A place where something had been driven into the linoleum.
Ahmare’s blood marked the point of impact. And there was more of her blood all around, already drying, making him think of the deaths in the arena. But he had to reroute from that. He needed to pull right the fuck out of thinking how she had been hurt or his head was going to explode, the tension between his love for this female and his—
His love.
For this female.
Duran glanced over at her. Her dark head was bent, her fresh blood leaving a trail even as she pressed on, her determination so fierce, he was convinced that she could lift the whole mountain they were under to locate what she was after.
He loved her. Probably since the moment she had come into that dungeon.
Take out the “probably.”
The dark spices that had come out of him upon her arrival in the dungeon should have been his first clue. But whatever the increments had been, now was the realization—
With a shift in his torso, he put his hand down to catch a tilt in his weight.
A smooth nub registered under his palm.
“I got it!”
Ahmare flipped around as Duran shouted in triumph, and her wounded shoulder let out a holler—not that she cared. “Thank God!”
They met in the middle of the storage room, reaching for each other as he held the beloved between his forefinger and thumb. She kissed him without thinking, and he returned the contact without hesitation, their mouths meeting in a rush of relief.
As she pulled back, she frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Duran just stood there, staring at her. Then he seemed to snap out of whatever place he had gone to in his head and pressed the pearl into her hand. “I’ll show you where to go. So I know you get out of here.”
The reality that they were parting hit her as he took her over to the door. She still didn’t have a solution for what was going to happen when she got back to Chalen’s alone. She supposed she’d thought Duran would come with her now, and they could take down the conqueror together. But he had scores to settle here.
As she put the pearl in the pocket of her windbreaker and zipped it in, she decided Chalen was going to have to be satisfied with the beloved. And as long as she had the damn thing, she had leverage. It would have to be enough.
Before she and Duran jumped out into the corridor, he gave her her guns back, and she was glad that his father hadn’t thought to strip off her ammo belt. She checked both clips and then nodded she was ready.
Duran stayed where he was for another long moment, his eyes roaming around her features. In a cold rush, she realized what he was doing.
“No,” she said. “This is not the last time. Do you hear me? This is not the last time we see each other. We’ll meet up . . . somehow. Somewhere. This is not it.”
He took her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. Then he pressed his lips to hers and lingered.
Everything was said in that kiss. Although no words were spoken, everything was expressed, the yearning and the sadness, the commitment that did not include a future, the wish on both sides that it had all been different.
Their beginning, their middle, and their end.
All of it.
“Please,” she whispered.
It was all the fight she could muster against an inevitability that nearly killed her. But there was no time to dwell on her emotions.
Overhead, red lights started to flash, and off in the distance, an alarm began to wail.
29
DURAN LOOKED UP AT the red lights and wanted to punch a wall. “That sonofabitch.”
In his brain, he triangulated where they were and prayed like hell he had the storage room located right. There were a number of them in the facility—or had been twenty fucking years ago.
Grabbing Ahmare’s hand, he pulled her into the corridor and broke into a flat-out run. Unlike the fluorescent tubes that had been in use constantly and were failing, the red lights, also inset into the ceiling, were fresh as a damn daisy, no blinkers or dead soldiers among them, their strength overpowering the weaker illumination and leaving everything stained the color of blood.
Seemed fitting.
When they got to the spoke he’d been looking for, he ran them back toward the moth room and the entrance they’d infiltrated. And as they pounded down the hallways side by side, he kept a count in the back of his head. Three minutes was nothing when your life depended on it—it was even less when you needed to save someone else.
There was still one minute forty seconds left as he got her back to the door they’d entered through, the one with the code, the one he’d left open for Chalen’s guards, who had yet to materialize.
“Come with me,” she said when he halted. “We’ll hunt your father together.”
“That’s not why I’m going back.” He kissed her hard. “I’m not leaving my mother’s remains here.”
“I can help!” When he shook his head, she gripped his shoulder. “Duran, you’re not going to make it out of here alive.”