“We shouldn’t leave them,” I whispered to Nicky.
He looked just as conflicted about leaving as I was, but then he took my hand and began leading me through the tunnel. “They can take care of themselves,” he assured me. “Right now, I’m getting you the hell out of here.”
We’d only walked for maybe two minutes before the sound of gunfire died down. Nicky came to an abrupt halt and cast a glance over his shoulder. “Shit.”
I only had time to get a glimpse of him before he flicked off the flashlight and pulled me into his arms, holding me close as he listened intently. In the distance, we heard the quiet creak of the trapdoor opening.
“Go,” he hissed in my ear.
We took off down the tunnel, feeling along the walls in the darkness, keeping our footsteps as quiet as possible. The people following us weren’t so concerned. Hearing each of them drop down into the tunnel, I picked up the pace, holding tightly to Nicky’s hand and hoping like hell he had some idea where we were going.
A loud crack sounded behind us as one of our pursuers opened fire. I crouched down instinctively and felt Nicky’s arm going around my shoulders, pulling me in front of him to protect me. We picked up the pace, no longer caring about the Agency assholes hearing our footsteps.
Nicky gave me a nudge to keep going. “Stay low,” he whispered. Then I heard him fire off a few rounds behind us. There was a grunt of pain as one of the rounds struck home.
Crouching low along the wall, I ran faster. Relief washed over me as I felt Nicky close behind me. But just when I thought the agents had backed off, they shot at as again, this time in a spray of bullets. Nicky cursed under his breath. I glanced behind me as if I could tell in the darkness whether he’d been hit, and suddenly slammed into a dirt wall, crying out in surprise before I could stop myself.
I felt around frantically, searching for a turn in the tunnel or a ladder, something!
“Up!” Nicky hissed, placing my hands on metal rungs and urging me upward.
More shots rang out, making me climb quicker. I was nearly to the top when pain exploded in my leg. I lost my footing and slid back down the ladder, knocking into Nicky and sending us sprawling on the ground.
“Got her!” I heard one of the agents yell.
Nicky snatched me up from the ground and flung me over his shoulder, then scrambled up the ladder, a deep groan rumbling in his chest. When he threw open the hatch, the late afternoon sunlight assaulted me, and I winced, sucking in the air through my teeth.
“Hang on, doll,” Nicky muttered, shrugging me off his shoulders and onto the ground inside one of the buildings that was still under construction. He slammed the trapdoor and glanced around frantically, then grabbed a heavy cinder block and set it on top of the door to slow down the agents.
It was only as Nicky hastily lifted me into his arms that I realized my jeans were soaked with blood and my thigh was raging with pain, threatening to send me careening toward unconsciousness. “Hold on, doll,” he murmured as he hurried toward a plastic sheet hanging over a doorway. He ducked under the sheet and rushed toward the doorway across the room, but stumbled, coming down on one knee, clenching his teeth over a sharp cry.
I glanced up at his face, alarmed to see it deathly pale. Then I noticed the blood that was dripping down his arm. “Oh, my God!” I wiggled out of his hold—which wasn’t difficult with him weakened from blood loss. Pain punched the breath from my lungs when I hit the ground, but I managed to push up to my knees as Nicky slumped into me. “Oh, no you don’t,” I grunted, somehow managing to get us both up and moving.
I pulled Nicky’s uninjured arm around my shoulders and gritted my teeth as I limped toward the door, dragging him with me. I pulled the door open just a crack and saw the parking lot; the building where we’d parked the Escalade was only a couple hundred feet from where we’d emerged.
“Come on, love,” I ground out, glancing around for any agents who might be coming for us. By the time we reached the Escalade, my breath was shredding my lungs, but the pain in my thigh had already started to subside. Not bothering to ponder the faster than usual healing time, I fished the keys out of Nicky’s pocket and managed to shove him into the passenger’s seat.
I was tearing out of the parking lot, tires squealing, when the Agency bastards emerged from the Piggs’ office, firing at us. I flinched with a startled cry when one of their bullets shattered the back window. “Son of a bitch!”
The tires clung desperately to the pavement as I whipped the car out of the parking lot and into the street, fishtailing the rear end when I gunned it. Nicky slammed into the door with a groan. “Hang on, Nicky,” I told him, my teeth beginning to chatter from the icy February air blowing in through the shattered window. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
He mumbled something incoherent in response.
“What was that, baby?” I asked, glancing in the rearview mirror to check for a tail.
“Not dying,” he said a little louder. “Trust me. I know what that feels like.”
I spotted one of the Agency’s sedans zipping around the cars behind me, gaining quickly. “Yeah, well, I’m not willing to bet on that, okay?”
I jerked the steering wheel, bounding onto the median and bouncing into the oncoming traffic. Before the Agency could even figure out what had happened, I was racing past them in the opposite direction. But it wasn’t going to take them long to come after me. I just couldn’t figure out why the hell they wanted to. Why were Nicky and I suddenly on their hit list? Had they come at the Pigg brothers to get to Nicky and me, or were we just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
As expected, the Agency’s sedan was coming up behind me again. And this time it had a twin.
Shit.
I was in freaking suburbia in an area I didn’t know. Outrunning them or losing them was becoming increasingly unlikely. There was no way to call for Gideon without the little mist trick Lavender had taught me. And I’d left my cell phone in my coat pocket, which was back at the Piggs’.
I blew through a red light, drawing the furious honks of several cars, but the congestion managed to at least slow my pursuers for a few valuable seconds. I zigzagged between a cargo van and a sports car, then floored it again, taking the first interstate entrance ramp I saw, not even noting which interstate it happened to be.
As soon as I merged into traffic, I reached over and snatched Nicky’s cell phone from the case at his belt and punched in a number before thinking. When I heard the familiar baritone on the other end, my stomach twisted into knots. But pride was going to have to take a number.
“Hi, Al,” I said through chattering teeth. “I need your help.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I smoothed Nicky’s hair away from his forehead as he slept, then bent and brushed a kiss to his lips. He was so doped up on fairy dust at the moment, he didn’t even flinch.
“The doctors say when he’ll wake up?” Al asked from where he sat in a wooden chair in the corner of the Tale hospital room.
I shook my head. “Not really. Maybe sometime tonight or tomorrow. His body was weakened by the blood loss and is struggling a little to heal itself.”
Even though I’d had no right to ask for his help the day before, Al had immediately sent out several Enforcers to come to our aid. And now with Red safely at home on bed rest, he’d transferred his vigil at the hospital to watching over Nicky and me. I wondered when the last time was that he’d had any sleep.