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Not a single Lorr was among them, and Dante didn’t know if he should feel relieved or terrified at that fact. The thought of seeing Maraliza drugged and unconscious, holed up in a dank jail cell, was more than he could bear.
But if she isn’t here…
Dante didn’t let his mind wander into worst case scenarios. The fact was, he and Tinsley were on a mission, and he wouldn’t stop until he found his sister. He only hoped it wasn’t too late to save her when they did.
“She’s not here,” he said, turning back to Tinsley, trying to swallow the pain in his voice.
“Then we keep looking,” Tinsley replied.
Dante nodded and was about to leave the hallway when he hesitated. There were still so many victims here, and he didn’t know how to help them all. He knew he couldn’t rescue them, but he couldn’t leave with a clean conscience, either.
Tinsley answered the question for him.
“We need to go,” she said. “We can’t help them from in here. Only by shutting the whole operation down. But that means getting out of here.”
Dante’s heart ached at the thought of leaving them, but he knew Tinsley was right. They couldn’t very well sneak dozens of unconscious women out of a fortified facility. They’d need a lot more help.
He nodded. Together, he and Tinsley left the hallway. Casting a glance over his shoulder as he shut the door behind him, Dante vowed to help them as soon as he could.
For now, though, they still had to find his sister, and he couldn’t help but feel frustrated that they’d wound up at something of a dead end. Not only that, but now they had to find their way out of the facility again without getting caught and figure out how to find another thread to follow.
It was becoming disheartening, especially with what they’d just seen, but Dante knew they couldn’t give up. Maraliza needed him.
Tinsley must have sensed his distress again because she slipped her hand into his and squeezed. It was a simple gesture but a powerful one. Dante couldn’t help but feel a little lighter, a little more hopeful, a little more energized as they made their way back toward the vent shaft.
They were going to get out of there alive. They were going to figure out where his sister was. And they were going to rescue her. There were no alternative options, and he knew Tinsley felt the same. It was about the only thing giving him hope now that he’d realized Maraliza likely wasn’t on that tiny little planet after all.
“She’s out there somewhere,” he muttered to himself.
“And we’re going to find her,” Tinsley finished for him, squeezing his hand again.
Dante squeezed back.
Chapter 27
“Rest if you need to,” Dante whispered once they reached a flat part of the duct.
She didn’t have a choice. Going up through the duct was much harder than climbing down. Her quads were screaming. Surprisingly, so were her arms. She reached down into her pocket and then remembered she had let Dante finish her emra bar. She kind of regretted that now.
With no stimulant to provide the burst of energy she was truly craving, she knew mental fortitude was all that was going to get her through. She took a deep breath.
Thirty percent done, she thought. It was an old human military mantra. When you thought you were finished, you were only thirty percent depleted. Or was it seventy?
Dante suddenly reached up and grabbed her ankle. Tinsley froze automatically, waiting. She then heard what Dante’s keen hearing had picked up before her own—footsteps.
It sounded like Jorvlens were walking—no, running—directly below them. Tinsley knew they were almost at the top of the air duct, but now they had to wait.
The aggressive-sounding Jorvlen syllables didn’t mean anything to her without her translator, but she knew enough to be scared. Something wasn’t right. She could tell the Jorvlens were anxious. She just prayed it had nothing to do with her and Dante breaching their facility.
Dante firmly tapped her twice on the ankle, which she assumed was an all-clear signal. The close encounter had fired her up more than any emra bar ever could, and she practically ran up the rest of the duct.
She stepped out onto the roof and looked around. A second later, Dante exited the duct and, without a word, he picked her up around the waist and all but dove down next to a large air-handling unit.
“They are on high alert,” he whispered in her ear.
She nodded, knowing he was relaying what the Jorvlens were talking about. There was a large click and she jumped. Dante tightened his hold around her and squashed them even tighter up against the compressor.
Tinsley wasn’t sure what the click had been, but a second later, she understood. A huge spotlight swept in front of them. They were hidden from it, but they were also trapped.
