“Lovely decorative colors,” Matthew muttered.
I smirked, but it quickly faded as Dawson moved ahead of us, approaching the third and final door. “Careful, brother. We take this slow.”
Dawson nodded. “I’ve never been here. Blake?”
Blake moved to his side. “Should be another tunnel, shorter and wider, and there’ll be doors on the right side. Cells—really, outfitted with a bed, a TV, and a bathroom. There’ll be about twenty rooms. I don’t know if the others are occupied or not.”
Others?
Kat looked at me sharply. “We can’t just leave them.”
Before I could answer, Blake intervened. “We don’t have time, Katy. Taking too many will slow us down, and we don’t know what kind of condition they are in.”
“But—”
“For once, I agree with Blake.” I met her shocked stare, and I hated myself for this. “We can’t, Kitten. Not now.”
Kat pressed her lips together, and I knew she wasn’t okay with this, but we didn’t have the time, and we hadn’t planned for rescuing more than Chris and Beth.
Blake keyed in the last code: Daedalus.
The sound of several locks sucking back into place broke the silence, and a light at the top of the door, on the right, flashed green. I moved in front of Kat as Blake inched the door open, and Matthew had done as I’d asked, blocked her from behind.
“We’re clear,” Blake said, sounding relieved.
We went through the door, discovering another onyx shield. Now we had two to get the others through. This wasn’t going to be easy. The tunnel was like the one above, but it was all white and much shorter, wider.
We were here.
My gaze tracked my brother as Blake called out before rushing down the hall, toward the last of the cells. “The third cell is hers.”
Dawson spun around as Kat and I moved close to him. He reached for the onyx-coated door handle. There was a flicker of pain across his stoic face, but the door opened, and my brother… My brother started trembling. His entire body shook as he croaked out one word, “Beth?”
I saw her then, a slender girl sitting on a narrow bed, and she looked like I had remembered—brown hair tucked back in a smooth ponytail and her elfin face pale. The moment recognition flared in her eyes, the second her gaze locked with my brother’s, I wanted to whoop with relief.
Dawson staggered forward, hands opening and closing at his sides, and all he could say was her name over and over.
She scrambled forward, her gaze darting all around, but then hitting him and staying.
“Dawson? Is that… I don’t understand.”
They moved at the same time, coming together in a rush. Their arms went around each other. Dawson lifted her up as he buried his face in her neck. When he kissed her, I shifted my gaze, wanting to give them the privacy we really couldn’t afford, but seeing them together, clinging to each other, got me right in the gut.
Dawson and Beth loved each other, and I had been an asshole to not support them since the beginning.
But we needed to get out of here.
“Dawson,” I said quietly.
My brother pulled away from Beth as he grabbed her arms, and the moment her mouth wasn’t occupied with Dawson’s, she started asking questions. “What are you guys doing? How did you all get in here? Do they know?”
Dawson was grinning like his face was going to split into two. “Later,” he said. “But we have to go through two doors and it’s going to hurt—”
“Onyx shields, I know,” Beth said.
Whelp. Douche Bag had been correct. Speaking of him, I frowned as I saw him coming up the hall, carrying the prone body of a dark-haired Luxen boy. “Is he okay?”
Blake nodded, but he was pale and tense. “I…he didn’t recognize me. I had to keep him quiet.”
Kat hastily looked away, and I knew despite all the crap Blake had done, she felt bad for him in this instance. Hell, who wouldn’t?
Beth turned toward Blake. “You can’t—”
“We need to go.” Blake cut her off and prowled past us. “We’re almost out of time.”
Beth was shaking her head vigorously. “But—”
“We need to go, Beth. We know.” Dawson kissed her quickly, and she nodded, but the panic was building in the wide hall, threatening to infect us all.
Urgency kicked adrenaline into high gear, and without any more delay, the five of us took off down the hall. Skidding to a stop, I punched the code into panel on the wall, and the door opened.
I jerked.
Simon Cutters was standing in the waiting room, so obviously not dead. Everyone stumbled to a halt behind me.
“Oh shit,” I said.