TWENTY-THREE
Peri wasn't confident about moving either fast or smart. She was physically spent, her brain mush after the day she'd put in before this fiasco. Sweat rolled down her temples even though the cavern, she knew, maintained a sixty-eight degree temperature year round. Her sore fingertips bled, the hole in her cheek where Theo had poked his damn knife throbbed in unison to her heartbeat, and her wrists felt as raw and painful as they looked.
"I've seen the aperture from the water," she said breath harsh and- damn it- a little shaky as she had to blow long strands of hair away from in front of her nose. The plait hadn't stayed braided, and her hair hung annoyingly loose down her back. And her front. Hampering her movements. "I didn't realize it was the ceiling of this cavern. I thought it- Never mind."
"Anyone else know about it?"
"Don't know. I only realized how big it is from in here. Outside it was just an interesting opening with some possibilities. But I was looking for it, I doubt anyone else will. So your answer is, no one is going to be looking for us where this hole comes out."
Finn brushed her elbow with his in an oddly endearing caress. "We're going to make it out of this clusterfuck in one piece. Trust me on this. We will get out, I promise. Through that hole, and out onto the cliffside. Keep climbing."
He followed suit, and Peri, who'd rested her hot cheek on the cool granite to look at him, felt a new burst of energy and reached up for the next hold.
"I have a comm device, doesn't work inside. But as soon as we're clear of all this rock, I'll try contacting McCoy, let him know where we're headed." Finn waited for her to get a good foothold. "Up there the Cutters and your brother and dozens of assorted, well-armed men, are dealing with Núñez's soldiers. They're coming now to pick us up."
"Psychic premonition or wishful thinking?"
"I hear a helicopter."
Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot.
The drop from here would most certainly kill them on impact. Which Finn already knew, so no point belaboring it.
Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot. "I don't hear anything other than my breathing."
"The good guys are getting closer." Finn glanced down over his shoulder. "And so are the fucking bad guys. Looks like Núñez's men didn't get the memo about leaving."
"So much for that plan." She held on with her left hand a little longer than she should because her arm shook. Finn waited until she started moving again.
"Nobody would believe that bullshit about sticking with him. He's seen how we can't keep our hands off each other. Even he's not that much of an idiot."
"I thought it would buy us a few minutes while he digested it." Her ruse hadn't worked worth a damn. Theo's men had clambered down to the water, but they were all still there. Waiting near the entrance. They were training the bright white spotlight on the two of them so they took center stage like bugs under a microscope.
Finn climbed beside her, the heat of his body warming the musk of his skin, the starch on his shirt and sea spray-scented soap. Her throat tightened with emotion. She wanted to be wrapped in his arms on cool sheets in a dim room. Not clinging like a frightened monkey to a rock-face.
"You didn't really think it would work, did you?" He adjusted the tablet between himself and the rock as he climbed. Every now and then Peri heard it thunk as marble bumped stone.
She didn't know how he was doing it. That tablet weighed at least twenty-five pounds. Dead weight. Unnecessary freaking dead weight. Every time he moved, Peri anticipated the heavy tablet pulling him backwards. She hefted herself up to the next toe and fingertip hold and looked up to gauge the distance. Only about twenty more feet. You can do this. One foot, one hand at a time.
"Had to give it a sho-" Now she heard the whop-whop-whop. It sounded as though the helicopter was right there in the cavern with them, and they were right inside its spinning blades
"Cavalry arrived," he shouted with satisfaction.
Lights from the hovering helicopter shone through the jagged hole directly onto them. The bright light blinded them as they continued to climb. Finn waved to acknowledge the rescue party as Peri glanced down to see if Theo was with the men who'd returned.
"McCoy, do you c--?" As he tried his comm, Finn's body suddenly jerked as though he'd gotten an electric shock. He said, "Ah, fuck."
Peri gave him a worried look. "What is it? Cramp?"
His pause was long enough to concern her. Then he said, "Checking to see if I have contact. I don't. Keep going."
Squinting, she looked up. Ten feet. They were going to make it. A wash of elation gave her a spurt of much-needed energy. Spurred on, keeping her eyes front and center so she wasn't blinded, she climbed for all she was worth. Until she realized Finn was no longer keeping pace.
"Finn?" She looked down at him from under her upraised arm. He wasn't moving, just clinging to the wall, forehead on the rock, immobilized. Her heart trip-hammered. "What's ha--"
She didn't hear the next shot over the deafening whop-whop-whop of the rotors, but suddenly a chunk of granite near Finn's left hand exploded. Scared the freaking crap out of her. With a jerk of surprise she almost lost her grip. They were damn-well shooting at them again from below. Bastards.
"Are you hurt?" Hell, she was already feeling downward with her foot, testing for a new foothold in the opposite direction.
"Don't come down for God's sake!" He sounded absolutely livid as she closed the distance between them. "Get up there. I'll be right behind you."
Peri found a solid hold, and gingerly lowered her body before swinging the other foot searching for purchase. "You're a damned liar, Phineas Gallagher."
Oh, God, he still wasn't climbing. Her entire body itched with prickly heat and her heart went manic at the ramifications. With bloody fingers latching onto a small outcrop, Peri tested her weight on it, then inched her way down to him.
"Jesus, woman, don't you ever fucking listen?"
"How badly are you hurt?"
Surrounded by noise and brilliant lights she got a good look at his face. Lips in a tight line, his forehead slick with sweat, Finn glared at her.
"Tell me," she demanded, tracking her gaze over him until she saw the sheen of wetness spreading over his right shoulder. Goddamnit, she wished that freaking helicopter would just move away and take the noise for a few minutes so she could think.
His breath looked ragged, she couldn't hear it over the din.
"Shot. Give me a minute. . ."
Shot. She anchored herself. Two feet. One hand. Cupped his cheek. His skin felt clammy and cold. He was in shock.
She gnawed her lower lip. Crap crap crap. Wouldn't leave him, couldn't carry him. Could the guys in the helicopter see them down here? "I see a tunnel off-shooting to the left about four feet, looks like it goes horizontal, not vertical. Big enough for us to fit in until they can come down and get us."
I hope. She dared not go to reconnoiter to make sure. She prayed it was at least big enough to allow Finn to rest on a flat surface until help arrived. "Drop the tablet, Finn. We'll retrieve it from the lake later."
"It'll break into a million pieces."
"And you call me stubborn? That damned tablet isn't the Holy Grail. We have four of them. That's good enough for me. Drop the damn thing and let's move before you lose your grip."
"How. Far?"
"Four feet." At least ten. "Left." Sixty feet down.
"Go."
Peri removed her hand from his cheek, to place it over his straining fingers. She gave a hard squeeze. "Hold on and shut up. Save your strength and move. Don't you realize that if anything happens to you it'll kill me? I love you. I have demands that need to be met. A life I want to share with you. If you fall, I'll never forgive you."
His lips twitched. "Are you proposing, Miss Case?"
"Ariel!" Theo's amplified voice boomed like the voice of God from above. "You're surrounded, and out of options. There's nowhere for you to run."
"Aw, shit. That's Núñez in the fucking chopper!" Finn's fingers beneath hers flexed. "That fucker is seriously pissing me off."
"Then let's go. See where that tunnel leads us because right now we're between Scylla and Charybdis. That's our only option. Ready?"
"Yeah."
Finn's loss of blood, and all the shouting they had to do to hear each other, worried her as she was acutely aware of his waning strength. Peri stayed by his side, so close she was touching him somewhere at all times as they inched their way sideways.
His foot slipped, and he looked at her with glassy eyes. "G—"
"One more hold and we're home free." She shot out her hand to hold his fingers in place as he lost hold. "I've got you, Finn. I'll climb in first and help you up." Clawing her way to the edge of the opening, Peri levered herself inside, then turned around to lean down. "Can you lift your body one more time?" Wrapping both hands around his wrist, she leaned back, pulling with all her strength.
With almost superhuman strength, Finn climbed inside beside her. It was a tight fit.
He lay on his side, his breathing shallow and too fast.
"I have to stop that bleeding before we do anything else." Peri pulled her arms out of the long sleeves of her T-shirt and undid the back clasp of her bra.
His eyes looked eerily silver and intense as they traced her naked breasts. "Beautiful. But. Don't-" His eyes drifted closed. "Have. . ."
"Let's get this off you, big boy. See what I have to deal with here."
"In. There." He didn't open his eyes.
He meant the bullet was still in his shoulder. Peri undid the buttons on his shirt with difficulty. Her fingers were raw, some bleeding, and fear and exhaustion had her fumbling for the small buttons. The buttonholes were pulled tightly because of the damned tablet strapped to his chest, making it harder to squeeze the buttons free.
Using both hands, she slipped her fingers between the fabric and his skin, gripped the edges of the placket, and tried to rip them free. The quality of the fabric wouldn't allow it. "Instead of bespoke shirts, shop at a regular store like everyone else," she told him, disproportionally furious at his damned recalcitrant buttons. "I wish we'd never found these freaking tablets."
"Mmm." His fingers curled around her wrist, his grip terrifyingly weak before his hand dropped to lie on the ground beside her hip.
He'd lost a lot of blood. There was a chilling, real possibility that he could die here.
She needed a plan. A strategy.
First things first. Stop the bleeding.
She'd figure out how to get him from here to there after that.
His lashes made black crescents on his cheeks. Finally, she got all the buttons undone. It was laborious and took up way too much time. Hurrryhurryhurry.
Quickly she spread open the unbuttoned shirt, then rested her fingers on the unsteady pulse at the base of his throat. Hurryhurryhurry. The tablet looked incongruous, warm shiny gold, against his tanned, cold skin. Peri hated the damn thing right then. She had to sit up on her knees to get a two-handed grip on it.
It winked gold as if laughing at all the trouble they were going through to save it. It weighed a ton as she lifted it free of his chest. It left a white, pressure indentation across his chest and belly. His chest, slabbed with hard muscle barely moved as he breathed.
This was bullshit. Finn was invincible. Powerful. Freaking bulletproof—
Not invincible. No longer bulletproof.
The knowledge that he could die terrified her. Her arms shook as she propped the tablet, none too gently against the wall beside her. Beyond their little refuge, bright lights shone. The sound of the blades was muted. Had they gone?
The world was still out there, waiting to bite them on the ass.
"I will be so pissed if you bleed to death right here under my house- Finn?" He was out cold.
She needed something to pad the wound so it would stop bleeding. His shirt? Damp with sweat and half covered with blood already. Her T-shirt would be perfect. Absorbent cotton. But she was loath to be bare-breasted in case Theo and his goons captured them, so she quickly put her shirt on again.
The t-shirt was long enough to cover her to mid-thigh. "As good as a mini skirt to cover the thong I put on a lifetime ago. This little piece of expensive lace was intended to give me confidence in anticipation of the confrontation I expected from you after the Cutter revelation. Instead, you walked out, I had very little confidence, and that wasn't even the freaking worst part of this hellishly long damned day."
She unzipped her jeans. "Given all that, one would think you'd at least be considerate enough not to die on my watch. I'd have to sell the house of course." She kept up the chatter as she wiggled the denim down her legs. Paused to remove her boat shoes, then pulled the jeans down her legs. "I could never live here with my dead lover's bones entombed in the cavern forever. Too creepy. On the plus side, you and our pal, Blackstar could keep each other company."
She folded the denim into a thick, flat pad, then climbed gingerly over his hip to get behind him. The back of his shirt blood-wet. She felt sick to her stomach as she eased his shirt off the arm he wasn’t laying on.
He didn't utter a sound as she gently rested his bare arm on his side.
"This salvage will take us well into our old age." She wiped the blood off his skin as best she could with a section of her jeans. Blood welled from a hole high on his shoulder.
She tried to remember what arteries were in the shoulder. Her mind was blank. If she'd ever known she couldn't remember now. She blotted more blood. "Hell, by the looks of things, our grandchildren will still be pulling up artifacts right here off the coast of Patagonia. Besides, I love this house. The location is perfect, it's c-convenient, I don't want to move, Finn."
Her vision blurred, but she blinked it clear. Buck up buttercup. You're the only game in town.
Using her bra to secure the thick unwieldy pad in place, Peri applied pressure with her palms. How hard? Damn it, for how freaking long was she supposed to keep this up?
Finally, she sat back on her haunches to check her handiwork and whispered, "Now what?"
For a moment Finn was disoriented and had to refamiliarize himself with where in the fuck he was. Hard cold floor. Stale, cool air on his hot skin. Yeah. Tunnel. He jerked into full consciousness, heart pounding as his eyes flew open.
No sound of chopper blades. Just his own uneven heartbeat pounding in his ears, throbbing with agonizing regularity and pain in his shoulder.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, shit. . ."Peri?"
When her fingers curled into his, Finn opened his eyes, blinking her into focus. He lay on his side, his head supported on her bare thigh. If he moved his mouth a few inches. . .
He looked up to see her face. Her hair fell in a wild fiery nimbus around her head and shoulders, and her freckles stood out in sharp relief against her paler than usual skin. "Are you okay?"
She nodded, exploring his face with cold, but gentle fingers. "Better now you're awake. You scared me there for a bit."
The tunnel they were in blocked most of the light coming from the cavern. But there was enough to illuminate her worried face, and the stark fear in her eyes. He tightened his fingers around hers, giving a reassuring squeeze.
He kissed her smooth thigh because it was the closest body part. "Darling? Are you aware you're not wearing any pants?"
She drew in a shaky breath. "Used them to pad your wound." Leaning down, she brushed a soft kiss on his mouth, her lips lingering for a few moments. "Think you can walk?"
Feeling annoyingly weak and lightheaded, he said, "Yeah." Give me a minute. Not gonna happen. The lack of sound from Núñez's chopper was a throbbing silence. Finn sat up. Fuck it hurt to move, his shoulder begged for mercy, and he almost blacked out. But he was upright.
"How long was I out?" he asked, buttoning his shirt.
"Seven-ish minutes."
"Shit. Where's the tablet?" He'd risked his ass bringing it with them. He hoped to hell he hadn't dropped it.
"I took it to the other end of the tunnel. Faster for me to move alone."
"Jesus, Peri, I'm sorry." Sorry for too many things to tick off right now. Bracing his hand on the wall, Finn staggered to his feet. His head swam. Enough of this shit. "I have a pretty good idea where the Cutters and your brother are. But I can't make communication in here. We need to move."
"You're sure they're coming?"
"Bank on it. But Núñez's men are trained professionals, and there are a crapton of them crawling all over your peninsula. The Cutters and your brother know what they're doing. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a fucking bloodbath out there, but we won't know until we're clear of this place. Did you notice they all have the same tattoo on the web of their thumbs? That indicates to me that they all follow Núñez, and they're not just hired guns."
"That tattoo's a whirlpool. It glows in the dark, which is creepy as hell. Theo's had it as long as I've known him."
"Which means those men are members of his Chosen sect," Finn said. "Marry religious zealots with heavy weapons, and you have what we're dealing with here. Trigger happy acolytes who will stop at nothing to give their Supreme Leader what he needs to fulfill his- and their- destiny. Núñez has obviously drummed into them who and what you are. That you're part of the prophecy. They won't stop until he has you and the tablets." Finn cupped her chin. "Not going to fucking happen in this lifetime or the next."
"Agreed. I explored this tunnel while you were out." She pulled his arm over her slender shoulders and took some of his weight. "It curves parallel to the main cavern, with a pretty steep downward slope in places, but I now know where it goes, and how to get us outside. The question is, will Theo and his goons be waiting for us?"
Even though her support was welcome, Finn removed his arm. He'd walk on his own. His warrior had enough to handle without dragging his sorry ass for miles. Although the thought was daunting, he put one foot in front of the other. "Let's find out."
It was a no-brainer that he was still losing blood. He'd said nothing, but the thick pad, she'd secured with her bra, and the bra itself, had fallen off, way back. He could feel the heated liquid bubbling sluggishly from the bullet hole in his shoulder, and felt the sticky warmth as it soaked the back of his shirt.
The ceiling of the tunnel was high enough for him to walk upright comfortably. Comfortable being a relative term. And wide enough for them to walk abreast, most of the time. In some places, the floor was even, with just a gradual slope. In others, a steep thirty-degree plus drop meant sitting and walking themselves down on their asses.
The farther in they went, the darker it became as they moved away from the main cavern and, he thought, deeper into the mountainside.
"Want to rest?" Peri touched his uninjured arm. His body reacted to the warm female musky scent of her skin, mingled with the evocative scent of lilies. Despite where they were, their physical condition, he wanted her as much as he ever had.
Finn shook his head, realized she couldn't see him, and said, "I'm good." He reached out to touch her shoulder. It didn't take much to draw her closer. Combing his fingers through her loose, silky hair, he shivered when the strands blanketed his hands and forearms as he cupped her cheeks. "Better than good."
Her lips opened under his. What he'd anticipated as a gentle kiss, became hungry and urgent as their lips, tongues and teeth clashed and for a few moments they melded together and forgot their dire situation.
Her fingers brushed over his damp mouth after they eventually broke apart. "To be continued. But for now, we're almost there."
When he realized he could see the heat in her eyes, Finn knew there was an ambient light source. "How close?" he asked as they turned in unison to continue walking. Here it was flatter, easier to pick up the speed.
"Round this corner. See? There's the tablet."
Propped up against the wall, the tablet seemed to glow with an inner radiance. Beyond it, the thin, lighted outline of a large flat square on the ground marked a dead end.
Peri pointed. "Freight elevator. It'll take us back down to sea level."
Finn raised a brow. "You have two elevators in your house?"
"You have four onboard your house." She placed her hand on his chest. "Stay put."
Not willing to let her do anything more without his help, he ignored the order and stepped onto the metal plate with her. It gave slightly with their combined weight. Now he saw the thick cables running up the vertical shaft over their heads.
"Trap door. You in?"
"Hell yeah," he smiled.
With a small grunt as she put her back into it, they pulled open a trap door. The interior was dimly lit with some sort of night light and showed mysterious shapes.
"Seriously, this time stay put. I want to rearrange a few things down there, and then I'll help you down." Sliding feet first, she disappeared into the opening. A second later the area where he stood lit up more brightly as she turned on an interior light.
Finn went back for the damned tablet. Might as well take it all the way home.
"Finn?"
He walked back, hefting its weight in both arms. "Here."
"Turn around and lie on your stomach. Drop your legs down, I've piled up some stuff for you to step on so you don't pull open that wound and make it bleed worse. Let me know when you're ready."
"Take the tablet first."
"Hang on a sec."
He heard the scrape of something heavy being dragged. "Okay, if you drop it straight down I have a soft landing for it." She sounded slightly out of breath.
Finn held the tablet over the lighted square, saw white cloth and Peri's bright hair, then let go.
She grunted. "Got it. Now you."
He was a little bit more difficult to maneuver, but he slid to the edge, dangled his legs, and dropped onto a blanket-topped crate. Even with the soft landing, and Peri's steadying hand, his body jarred painfully, and he had to grit his teeth.
"I made some stairs here. Come down."
She'd stair-stepped packing crates, and Finn walked down to stand beside her.
"Here are our choices." Gathering the wild mass of her hair with both hands, she twisted and tucked it into a messy bun at her nape. "Right now we're at ground level. If the doors open, we'd be in the garage with access to your helicopter."
The muffled sounds of gunshots and men shouting was an indication the shit was still hitting the fan in and around the house.
"They think the tablets are in the chopper, but they know it's rigged to blow. They'd presume I'd try to get back to the chopper. Ground level isn't an option since we don't know how many men might be waiting for us. But we'd have the chopper and the backup of at least my two men ...
"If we go down, we'll have my Sea Witch and the open sea. Either place could possibly be swarming with Theo's soldiers. Which odds should we go for?"
"Sea level. It's a clear way out, right? No idea if the chopper is still a viable option. It might be disabled."
"As might be the case for Sea Witch," she pointed out.
"I vote down to the open water."
"Me, too." She pressed the only button, and the elevator started to smoothly descend.
Finn glanced around. The freight elevator was packed, practically ceiling to floor and wall to wall with heavy crates. She'd managed to clear a space big enough for them to stand, near the door. "What is all this?" He had a damn good idea.
"Cutter artifacts." She squeezed behind him, took the small Glock from beneath his shirt. "Packed and ready to deliver to Cutter Cay at my earliest convenience."
He curled a strand of her hair around his finger, his knuckle brushing her smooth cheek. "Was it worth it?" he asked, taking the gun she handed him, even though he knew it held no bullets.
"Yes." Her eyes met his. "Unequivocally. It was fun at the time, and, if not for all this, I probably wouldn't have met you."
Finn shook his head as he leaned against a pile of heavy crates, pretending to himself that he wasn't lightheaded. He needed his wits about him, no time for wimping out. "If not here and now, we would've met somewhere else. Even Blackstar prophesied it."
"Funny." she shot him a sassy smile that sweetly pierced his heart like an arrow. "Theo had the same strong belief that he and I were soulmates."
"Núñez is a psychotic, fuckhead screwed up on numerous levels. If he so much as lays one more finger on you, I'll gut him like a fish." Bending to get the knife out of his boot almost had Finn puking. He straightened slowly, swallowing hard as black dots swirled in his vision.
Peri took his arm, eyes troubled. "Can you make it to Sea Witch? Never mind. That's rhetorical. Lean against the box behind you, I just remembered something."
Finn leaned back, letting the heavy crate at his back take most of his weight as Peri disappeared between the packing crates.
The sensation of floating didn't dissipate, but the pain at least kept him focused.
"Damn it," she murmured, hidden from view. Wood scraped against wood "Where the. . .Yes!"
She returned to his side brandishing a lethal looking dagger.
"Jesus-"
"Side-arm for a knight back in the day. This will go back to Zane." She did a few parries. "But in the meantime, we have use for this beautifully preserved fifteen-century Rondel dagger, and its tapered twelve-inch steel blade. Too bad the wooden hilt got eaten underwater over hundreds of years." She used it to slice a strip of cloth covering a nearby crate. "Woo hoo, and still wicked sharp." She wrapped the strip off the cloth around the bare steel of the hilt and secured it as she'd done with her hair. "I can do a lot of damage with this."
Unless someone took it from her- Fuck. "Make sure you have a sure grip on it," was all Finn offered. "Tell me where and what to expect when the door opens." He hoped to hell there weren't a dozen men waiting for them.
Peri readjusted her fingers on the fabric wrapped hilt. "Opens into a wide tunnel. Turn right. Walk twenty-five feet, first opening turn right again, enter cavern where Sea Witch is docked. Two ties. Then about a hundred feet straight out into open water."
"Weapons on board? Núñez was in the helicopter. There's every chance they'll spot us out on open water and he'll alert his people to give chase. "
"A Taurus 9 millimeter under the dash. A semi-automatic in the top left dresser drawer in the master cabin. Same in the guest cabin. All fully loaded. And of course, a galley full of sharps."
Finn smiled. "Better than I hoped." The elevator stopped with a small jolt. Show time. "Ready?"