Explosive Attraction - By Lena Diaz Page 0,15

that door and down the stairs. From there he could get Darby out of the hospital and take her somewhere safe.

A muted noise sounded behind them. Footsteps, coming toward the double doors that blocked off this wing. The exit was still thirty feet away.

Too far.

Rafe shoved the nearest door open and pulled Darby inside the room with him. A brief glance at her face had him wincing. Her complexion was ghostly white, her eyes wide and searching. With good reason.

They were in a world of trouble here.

Easing the door shut, he dropped her hand and did a quick survey of the room. It was another patient’s room, thankfully empty because—as the doctor had told Rafe earlier—Captain Buresh had cleared out the floor to keep Darby safe.

Not that his plan had worked.

Footsteps sounded down the hallway again, quiet—as if someone was trying not to make any noise—and stopping and starting, like someone was searching each room, one by one.

Rafe had to do something, fast. He ran to the window and looked out. A three- or four-story drop to the parking lot. No balcony. And there weren’t any other exits from this room. He did what he’d been trained to do long ago at the police academy—look up—because most people don’t. When he spotted the acoustic tiles in the ceiling above him, he realized exactly what he had to do.

“Rafe,” Darby whispered, “what’s going on? Wasn’t that Buresh on the phone? What did he say?”

He let out a quick breath. “A transformer blew. The captain said he and Daniels were in the E.R. He said we should stay in my room and wait for him to call back.”

“Then why did we leave your room?” Her voice was panicked, high-pitched.

He held a finger to her lips, reminding her to whisper. “Because Buresh said Daniels was with him.”

“I don’t understand.” She remembered to whisper this time, but her voice shook with each word. “What does that have to do with—”

He waved her to silence again and crossed to the door. He put his ear against the wood, listening. Nothing, then...another shuffle, a shoe scraping across tile. Whoever was searching the rooms was maybe halfway down the hall. How many doors had he and Darby passed on their sprint from his room? Ten on each side, eleven? Twenty-two rooms to search. Not a lot when there was practically nowhere to hide in each room, other than under the bed or in the bathroom, maybe in the small closet behind each door.

They were running out of time.

He rushed back to her and tried to explain. “Daniels was assigned to guard you,” he whispered. “When the lights went out, he should have immediately gone into my room to check on you. That’s SOP, standard operating procedure.” He looked up again, mentally measuring the height of the ceiling. He could easily lift Darby up there. But how would he follow her up? He didn’t want to prop any furniture beneath the hole where they climbed up. That would be like a sign telling the bomber exactly where they were.

“Should we call Buresh back?” Darby asked. “Maybe he forgot about this SOP thing.”

“He didn’t forget, and there’s no point in calling him back,” he answered, only half paying attention to the conversation. There, the bathroom door. If he pulled it closed, and braced his foot on the handle, then used the top of the doorframe for leverage, he might be able to pull himself up into the ceiling.

“Why not?” Darby’s voice broke on the last word.

Rafe forced himself to focus on what she was asking. “Buresh can’t help us, neither can Daniels.”

“Why not? Why can’t they help us?”

“Because, by now, they’re both dead.”

* * *

DARBY STARED AT RAFE in horror. He’d just told her two police officers were dead, and now he was calmly holding out his hand, telling her to climb on his shoulders so he could lift her into the ceiling?

The man was insane. And he was asking her to do the impossible.

Climb into that black hole where he’d removed the ceiling tile.

The thought of going into that dark space, being cramped between the roof and the flimsy network of railings holding the tiles in place, had her stomach churning with nausea.

“Darby, we have to go now.”

She shook her head and backed up a step. She drew in a choppy breath, then another, and risked a quick glance up. No, she wouldn’t do it.

She couldn’t.

Rafe frowned and dropped his hand. “What’s wrong?”

“I just...can’t...I can’t go up there.