Chapter Thirty-One
" shit, Seal, look at this!" Cece said urgently tugging my sleeve as she handed me her phone. On the screen was a text message from Echo with a picture of a whole bunch of formulas laid out on a sheet of paper in a rectangle.
"Is this all she sent?" I asked as I stared at the photo.
"Yeah, that's it," she nodded. "What the hell is that?"
"She's sending us a message," I said. "But hell if I know what it is. Forward the photo to me."
Cece quickly took her phone back and forwarded me the picture, and the two of us sat in the closet in my father's office staring at our screens.
"It's a rectangle," I said. "What's rectangular?"
Cece shrugged and turned her phone around looking at the photo from all angles. Suddenly, I had an idea. I grabbed the laptop and typed in Echo's number again. The map still showed her location as in the building.
"She's here," I said looking up at Cece. "You were right, she's here. If she sent the message..."
"She did," Cece nodded. "I know it's her. Look down here in the bottom corner under the short formula, she wrote the word chica. The kidnappers wouldn't know that's my nickname for her. She's here."
"I'll bet she's up on the seventeenth floor," I said staring at my phone.
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"Look at all of her equations," I said pointing toward the far wall and then quickly doing a few calculations on my phone's calculator. "The outer sides all have seventeen as their root. Can you see that?"
"Um, okay?" Cece said.
"I think she's trying to tell us she's on the seventeenth floor," I said. "Either that, or I failed basic algebra and my calculations are off."
"You're a piece of work, Seal," Cece said shaking her head. "Fine, what's the plan then?"
"We get upstairs and find Echo," I said. "Then I create a diversion with the C-4, and you hustle her out of there into the lab. Got the keys?"
"No, you have them," she sighed. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys to my father's lab and handed them to her as she smiled and said, "Okay, now the plan has a slightly larger chance of succeeding."
"Check your gun," I said. "Make sure the safety is off and that you're ready for whatever happens. We have no idea how many of them there are or what kind of weapons they have."
"Great," she said rolling her eyes dramatically. "Now the chance of success just dipped again."
"Don't be a pessimist, lady," I grinned as I checked my gun and tucked it into the pocket of my hoodie. "Let's roll."
We exited the office and quickly made our way to the stairs.
We climbed one flight to the seventeenth floor as Cece hit the cameras with the paint. We made our way to the hallway next to my father's lab.
I followed the map I'd committed to memory and led the way down a long corridor then carefully checked the hallway signaling to Cece to come up underneath and hit the camera that was aimed down the hallway where the lab was located. Once she'd covered the lens, we dropped to our knees and scooted down the hallway toward what looked like the first of four offices. The glass panels sat on top of beech wood partitions that gave us a place to hide as we made our way down the hallway, but the full-length glass doors we'd have to cross in front of to get to the next office gave us nowhere to hide.
"We're going to have to move fast, okay?" I said as I motioned for Cece to follow me. I could feel her right behind me as I slid over to the first office and slowly raised my eyes just over the edge of the glass. Nothing.
Cece and I carefully made our way down the hall looking in the offices and finding nothing. It was possible that they had Echo locked in a lab, but my instincts told me that they didn't have access to the labs, otherwise they wouldn't have needed to kidnap Echo in the first place. I lifted my head just above the glass, and inhaled sharply as I ducked down.
"She's in there," I whispered.
"In that office?" Cece asked. "You sure?"
"Positive," I said. Cece motioned to me to get going as I slid on my belly across the front of the door and moved toward the far side of the hallway. There was no way we could go in guns blazing and not wind up with someone getting seriously wounded —or worse. I was going to set up an explosion in the area behind the office. What we hoped would happen would be that the kidnappers would come check it out and then we'd stand a better chance of rescuing Echo. It wasn't the best plan, but it was the only one we could think of under pressure.
Cece watched as I set up the explosives and then motioned me when it was safe to slide back to where she sat waiting. I had only used 50 grams of the C-4 knowing that any more than that would likely cause more damage than we wanted. I looked at Cece and motioned for her to get as far away as she could, then I counted down on my fingers before lighting the fuse. Once the fuse was lit, I ran down the hall to join Cece around the corner. It took fifteen-seconds for the fuse to burn down to the blasting caps and when it hit, the explosion shook our hiding spot.
"What the fuck?" came the shout from the other end of the hallway as a guy in a dark colored tracksuit exited the office and walked down to check out the explosion site. Cece and I silently moved down the hallway, and in a matter of seconds I had my arm wrapped around the guy's neck with my pistol pointed at his temple.
"Where is she?" I growled.
"What the fuck?" the startled man yelled.
"Where the fuck is she?" I repeated as I pressed the metal into his head.
"Who?"
"The girl?" I growled. "Where is she?"
"In the office!" he shouted as I heard Echo yell, "Don't hurt him! He's just the muscle!"
"You're one luck son of a bitch," I said before I smashed him in the back of the head with my pistol knocking him out cold.
"Ryan!" Echo cried as I ran into the room and found Cece kneeling at her feet frantically trying to cut the cable wound around her legs. "He's got the keys in his pocket, and my phone!"
"Got it," I said as I went back out and rifled through the guy's pockets finding the lock keys and Echo's phone. I went back into the office gave the keys to Cece and the phone to Echo before I turned and headed for the door again. "I'm going to the lab. Hurry up and join me!"
It took me three tries to locate the door to my father's lab, but when I tried the first of the two keys it didn't work. I was sweating by the time I slipped the second key in and heard the lock click. We were in — or so I thought.
The inner room was pitch black and by now Cece and Echo had joined me, but us could find a light switch on the wall, so Cece flipped on her cell phone and used the glow of the screen to scan the small space. The door leading into the lab resembled that of a large industrial refrigerator with a seal running around the outside edges. It was silver and had a lever with a lock in the middle; I slipped the first key into it and turned it hoping that it would be a simple solution. The lock easily opened and I carefully pushed down on the lever, unsure of what would happen once we broke the seal. I heard the whooshing of air and as I pulled the door open I saw a blue light shining from somewhere toward the back of the room.
I signaled to Cece and Echo to follow me as I moved slowly between two lab tables that sat parallel to one another stretching eight feet into the center of the lab. Both were covered by glass cases and had fume hoods hanging from the ceiling. To the left of the tables were four large boxes with blinking lights flickering on and off in what appeared to be random patterns as they processed information and stored it deep in the inner recesses of some technological brain.
"Servers," Echo whispered. "All of his research data is on them, but the most important data is on the hard drive. We need to find it."
As we cleared the lab tables I stopped abruptly whispering, "Get down!"
We all dropped to the floor and crawled toward the two giant circular glass cases that rose up out of the floor just as a voice filled the space.
"You are not getting out of here alive, missy!" the goon shouted.
"Give yourself up, Echo Frost," a second voice hissed. "You cannot beat us."
"The hell I can't!" Echo shouted before I could slap a hand over her mouth.
"Shut the hell up!" I whispered. "They don't know who's in here with you or that we're armed."
I looked at Cece and nodded as I pulled my pistol out of my pocket. She was already holding hers.
"You stupid, stupid girl," the voice growled. "You have no idea what you've done or how we're going to make you pay for it."
"On three, we're going to rise up and fire at them," I said. "This is for real, so don't hold back, okay?"
"You sure we shouldn’t wait for the police?" Echo whispered.
"Chica, no police are coming," Cece said patting her arm. "Me and Seal rolled solo on this rescue mission."
"Hey, what are you people doing in this lab?" came a voice from the hallway. "You're not supposed to be in here."
"Butch! GET DOWN!" Echo screamed as Cece and I rose up from behind the lab tables and started firing. The goon and his boss returned fire and soon the room was full of the deafening sound of guns firing and the smell of black powder. I ducked down to eject the spent magazine from my gun and slam in a new one before emerging from between the tables and firing at the man moving towards us. I fired and he dropped to the floor with a thud seconds before I felt the searing pain rip through my midsection.
"Ryan!" I heard Echo scream as I fell backwards and everything went black.