eat.
They still don’t come. For hours and hours. Maybe days. I have no idea how long I’ve been in this dark hole, only that no training I had as a child prepared me for this.
For the possibility that I’d be left so utterly alone.
I’ll die down here. I’ll starve to death. No—first I’ll die of dehydration.
And no one will ever find my body. Nobody knows where I am.
Killian. I would give anything to see your face one last time.
That thought is what finally makes me break down and cry.
I lean against the dirt wall with the thin blanket wrapped around my shoulders, shivering like a dog, tears streaming down my face, and let myself sob. I let it all out. All the pain and confusion, all the regret and despair, all the dashed hopes and lost dreams.
I cry for Max and Fin, who’ll never know what happened to me. I cry for the life I could’ve lived, for all the warm summer nights and glorious winter sunrises and dinners with friends I’ll miss. For all the years I had ahead of me.
Years I might have spent with a man. Raising a family. Being in love.
Being loved.
I cry until I’m empty. Until I’m as hollow as a shell.
Then I wipe my face on the blanket, blow out a hard breath, and stand. On my heels, because that’s the only way I can do it without collapsing from pain. I take one of the empty plastic water bottles and use the uncapped end to start digging footholds into the dirt wall.
Because of all the things I am, a fucking quitter isn’t one of them.
I’ve only been digging for maybe five minutes when an explosion nearby knocks me onto my ass.
There’s an abrupt change in the air pressure, followed by a shower of dirt clods raining down onto my head. That explosion is followed quickly by several smaller ones. Then I hear bursts of automatic gunfire and the sound of men screaming. There’s more gunfire, closer, then an enraged, unearthly roar, like nothing I’ve ever heard. It comes again, raising all the hair on my arms.
It’s a scream of fury. Of vengeance. The scream of a demon thirsty for blood, its frenzied bellows echoing down the tunnels.
But it’s not a demon. It’s a man.
It’s my man, and somehow, he found me. He came for me.
And from the sound of it, he’s kicking some serious ass.
My heart takes off like a rocket. I scramble to my knees, craning my neck up toward the grate, toward the flickering orange light and the billowing smoke.
At the top of my lungs, I scream, “Killian! I’m here!”
Footsteps pound on dirt. Closer and closer they come, until a figure appears to one side of the grate and skids to a stop, looking down at me.
He looks like something out of a doomsday movie. He’s a soldier after the apocalypse, combing the ashes of the world for his lost love.
Clad in a military-style camouflage combat uniform, he’s wearing night vision goggles, heavy boots, kneepads, and a black helmet that Darth Vader would approve of. It covers his entire head and face. On his back is a tactical rucksack. The belt around his waist carries a huge knife in a sheath and several sidearms in holders. His chest is covered by a vest that has Velcro pockets stuffed with ammunition cartridges and grenades. Gripped in his gloved hands is an enormous black rifle with an infrared scope on the end.
I can’t even see his face because of the helmet, but I know it’s him.
I’d know that man anywhere.
I gaze up at him, my heart expanding inside my chest. With a hitch in my voice, I say, “Hi, honey. What took you so long?”
30
Jules
Killian lowers a metal ladder, slides down it like a fireman on a pole, grabs me, throws me over his shoulder, and climbs out of the dungeon with swift, silent efficiency. He doesn’t even jostle me on the way up.
I get the feeling he’s done this sort of thing before.
When we reach the top, he flips me over into his arms. He carries me through the wreckage of a building, navigating easily around smoking piles of rubble, stepping over bodies like they’re planks of wood.
The bald guy with the skull tattoo on his Adam’s apple lies on his back with his eyes wide open, a gaping wound in the side of his head where his brains were blown out.
I bury my face in Killian’s tactical vest and close my