Taggart Family Values - Lexi Blake Page 0,87

to kill the bad guy. His heart was behind your shoulder. I knew what I was doing and I wasn’t about to let him drag you away and use you as a human shield. As for the auction… I know you won’t believe me but I felt bad about that. I should have found another way but it worked out. That invite led to us all getting valuable intelligence. I’m sorry about…well, I’m just sorry.”

He tried to keep his eyes on the monitor, but he could feel her moving behind him. “You halfway sound like you care, Maggie.”

“I did and I do,” she said quietly. “You’re not going to be able to untangle that mess, Ben. We don’t have near enough time.”

She cared? About him? “I need some optimism.”

That was the moment the lights went out. They were plunged into complete darkness. Ben reached out, putting the tablet down.

He stepped back, turning and reaching out for her. “Maggie?”

“I’m here.” She moved close to him, bumping up against his chest. Her arms went around him. “I don’t want to lose you. I can’t see a thing.”

He couldn’t see a damn thing either, but he could already feel something. A chill went through the room. If the power had gone out, then the climate control would go as well. It was possible the venting had opened and they were about to get a big dose of what it meant to be twenty-three thousand feet above sea level.

The truth was even if he could get them out, it wouldn’t matter now. They could try to climb down, but their time was running out, and this was the kind of climb that took hours and hours without the aid of a helicopter.

And they couldn’t hack into a system when the wireless was down.

He held her for a moment, taking in the gravity of the situation. His eyes adjusted and he realized something was still working. “Is the timer still ticking down?”

“Yes.” She laid her head on his shoulder, the same one she’d shot. “It’s on some kind of battery, but if I try to clip it, it looks like it triggers the system.”

Naturally.

“And the sensor that connects it to the bomb on top of the mountain is very likely battery operated, too.” It’s what he would do. Huisman would have left nothing to chance. He’d set everything up perfectly. He’d even left them in the dark.

Like rats on a sinking ship.

How did he want to spend the last half hour of his life?

“I think I can see enough to get around now.” Maggie took a step back. He heard her boots move across the floor. “Damn it. Well, the power going out didn’t kill the security system. That door is not budging.”

Because the man on the other side of it would have been very careful. Had Huisman hurried and hustled to make this happen? Had he realized he was going down and scrambled to catch the hunter in a trap of his own? Or had this always been his plan?

Ben rather thought it was the latter.

He heard a long sigh and then a single stream of light cut through the darkness. Maggie moved through the room, toward the big four-poster bed. She opened the nightstand and started going through it.

“Oh, look. The good doctor believed in safe sex,” she murmured. “And a shocking amount of lube. Who needs that much lube? Ah, there we go.”

She set down the small flashlight and there was the scratching sound of a match striking. She lit the candles that had decorated the room.

“Do you think he used this place as his pleasure palace?” Maggie asked as she filled the room with soft light.

Ben realized that he hadn’t moved. Not an inch. Since that moment when Huisman’s words had whispered through his brain—how will you spend your last hour?—he’d been locked in place, his focus shifting from survival to something else.

Her.

She turned, her pink hair still somehow so vibrant in the candlelight. It had softened all of her other features. “You okay?”

It was a ridiculous question. They were trapped inside a mountain that was going to blow up and decimate a whole lot of the population of their planet. He was not okay. “No.”

Maggie stepped in front of him. “You need to have a little faith. We’re stuck. There’s nothing we can do, but our people know what’s going on. They won’t let this happen. I assure you that my team is taking that state-of-the-art helo up the mountain