“Copy that,” Sawyer said.
He glanced at Misty, who looked more like a zombie than ever. Something told him that getting her out of the computer wasn’t going to be easy.
* * *
Harley had shot three men in black tactical gear before she, Erin, Caleb, and Jake made it into the building. And even though the others had done as much damage, it barely seemed like they were making a dent in the numbers they were facing. As the four of them charged through the main doors leading toward the control room for reactor five, they were slowed down by a handful of bad guys ahead of them and another group coming up from behind.
STAT had dealt with some tough situations before, but this time, they might be in over their heads.
As they moved through the hallways, the four of them covered each other like they’d been doing it for years. From the corner of her eye, she saw Erin watching Caleb’s back. Man, she was so damn happy the woman had decided to come back. Harley had to admit she hadn’t been so sure when Erin and Elliott had first walked into that microbrewery, but seeing Erin fight to protect Caleb now, she knew it had been the right thing.
She prayed Jake knew where the hell they were going because she simply went into point-and-shoot mode, the MP5 she was carrying firing out regular and rhythmic three-round bursts as targets appeared around her like she was in a video game. Some part of her wondered how a wannabe-school-teacher-turned-werewolf had gotten so natural at pulling a trigger, but then more bullets came her way, and she stopped thinking completely.
As they continued through one corridor after another, Harley heard voices coming through her earpiece—Jes shouting they were encountering stiff resistance in their efforts to reach the explosive-laden vehicle along the backside of the complex and Rory saying they were having problems getting Misty to disconnect from the computer system.
She strained to hear something from Sawyer, but nothing came. She told herself Rory would have said something if Sawyer had been hurt. Still, she couldn’t help but worry a little, even if there was a little voice in the back of her head assuring her she’d know if he was in trouble. Sawyer was her soul mate, even if they hadn’t gotten around to talking that much about it. She would always know if there was something wrong with him. Of that, she had no doubt.
Harley was still lost in thoughts of her soul mate, reloading and firing her weapon on automatic pilot, when the four of them rounded another corner and found themselves in front of a big glass wall, a room full of computers and control panels on the other side.
The reactor control room.
Harley took in the scene in the room. Yegor yelling, Seamus and Batu standing there expressionless, a man in black tactical gear shoving his weapons against the side of Kristoff’s head, Adriana standing by herself near the wall of control panels, sparkling so bright it was like she was glowing from within even as lightning streaked between her and the control panels.
They were too late.
In the second it took for that thought to flicker though Harley’s mind, it happened. Adriana seemed to…erupt. Jagged lines of raw, white electricity ripped through the air, hitting the wall full of computer equipment and one of Yegor’s goons who’d decided to stand too close. Both the panels and the man exploded. Fire, sparks, and pieces went everywhere.
Time seemed to stop as Harley and everyone else froze.
When it started again, Adriana was tumbling to the floor, Kristoff diving forward to catch her. Emergency alarms started ringing throughout the facility, immediately followed by flashing red-and-blue lights mounted to the ceiling. Just when it seemed that it couldn’t get any crazier, Caleb let loose a growl and dumped an entire magazine of 9mm rounds into the window in front of them, throwing shards of glass everywhere.
Then Seamus disappeared from inside the room, reappearing at almost the exact same moment, his knife coming at Harley’s chest.
Chapter 19
Misty went from tranquil and catatonic to screaming in the space of a single heartbeat, and it was the most blood-curdling sound Sawyer had ever heard in his life. Rory must have thought so, too, because he stumbled back with a wide-eyed expression of near panic on his face.
Sawyer had no idea what the bloody hell had happened, but he leaped forward all the same, catching Misty as she collapsed sideways out of her chair. He eased her to the floor as the sound of intense gunfire filled the air. Shouts over the radio confirmed the situation in the control room had gone completely pear-shaped. Adriana had apparently fried the computer system that controlled reactor number five.
While Misty had been in there.
He had no idea what that meant, but if the scream she let out was any indication, it couldn’t be good.
Sawyer shook Misty’s shoulder as Rory moved over to the door, keeping an eye on the corridor outside in case Misty’s screams brought someone running. But from the chatter over the radio, the alarms, and the chaos of gunfire coming from multiple locations around the complex, Sawyer was confident worrying about screams was pretty low on the bad guys’ priority list.
When shaking her shoulder didn’t wake Misty up, Sawyer shouted her name as loud as he could. If the scream hadn’t given them away, this probably wouldn’t, either.
He called her name for the fifth time when Misty’s eyes suddenly snapped open, confusion and pain reflected in violet irises that were no longer milky and glazed.
“Ugh. What the hell happened?” she asked, slowly sitting up with a little help from him, shaking her head like she was trying to clear out some cobwebs.
“Adriana fried the computer system that controls reactor five,” he said. “I was worried you’d gotten trapped in there.”
Misty shook her head again, wincing in discomfort as she pushed herself up off the floor. “I almost was.”
Helping Misty, he gently nudged her toward Rory. She still looked unstable, but they didn’t have any more time to waste. He needed to get to the reactor room and those magnets. Rory got an arm around her shoulders to help her walk.
“Were you able to do anything to help the situation while you were in the computer?” Sawyer asked as he led the way out of the security room. He replayed the maps of the power plant through his head, trying to remember the shortest route to reactor five. It was going to take forever to get there with Misty in this condition.
“No,” Misty said. “I’d just made it through the security firewalls and was about to put the reactor into emergency shutdown when a wall of electricity came racing toward me. I barely made it out before my brain melted.”
Not even wanting to think about that, Sawyer stopped midstride, turning to her and Rory. “If we keep going at this pace, we’ll never make it to reactor five in time to help.”
Misty opened her mouth to say something stupid about leaving her behind, but Sawyer cut her off.