Chapter Sixteen
Trinity Sands Resort
Main Building
4th Floor
At first, Connor thought the rat-ta-tat-tat sound was from the TV. Last thing he remembered before drifting to sleep was Jeremiah Wolfe browsing the channels, looking for something to watch. He had apparently decided on an action movie because the sound of gunfire was loud enough to rattle his bed.
But then Connor opened his eyes. The room was dark. No blue glow from the TV, but still the muffled rattle of an automatic weapon. Disoriented, still not sure he was fully awake, he stared up at the ceiling above his bed.
Who was shooting? Was anyone? Or was he imagining it? Maybe it was leftover from his dreams. Though he couldn’t exactly remember what he’d been dreaming about, it was totally possible after the week he’d had that he’d been dreaming of a war zone.
Rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-ta-tat.
The fire alarm wailed, its shriek piercing the dark.
Wolfe bolted upright, knocking his pillows to the floor between their beds as he did. “What the…? Is that the fire alarm? Shit!” He rolled out of bed, heavy limbs flailing. The guy was all solid muscle, almost the exact opposite of Connor, but he seemed to have the same problem coordinating his body. Instead of the ungainly giraffe Connor was always compared to, he was more like a bumbling bear cub.
Wolfe grabbed his pants and boots from the floor. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” Connor scrambled to his feet. He’d fallen asleep in his clothes and only needed his boots. He was on his way to the door a step behind Wolfe.
“We need to find your dad,” Wolfe said and pulled the door open.
Holy shit.
Dad!
Wolfe was right. They had to find him.
Emergency lights strobed in the hallway. The other recruits spilled from their rooms in various states of undress, but Connor ignored them and beelined for his dad’s room. He pounded on the door.
No response. Where was he?
Wolfe’s large hand closed around his shoulder. “We have to get outside.”
“Not without Dad!” His voice cracked, sounding more child than adult, but he didn’t care. He tried pounding again, but Wolfe pulled him around.
“Hey. He’s not here.”
“He has to be!” Panic rose up, fast and hard, nearly choking him. His hands started to shake and he balled them at his sides.
Wolfe tightened his grip on his shoulders. “Man, listen. I’ve been training under your dad for a couple months. He’s smart. He’s tough. If he’s not here, he’s probably already outside directing people to safety and tending to wounds. You’ll see. He’ll be taking care of people. It’s what he does, and he’s damn good at it.”
But why wouldn’t he come get me first? The question stuck in Connor’s throat and brought a coating of bitterness to his tongue. Stupid. He knew why. His dad had a savior complex when it came to strangers, but kept friends and family at arm’s length. And double that arm’s length for his son. He’d never wanted the responsibility of fatherhood. Why would he start caring about his son now when there were other people to be saved?
Fine. Whatever. It wasn’t like he was pining for his father’s love anyway. He’d save his own skin, just like he always had.
The fire alarm stopped just as suddenly as it had started. Everyone froze and looked at each other.
This couldn’t be good.
Connor turned away from the door and shouldered through the crowd, making his way toward the stairs. Fire alarm or no, he was getting out.
Just as he reached for the push-bar, the door flung open and Jean-Luc staggered from the stairwell, followed by several other people who looked like they’d been through a war zone. They carried a bleeding woman in a sheet. Jean-Luc’s shirt was covered with blood, but whether it was his or someone else’s was anyone’s guess. The moment the final person cleared the doorway, he threw his body weight against the metal door. “Find something to block this with!”
“What about the fire?” someone asked. “We can’t stay here!”
Connor didn’t hesitate. He’d already figured out there was no fire. He glanced around, spotted a table and chair set-up by the elevator banks down the hall and started toward it. “Wolfe!”
Wolfe must have had the same idea, because the guy was already one step ahead of him.
“Yeah. Good thinking,” Jean-Luc called after them. “We need to block all the exits and jam the elevator. We’re going to hold this floor until help arrives.”
“But what’s happening?” Schumacher asked and was ignored. He looked sleepy and pissed off and not the least bit frightened. The bastard.
Connor wished he could say the same about himself, but his heart was trying to surge up out of his throat. Still he kept moving. He and Wolfe flipped up the long side table that sat against the wall across from the elevator bank and broke off the legs with several well-placed kicks. Jean-Luc grabbed one of the legs, while another recruit—Samira Blackwood—jammed the stairway door at the other end of the hall with another leg. Two other recruits dragged one of the heavy chairs over to jam against Jean-Luc’s door, while Wolfe muscled the other chair over to help fortify Sami’s door.
While they all worked, Connor considered the problem of the elevators. The easiest way to jam them was to call them and push the emergency stop button when they arrived. He didn’t know how smart that would be, though. Someone, somewhere in the hotel had automatic weapons, and judging by all the blood on Jean-Luc, they weren’t afraid to use them.
So no calling them. But, like everything else, elevators were computerized nowadays. And Sami Blackwood had been working with Harvard to learn how to hack.
Connor grabbed Sami’s arm as she passed. “Can you hack the elevators?”
She looked at the doors and a line of concentration formed between her sculpted brows. “Yeah, but I’d need Harvard’s computer. Mine won’t cut it.”
“What floor is he on?”
Sami pointed down. “Third.”
Connor considered the doors again, but shook off the idea taking one down a floor. Harvard might have gotten out of the building. Or he could be dead. But they still had to stop the elevators somehow, and Connor could think of only one way to do it. He jabbed the call button and held his breath as he waited for the ding announcing the car’s arrival. The doors slid open…
Empty.
He released his breath, darted inside, and hit the emergency stop button. Then he reached to hit the button again to call the second car.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, kid!” Jean-Luc plowed through the crowd and tried to swat his hand away from the down button, but was too late. “Merde! Your pa’s gonna kill me.”
“We have to stop the elevators or else blocking the doors won’t do much good,” Connor explained, trying to sound reasonable despite the terror riding him hard.
Jean-Luc positioned himself between Connor and the still-closed elevator doors. In his hand was a wicked looking blade already dripping with blood. “And they say I’m reckless.”
“I had to.”
“Not saying otherwise, but—” The second set of doors slid open and Jean-Luc readied the knife, but sheathed it when he saw the car was also empty. He exhaled hard, walked inside, and pushed the emergency stop. “Good call,” he conceded finally as he dug around in the pocket of his bloodstained shorts. “But no more risks like that. I need to keep you breathing.”
He found his phone and cursed in a long string of Cajun French at the spider web of cracks across the blank screen. It wouldn’t power on. “Anyone have a working phone?” he called to the group.
“I do,” Sami said and disappeared inside the room she’d had to herself. She returned a few seconds later with her phone and slapped it into Jean-Luc’s waiting hand. “I should’ve saved everyone’s numbers before we left the training facility. I didn’t think—”
“No worries, cher.” He tapped the side of his head with one hand while he dialed with the other. “Photographic memory.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“What can I say? It’s a gift and a curse.” He raised the phone and waited through the rings. “Jess, call me back at this number when you get this message. I have your boy. He’s safe. All of the recruits are also present and counted for, plus a handful of civilians, one critically injured. We’ve barricaded on the fourth floor. Christ, Jess, where are you? Could really use some ideas on how to get us out of this clusterfuck right about now.”