The sound of the stairwell door slamming shut echoes down the hall.
“Come on, Reb,” I say loudly. “We’re almost there.”
We round the corner, right as Luther is stepping back out of the empty office, a small bottle of orange juice clutched in his hand.
He looks relieved when he sees us.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Oh, just peachy.” I struggle to hold my best friend on her feet. “We’re at the dry-heaving stage.”
On cue, Rebel makes a gut-wrenching sound so believable that I almost expect to see chunks.
Luther’s face twists into a mix of concern and revulsion. “Maybe she needs to go to the emergency room?”
Another round of fake-heaving.
“No, no,” I insist. “I just need to get her home and to bed.”
Luther nods enthusiastically.
“Can you help me get her downstairs?”
He rushes to Rebel’s other side faster than I can blink. He hands me the juice and takes her weight from me. A minute later, we’re in the lobby.
Rebel and I are almost in the clear, but that leaves Jeremy trapped in the security office. He may have forgiven me for our breakup fight, but he won’t take so kindly to being left to fend for himself with the SHPD.
I hook my foot around Rebel’s ankle, sending her stumbling toward the guards’ desk. She lands against the side with a heavy thud and proceeds to dry-heave in Travis’s general direction.
He rushes out from behind the desk and takes Rebel’s other side. “Here, let me give you a hand.”
I clear my throat loudly, and Rebel manages a stumble that sends all three of them to the floor. The guard desk now blocks their view of both the security office and the front door.
I shoot Jeremy a text. Now.
In a flash, he’s sprinting for the door faster than I’ve ever seen him move. He unlocks the door, dropping the security pass on the ground as he races into the night.
“Are you okay, Miss Malone?” Luther asks, climbing back to his feet and helping her up.
She groans, sways a little, and then latches herself to my side.
“I think I can take it from here,” I say, flashing them a long-suffering smile.
Travis’s eyes widen. “If you’re sure…”
I nod and start for the door. He hurries ahead of us to unlock it, only to jerk back, confused, when he sees his security pass lying on the ground. Better he thinks he dropped it there than raise a red flag by it going missing.
“Thanks for everything!” I push past him, not waiting for him to ask the inevitable questions forming in his mind. “I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Malone how much you helped!”
Travis’s frown turns into a proud grin. “Anything for the boss.”
Oh yeah, I’ll totally be telling the evil king of the superheroes how his guards let us sneak into his top secret facility and his office. Mr. Malone would love that.
“The guys are going to be pissed,” Rebel whispers as we make our way toward the sidewalk.
“Maybe Jeremy found something,” I suggest.
At this point, he’s our only hope.
Chapter 14
Rebel cries the entire way back to the Lair. It hurts me to see her in this kind of emotional pain, especially when I know it’s my fault that we didn’t get Deacon tonight. It’s my fault they changed the security protocols on the secret sub-level. It has to be.
I shouldn’t beat myself up. Logically, I know that if I hadn’t been down there—hadn’t seen Deacon with my own eyes—there would be no proof that the secret sub-level exists, let alone what’s going on down there.
But that knowledge is cold comfort. I hug Rebel and try to figure out what to do next. How’re we going to save Deacon and my mother when we can’t get back to sub-level three? If that’s even where my mother is. She’s not a villain. She doesn’t belong there, and she has friends at the lab. Really, she could be anywhere.
And how are we going to face Draven and Dante when we’ve failed to get Deacon back? Just the thought of Draven’s reaction makes my stomach hurt—not because I’m afraid of him, but because I’ve seen how much this weighs on him. On both of them. I know how every second feels like a year and every hour feels like an eternity.
I’ve felt that way since the moment I saw Deacon. And it only got worse when I walked into my house and my mother was missing.
The ride to the nightclub from the lab feels excruciatingly long, but when Jeremy pulls up in front of the Lair all I can think is, it’s too soon. I don’t have an explanation. I don’t know how to tell Draven and Dante what happened without causing them more pain. I don’t—
Nitro meets us in the parking lot, throwing open the van door before we even come to a complete stop.
“Deacon!” He climbs inside, but his face falls when he sees Rebel’s tear-streaked cheeks.
“Oh, God. Is he—” Nitro turns white and looks like he’s going to pass out.