Henry shook his head. “That’s not the only entrance to the tunnel.”
My mouth went dry. Suddenly, I was back in the library, watching Anna and her Secret Service agent. I hadn’t asked myself why the agent had chosen the library for his standoff with the guards.
He told Dr. Clark that he had to get Anna out.
I grabbed Henry’s arm, the way he’d grabbed mine in the hall. The part of my brain that was driven by instincts—by an ancient and unmentionable fear of predators, of darkness, of death—kicked into high gear. I ignored the vicious and incessant beating of my own heart. I ignored the lead that lined my stomach when I thought about the fact that I was risking Henry’s life, as well as my own.
“I think I know where to look for the entrance to the tunnel in this building,” I told Henry. I checked the tablet feeds, then nodded toward the stairs. I forced myself to let go of his arm, forced myself not to touch him, not to think about touching him. “Move.”
CHAPTER 52
We made it three-quarters of the way to the library before a man with an assault rifle caught us, head-on.
“Down on the ground!”
I recognized the man as the one who’d hit Anna Hayden over the head, the one who’d implied that he was taking orders from Dr. Clark for now.
Mercenary. Unpredictable.
I dropped to the ground. The guard rounded on Henry.
“You!” he said, jabbing the gun in Henry’s direction.
Henry held his hands up. He slowly lowered himself to his knees. I saw a flicker in the gunman’s eyes. He stepped toward Henry.
“Marquette,” I blurted out Henry’s last name. “He’s Henry Marquette. I’m Tess Kendrick Keyes.”
Henry stared down the gun—and the man who held it. When he spoke, each word was deliberate and crisp. “You want us alive.”
Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot him. Please, don’t—
After an elongated moment, the guard lowered the gun ten or fifteen degrees—just enough to start my heart beating again in my chest, not enough to stop me from picturing him changing his mind and pulling the trigger.
The guard shifted his gaze from Henry to me. He removed one hand from his gun and lifted it to his ear. I realized that he was talking to someone, sending a message. “I’ve got eyes on—”
One second, Henry was beside me, and the next, he lunged for the man’s gun.
No.
Henry’s hands closed around the barrel of the gun and he slammed it back into the gunman’s face, throwing his whole body after the blow. The two of them went down. The gun went off.
No.
I leapt forward, nothing in my mind except getting to Henry. If I could get to him, he would be okay. If I could touch him, I could save him. I could make him fine.
Please, God, let him be fine.
“Tess.” Henry stood up off the guard. I looked for blood, looked for a hole in his shoulder or chest. “Kendrick.” Henry’s voice was sharper this time. “We need to go. Now.”
He’s okay. Henry’s okay. As we took off running for the library, I fought the urge to glance back over my shoulder. No blood, I thought. There was no blood. Not on Henry. Not on the gunman.
“He’s unconscious,” Henry said as we hit the library door. “He won’t stay that way.”
Maybe one of us should have grabbed the gun—but I didn’t know how to shoot it. I doubted Henry did, either.
We have to find a way out of here. We have to find the tunnel before someone comes looking for the man Henry took out.
How long did we have? Seconds? Minutes?
Fueled by adrenaline, I pushed forward. Where had the Secret Service agent been heading?
If I were an entrance to an underground tunnel, where would I be?
“The tunnel’s under us,” I told Henry. “The entrance probably is, too.”
I squatted down, running my hands frantically over the floor. There had to be something. I looked for a flip, a switch, a crack in the floor—
“Here,” Henry called. He threw his weight against a bookshelf. It creaked, then started to move. I hurried to help him, not questioning how he’d found it, how we could have possibly gotten so lucky when—
“This way!”
I heard the shout, and then I heard running—toward the library, toward us. The bookshelf gave way. Something clicked, and a second later, I was looking into a dark hole.
The tunnel—if we were lucky.
“You go first,” Henry told me. “Give me the tablet, and go.”
There was no time to think, no time to waste. I handed him the tablet, then dropped down into the hole and landed hard. I looked up.
“Go,” Henry told me again. There was a finality to his tone, and I realized then why he’d asked for the tablet.
He’s not coming.
“Henry!” My yell was lost to the sound of the bookshelf moving back into place. A second after the entrance closed, there was silence, and a moment after that, I heard the sound of feet overhead.
Of gunshots.
They won’t hurt him. He’s a high-value target. He has to be—
There was no way back up.