Page 42 of The Vigilante's Lover
“Mia!” I shout. She doesn’t react to my voice, but stares at the mirror from her side. I kick it again and she jumps back. The window holds.
I look around, pushing the panic down and taking deep, calming breaths. There must be something nearby I can use to smash this window open. Nothing. The hall is empty.
I hear a door open and whirl at the sound, expecting a horde of Vigilantes barreling down on me.
“Jax?”
Mia stands in the open doorway.
“Jax,” she says again, “what are you doing?”
My mind snaps back to attention. She can’t think I’m on to her, or she won’t come with me.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I say. Without waiting for her response, I grab her hand and pull her back down the hallway. She comes willingly. She’s somehow traded her high heels for a pair of Phase One Trainee uniform shoes, so we take off at a run.
Once I have her out of this silo, she’s going to pay for what she’s done.
20: Mia
Thank God I got the shoes off Katya. I can’t wait to tell Jax how. He’ll be so proud of me, I think. Maybe it’ll prove I’m worthy of staying with him.
Jax drags me down the hall at a breakneck pace. We approach another door and he sticks a bit of tape to it, or something, then pounds on the steel when it refuses to open. I lift my bracelet and the panels smoothly slide apart.
He stares at me a moment, dumbfounded. “That shouldn’t work during a lockdown.”
I give a little shrug. “I’m special.”
Jax takes his tape again and we head down another hallway, this one unfinished with bare concrete.
We come to another door, older, with an actual handle. There is no scanning device above it. I shake my bracelet at it, but nothing happens.
Jax grins. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
I have no idea what he means, but he turns and delivers three swift kicks to the handle. The metal groans and dents in.
He braces both hands on the lever and jerks it swiftly down. Something snaps inside, and the door opens.
“Low tech,” he says.
The lights are dim in this hall, and I can hear the drip of water.
“This way,” Jax says. We run along the concrete walls until we come to a rusting ladder. He glances down at my shoes. “Lucky break.”
I want to tell him luck had nothing to do with it, but he’s already halfway up the ladder. It disappears into a dark circular space. I’m hesitant to follow.
“Come on,” he calls down. “Don’t make me come for you.”
I hear a crashing sound down the hall and figure they’re on to our location even without their fancy gadgets. I stick my foot on the bottom rung and heave myself up.
The tunnel we’re climbing is dank and musty smelling. Jax is waiting a few feet up. “Don’t get us caught,” he hisses.
“Just cloak us or something,” I hiss back.
“We’re escaping the old-fashioned way,” he says and starts climbing again.
“So they took your toys,” I say.
“Something like that.”
