.”
Lennox stared at her in obvious confusion, then muttered a curse. “We need to get moving again so let’s put a pin in this confusing conversation until later. But before we take another step, I need you to understand something.” He leaned so close that for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. “I know things between us have been confusing and that’s my fault,” he said slowly, his breath warm against her cheeks. “But I never wanted to break up with you. Talia, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I can’t even put into words how much I want to keep seeing you.”
Hope filled her. “But…”
Lennox put a finger to his lips, then pointed down the passageway.
“We need to get out of here,” he whispered, throwing a glance back the way they’d come, his expression becoming all business again as he urged her to get moving again.
“Okay, you’re right,” she said just as softly.
She’d put aside all of her questions for the moment and focused on getting out of there. But they definitely needed to talk later.
Lennox urged her up a flight of metal stairs to yet another deck of the huge ship and another passageway that looked exactly like the one on the previous floor, with not a single exit sign in sight. “Until we can find our way off this ship, we need to keep avoiding Keller.”
