“You’re going out that window.” Not waiting for a response, Zack picked up a nearby stool and shattered the glass. “Go!” Lifting her, praying she could avoid any glass he’d missed, he shoved her toward the window.
Small-framed, she wriggled through the opening with relative ease. Once she was through, Zack stepped onto the stool. Behind him he could hear pounding on the door. Shouts coming from the hall. He knew the security personnel were equipped with radios. It would only be a matter of seconds before they realized their mysterious intruders had slipped out of the building.
Zack forced his body through the window, the glass breaking beneath his weight, the sharp edges scraping against the fabric of his coat. He felt a shard pierce his left hand, but the pain barely registered over his growling fear. If he got stuck, both of them were as good as dead.
Then he was through the window, on his hands and knees in the snow. The night embraced him like a cold but dear friend.
“Oh, my God. You’re bleeding.”
Zack looked down to see blood dripping from his hand. “As long as it’s not from a bullet, I’m not going to worry about it.” Scrambling quickly to his feet, he scanned the area. They’d come out on the west side of the building. Twenty yards away two four-wheel-drive vehicles sat rumbling in the parking lot, exhaust billowing into the frigid night air.
“We need a vehicle,” he said.
“I don’t think we’re going to—”
Emily’s words were cut off when a bullet slammed into the brick less than a foot from where she was standing. Zack heard her yelp. He saw her hand shoot up to her cheek. Worry tore through him when he saw blood, thought she’d been shot.
“Emily!”
“I’m…okay,” she said. “Piece of brick caught me.”
Zack looked over his shoulder to see the spotlight mounted on the rear of one of the four-wheel-drive trucks sweep toward them. There was no time to steal a vehicle.
Taking Emily’s hand, he pulled her into a dead run toward the hole he’d cut earlier in the fence.
If their luck held, they might just make it out alive.
Chapter Nine
Emily ran as she had never run before. She ran until her legs burned. Until she thought her lungs would burst into flames. Just when she thought she could go no farther, another wave of adrenaline pumped her forward. They ran over fields blanketed with deep snow. Through forests dense with trees and brush. Down ravines riddled with loose rock. Over ice and through fast-moving water.
Emily ran until her body literally gave out. In a small gully filled with sapling pine her legs tangled, and she was flung facedown into two feet of snow.
For several long seconds all she could do was suck oxygen into her burning lungs. She saw Zack collapsing onto the snow beside her, heard his heavy breathing punctuated by the frenzied pound of her own heart.
Slowly their breathing began to regulate and she became aware of the sound of rushing water in the distance. Of an owl hooting from a tree. The wind turning the winter branches into bony fingers reach ing for a black sky. Of Zack rising, grumbling as he brushed the snow from his coat and pants.
Emily rolled over and struggled shakily to her feet. “If I live through this, I’m not going to have to go to the gym for a month.”
Zack’s gaze met hers. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked as downtrodden as she’d ever seen him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I dropped the papers. The notes.” Cursing viciously, he slapped some more snow from his coat. “I had them in my hand, but when that bastard started shooting…” Shaking his head angrily, he set his hand against a nearby tree and leaned. “Damn it.”
Emily knew it was pointless to get angry. But she was exhausted and cold and more frightened than she’d ever been in her life. Before realizing she was going to move, she was across the snow and jamming her finger into his chest.
“You mean to tell me we went in there for nothing?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
She couldn’t believe it. She could feel her frustration building. “And you call yourself an agent? How could you do something so…unprofessional?”
“I was a little busy getting shot at.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned away from her abruptly and walked several feet away. Emily could see his breaths puffing out into the frigid night air and understood how much this had upset him. Guilt nipped at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have blamed you. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t,” he snapped, turning back to her.
But she could tell by the tight set of his jaw and the dark flash of his eyes that she had. And not just a little. Zack Devlin was as upset as a man could be.
“I can’t believe I bloody screwed this up,” he said.
“Those weren’t the best of circumstances back there.”
His jaw flexed. “I just about got you killed.”
“No.” She pointed toward the direction from which they’d come. “The people at Signal and the bastards at Lockdown are the ones to blame for this. Not you.”