Dayne smiled again. “I’m just a single dad trying to save the world. Please help me.”
The guy really did have the charm down. “You’re a dad.”
He tugged a worn wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open, holding up a picture of a cute kid with really green eyes. The kid looked more human than his dad. “His name is Drake. Named after a relative. He’s visiting family close by right now.”
“Where’s his mother?” Promise asked.
Dayne shook his head. “She didn’t survive the last war.” He swallowed, his throat moving as he put the wallet back in place. “Please just tell me you’ll consider what I’ve said.”
“I already have.” She backed up until she all but sat on the sunny windowsill. “Ivar!” she screamed. “Help!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ivar tore into Promise’s office, smashing the door into the back of something solid. He kicked it open, and a bookcase fell over with a loud crash. The second his gaze landed on his woman, his heart stopped trying to burst out of his ribs. Fury caught him, and he tried to banish emotion for the first time in months. His blood felt like it was about to boil. “You okay?”
She sat on the windowsill, clutching a notebook to her chest. “He shoved the bookcase in front of the door with one hand,” she said, her eyes wide. “Just one hand. Like it weighed nothing, and his movement was too fast for me to see. The guy was just a blur. Then he jumped.”
Ivar looked frantically around, his gaze catching on an open grate in the ceiling. “Who?”
“Dayne. Kurjan leader. He’s—”
Before she could finish, Ivar was already in motion, leaping up and yanking himself into the opening. His shoulders were too wide, and he crashed through the adjacent ceiling tiles, sending them spiraling down. The metal cut into his hands as he held himself aloft. “All alert. We’ve got a Kurjan in the ducts,” he said into his comms, looking one way and then the other down the empty tubes. What the fuck? He couldn’t leave Promise unguarded, and the ducts probably wouldn’t take his weight. He’d end up falling into a classroom and probably killing whoever he landed on. Even though Kurjans were tall, they weren’t as large as hybrids. The need to chase the bastard was a physical burn through his blood.
He dropped back down, his boots cracking more tiles on the ground. “The ducts are different than on the blueprints,” he said, taking in Promise from head to toe. She appeared unharmed. The need to touch her, to pull her close, shocked him.
“Renovations in the fifties, I think,” she said. Her eyes widened. “There are tunnels from even before that time—from the first incarnation of the school. As undergrads, we’d go down there and diagram equations on the walls. There are some famous ones there.” She pushed off the windowsill and dropped her notebook. “I’ll show you.”
He grabbed her hand and ran into the hallway, grateful it was empty during the class hour. Her touch calmed him so he could plan. The rest of the team had to move and now. “We have a rabbit,” he said into the comms. “Head north and down.”
She struggled to keep up as they ran through the halls to the north entrance, her breath panting. “Slow down. Keep going to the end of this hallway, and there’s a boiler room down a couple of flights. It’s a way into the tunnels that the students don’t know about. Only faculty. As students, we went to the edge of the campus to enter in order to follow the tunnels. They go in many directions.”
“Where?” he growled, slowing down enough that she didn’t trip. “Where did you enter them?”
“Beyond the parking area by the east side of campus. It’s by what’s now the water reclamation facility,” she gasped, partially bending over as they reached a locked door that was just opposite the double doors leading out to a courtyard.
“Tunnel entry at east end—forget the north,” he barked into the comms. “Get there, now.” He put his boot to the door, springing the old metal open to slam into the wall. Narrow cement steps, dirty and marred by oil, led down into darkness. He had to get her to safety before he followed the enemy. She was all that mattered. “Go outside into the sun and stay there. Right in the middle of the lawn and away from any trees.”