Page 24 of The Lost Soldier
He curled his fingers around her biceps.
“You shouldn’t be able to touch me.”
“Really? That might come in handy when I find the bomb.”
“Interesting. Okay, call me when you’ve found it. I’ll go find the men.” She took off down the hallway, her feet hitting the tile floor, but she didn’t hear them. It was all an illusion. She wondered if him touching her back at the cabin had anything to do with them touching each other on the cosmic plane.
She pushed all those questions and pesky doubts from her mind and concentrated on moving about the building. Most of the time it was easy to step through a wall, or peek into a room, but Scottie was right, someone had built up a strong wall protecting this place from people like her. Only she felt stronger with Chad. It was as if her ability doubled in strength.
For the most part, the building was empty of people, but filled with explosives and military weapons. She peeked her head into the last room on the top floor on the west side. Boxes and boxes of grenades filled the room. She reached in through the wall. The cold, hardness of the cement bricks chilled her bones. The skin on her fingertips burned when they grazed the top of the metal objects. One moved slightly as she pulledher hand back. She froze, hoping that wouldn’t set them off. Glancing at her watch, she let out a sigh of relief. Would have sucked had she been the reason the building exploded and not the bomb.
Taking the stairs, she jogged to the lowest level, and made her way to the west side. The compound had four corridors off a center building. The few people that mulled around were either guards or what appeared to be office workers in the main tower, though what kind of office she had no idea because she didn’t believe this to be a government organization. The guards didn’t wear the North Korean military uniform, but it could be some secret government organization. Hell, the United States had a half dozen or so that even some of the highest officials didn’t know existed.
As she rounded the corner on the second floor, she heard male voices. She wished she’d taken a language in school, though it probably wouldn’t have been Korean.
From the third door on the right, two men appeared, both with bags over their heads, one visibly injured as he limped and groaned with every step. Behind them, four men wearing military camouflage, carrying large weapons, thrust the captives forward, hitting them with the butt of their weapons.
“Hunter,” she whispered in her mind, but got no response.
When the two men walked past, she felt a wave of psychic energy around one of the men. She couldn’t tell if it was him, blocking himself off from everyone, or someone else had wrapped him in a blanket of protective energy.
Or maybe a bit of both.
“I found them,” she projected to Chad. “They are on the move.”
“Follow them,” Chad responded.
“Find the bomb?”
“Yes. Tell me if they leave the building.”
“Be careful,” she projected.
“You too.”
On tip-toe, she slinked through the hall until the men stopped at the elevator. It wasn’t a very big elevator, fitting maybe eight people. With her, it would be seven people inside. While her non-existent body could be absorbed into almost anything, if she came in contact with organic material, and a person was organic, they could know she was there in a way that could zap her energy, making it difficult
She sucked in a breath, slipping inside the caged machine, right next to who she believed to be Hunter. Heat radiated from his body, prickling her skin. She kept reminding herself that her body wasn’t on this plane. That she really wasn’t feeling any of this.
But part of her wondered if Hunter really was emitting some kind of boiling, invisible steam.
The doors closed, and the motor roared. The elevator shook and bounced as it started it’s decent downward. Hunter’s body continued to come in contact with her mind. A dull ache built slowly from the base of her neck to the top of her forehead.
As soon as the doors opened, she leapt into the hallway, then followed them through the north wing.
“Where are you?” Chad’s voice filled her mind, giving her a sense of calm.
“Heading toward the doors on the north end.”
“I can’t disarm the bomb, and I can’t take it with us.”
“So, this place is going to blow soon.”
“Yep. Best part is that the bomb is not Korean, either North or South. It’s American. So, either our government has more than one op here and the branches aren’t speaking to one another, or some gorilla organization. Either way, we need to figure out how to get our men out.”
One of the captors pulled back the door. The warm sun filtered through the open space. A convoy of trucks awaited them.
“Not going to be a problem. They are getting in the back of a truck now.”
