More sparks.
Almost there…
CHAPTER 40
LARA
Gunshots.
She knew they were gunshots almost instantly, the sound traveling along the concrete walls and floors of the facility, standing out against the quiet hum of the turbine in the background. For a moment, she remembered how all of this started for her — waking up to the sound of gunshots and discovering that the world had changed while she slept.
She opened her eyes in time to see Will pulling himself free. He was already stepping into his pants somewhere in the semidarkness of the room by the time she sat up on the small cot. “I heard gunshots…”
“Two shots. From Operations.”
“Glock?”
He glanced at her, pleased. “Sounds like a Glock, yeah.”
She smiled proudly back at him. “I’m learning.”
“Yes, you are.”
Will slipped on his shirt as she climbed out of bed and looked for her clothes. Found her pants nearby and quickly pulled it on, but the large T-shirt was nowhere to be found.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“One shot is an accident, two is on purpose.” Will grabbed his gunbelt from the nightstand and slipped it on. The silver shape of his cross-knife gleamed in the semidarkness. Will opened the drawer and pulled out a fistful of spare magazines and two radios, handing one to her. “Don’t lose it.”
“I won’t.”
“Keep it turned on at all times.”
“Okay.”
“I have to go.”
“Be careful.”
He moved with purpose to the door, put his hand on the lever, but didn’t turn it.
“What?” she asked.
“I forgot something.”
“What is it?”
He walked back to her, slid one hand around her waist, pulled her against him, and kissed her hard on the mouth. Her bare breasts crushed up against his chest, but she adjusted quickly and kissed him back.
Finally, he pulled away and looked at her. “That.”
“Good call,” she said.
He let go of her and quickly left the room, but not before looking back one last time. She smiled back, and for a split second she wanted to grab his hand and tell him to ignore what was happening out there, to stay with her instead, that they could be happy here, just the two of them.
But she didn’t, because she knew this was what Will did. He ran toward danger, didn’t shrink from it.
She stood alone in the darkness for a moment, trying to decide what to do and feeling a little flushed. It had been a while since she felt this way about someone. Will was so different from all the other men she had ever been involved with. In another life, they would never have met. When would she have ever come in contact with a guy from Harris County SWAT? Or an Army Ranger?
She pulled herself out of her thoughts. She felt silly, like a teenager in love for the first time. She was too old for that, she reminded herself, and began looking again for her T-shirt on the floor. She finally found it crumpled up near the foot of his cot and pulled it open. She found her shoes farther back toward the door and slipped them on one by one before stepping out into the brightly lit hallway.
She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Danny rushing toward her. He was still buckling his gunbelt. “Will?” he asked.
“He’s headed there now.”
Danny nodded and ran past her. He hadn’t bothered to ask where “there” was.
Lara looked after him for a moment, then remembered her Glock and hurried down the hallway to her own room. She found it amusing that her first instinct was to go for her gun. The old Lara would have been terrified at such a thought. Then again, the old Lara had survived The Purge by pure dumb luck.
She thought about checking up on Carly and the girls farther down the hallway, but it was late, almost midnight, and they were probably asleep. Unlike Will and Danny and her, most of the facility seemed oblivious to the gunshots, which alarmed her.
Wake up! she wanted to shout. Something’s happening! Can’t you people hear it?
The Glock was in the drawer next to her cot where she left it. She was clipping the holster onto her belt when there was a knock on her door.
“Come in!”
She looked back to see Carly standing in the open doorway in pants and T-shirt, her eyes groggy from sleep. “Is it bad?” Carly asked, looking at Lara’s gun holster.
“I don’t know, just to be safe.”
She glanced at her wall clock: 11:55 p.m.
“Danny woke us up,” Carly said. “He said he heard gunshots.”
“We heard them, too. How’s Elise?”
“She’s fine—”
The sound of a third gunshot stopped Carly mid-sentence. This one was closer — much closer than the two shots from earlier.
“Oh my God,” Carly said.
“Danny’s there with Will,” Lara said. “They’ll be fine.”
I hope.
She unclipped the radio from her belt and pressed the lever. “Will, come in. What’s going on? I heard another gunshot.”
Will’s voice came through the radio: “Where are you?”
“In my room. Carly’s here with me. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Will said.
Unsurprisingly, she couldn’t tell if he sounded anxious or excited. It was hard to read Will’s emotions at any given time when he was standing in front of her. Trying to guess his thoughts through a radio was next to impossible.
“We have a situation here,” Will said. “I need you to go back to Carly’s room and lock yourselves in with the girls.”
“Will, what’s happening?”
“Lara, did you hear me? I need—”
“And you need to tell me what’s going on,” she interrupted, a lot more forcefully than she had really wanted.
But it did the job, and Will said, “It’s Kate. She shot Ben and Rick, and she has Ben’s pendant.”
“Pendant…?” But she knew what that meant as soon as she said it.
“Yes,” Will said.
“Where are you now?”
“Entrance Hallway. Kate’s here. So I need you to go to Carly’s room and lock yourselves in. Don’t come out for anything, no matter what you hear, unless it’s Danny or me knocking on the door. Lara? Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“Go. Now.”
“Be careful,” she said quickly.
“I will.”
She looked over at Carly and saw the younger woman’s pained expression. “They’ll be fine,” Lara said. “Danny and Will are together.”
Carly gave her a forced smile and nodded.
Lara hurried over to her. “Come on, you heard what Will said.”
She took the other woman’s hand and led her back outside. They turned right and headed down the hallway toward Carly’s room. It was almost all the way at the back, with the community bathrooms farther down.
She opened Carly’s door and guided her inside. “Stay here with the girls.”
“What? What about you?”
“I’ll be back.”
“But Will said—”
“I know,” Lara said and tried to put as much confidence into her smile as possible. Maybe fifty percent. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Until then, do what Will said. Lock the door and keep it locked, okay?”
Carly was about to argue, but Lara quickly closed the door and ran up the hallway.
It seemed to take forever to get to the first turn up ahead. Then she was running around another corner, heading toward the Entrance Hallway, which was exactly halfway between Quarters and Operations.