Rose laughed at her joke, but it ended on a groan, and she knew the other woman was hurt. Asking how badly seemed kind of pointless. It didn't matter what injuries they had, they still had to find a way out.
Pushing herself up to her knees, the world spun sickeningly around her, but Cassandra did her best to shake it off. There was something sticky on the side of her head, and she assumed she’d struck it when she’d been thrown down.
“Do you have your night vision goggles?” she asked Rose as she blinked and tried to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness.
“No, lost them. My weapon too.”
“Oh yeah.” Cassandra realized she’d lost that as well. That was a major disadvantage if the person they suspected was still there had survived the explosion. Still, they had to be the person who set it, so the chances that they’d stick around to get caught up in it seemed slim.
“Where was the door?” she asked, looking around the room but unable to see anything other than shadowy piles of what she assumed was rubble. Since she’d been thrown down, she’d lost all sense of direction and had no idea where the way out was supposed to be.
“It was over here,” Rose answered confidently, and Cassandra followed her to where a pile of concrete blocked what she could now make out had once been the door.
Without discussion, they both reached down and began to move the debris. It was slow going and they had to work together. The pieces were too heavy for them to move alone, even if they weren't injured.
What felt like hours later, but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes at the most, Cassandra heard something that had her freezing and spinning around.
“Did you?—?”
“I did,” she answered Rose’s question before the other woman could even get it out.
“Was there another entrance to the lab?” Rose asked, heading closer to where they had both heard a sound.
“I didn't see one, the guys didn't mention one either,” she replied.
“A secret entrance then? If this was a lab run by my brother, I wouldn't put it past him to have secret entrances and exits just in case the place was ever raided. Ridge was a paranoid guy,” Rose muttered.
Abandoning where they’d been working, Cassandra followed Rose. “Maybe the guys found it.”
“I hope so.”
In Rose’s voice were the same emotions she was feeling. Fear, worry, restlessness. Rose wanted to get to Steel as badly as she wanted to get to Dragon. Of course, she didn't want any of the guys to be hurt—or worse—but the need to get to Dragon wasunlike anything she’d experienced before. It pulsed beneath her skin, like an itch she couldn’t scratch, and she prayed like she’d never prayed before that Dragon was about to come through the wall, strong and unharmed.
Another sound, one that definitely sounded like a person moving rubble out of the way, came from a corner of the room, and they zeroed in on it.
“There,” Cassandra said, pointing to a small hole in the wall. “There was a hidden door right there.”
“I see it.”
“It has to be them, right?” Just because she didn't see why someone would set explosives, then hang around in the blast zone, didn't mean there wasn't someone else in the building.
“Wish I had my weapon,” Rose muttered, and the anxiety in the room seemed to amp up.
If it was whoever had set the explosives, she and Rose were sitting ducks. They were trapped in there, they wouldn't be able to get through the debris to safety before whoever was coming got in.
“It’s them,” she said confidently, trying to convince both Rose and herself.
Before either of them could say another word, someone grunted, and the rubble in front of the hidden door tumbled down as the beam of a flashlight danced over them, temporarily blinding them.
“Huh, wasn't expecting two of you. The sister and the girl, two for one. My lucky day,” a strange voice spoke, and Cassandra’s blood ran cold.
Chapter
Nineteen
January 9th
9:10 P.M.
