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“What will we do with him?”
“We’ll figure it out when we’re clear.”
Viktor felt Marissa stiffen beside him, but her face remained calm. They moved closer and spied Reed and another man. Trenton Cole was bound and gagged, sitting in one corner. Where’s the third man?
Viktor’s hackles rose but he was too late. They heard the cocking of the pistol behind them.
“Don’t move.”
Viktor could have easily disarmedthe man before him, but with the hostage situation, that was not an option. The man pushed him and Marissa forward after relieving them of their weapons. The two canisters gleamed ominously before them. Trenton Cole’s eyes widened, and filled with tears. He shouted what sounded like a muffled “No!” through the gag. Logan had a gun pointed to her father’s head.
“I was beginning to think you didn’t care for your father, Ms. Cole,” Reed drawled.
“Fuck you!” Marissa snarled.
“This is even better. You brought Baran with you,” Reed continued with relish. “Now I have to improvise on my boss’s plan of revenge because as you both can see,” he nodded to the canisters, “the clock is ticking.”
“Get to the point, Reed,” Viktor said icily.
“I will. It’s just too . . .” Reed sighed. “Tragic.”
He pulled a heavy chain and a padlock from the floor. “The original plan was to leave Ms. Cole here and have her suffocate by nerve gas, using her father as leverage and our ticket to escape. But since you’ve decided to join us, we’ll leave you too. Romantic, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Very,” Viktor replied sarcastically.
“However, I’m feeling benevolent,” Reed continued. “I’ll give you two a chance to stop the canisters from going off.”
Viktor eyed the timer. Less than five minutes.
“Clock’s ticking, asshole. If you guys are planning on getting out of here alive, you all best get moving,” Viktor said.
Reed smirked and walked forward, snatching away the gas masks and pouches of atropine from them. It was then that Viktor started feeling the inkling of panic. Not for himself, but for Marissa.
“As I said, I’m feeling benevolent,” Reed repeated, his voice laced with malice. “I’ll leave one injector behind. Test of true love, don’t you think?”
“You bastard,” Marissa cursed.
“Either you both choose to die, or maybe one would rather live than die for the other.”
Reed nodded to Logan to move ahead with Trenton Cole. “Good luck.”
The moment Reedturned the corner from where they were, Marissa and Viktor sprang into action. Reed didn’t take away their tool belt, so Viktor immediately worked on the trigger. They’d been through this exercise before. A building’s ventilation system was the most effective way to deliver the deadly agent, so they would either shut it down or reverse the airflow. The plan was to reverse the airflow to keep the gas containedwithin the basement as much as possible just in case an entrance was breached.
Thankfully, Marissa was familiar with the equipment used in the Senate Building. Not since the zee bomb mission had she felt a strange calm mixed with an underlying panic.
“How are you doing, Iz? We’ve got three and a half minutes,” Viktor called out to her.
“Almost there,” Marissa replied, punching in the code when it prompted her, she pushed the red button and yanked down on the lever. Almost instantly, a screeching sound echoed through the basement as the system ground in reverse.
“Done!” Marissa declared as she crouched down beside Viktor, who was studying a network of wires before him.
“This trigger is different,” Viktor said finally. “Open the other one.”
Marissa did as she was told and pulled out the control panel of the second canister. Viktor cursed a blue streak. It was identical to the first one.
“They took our phones,” he said rhetorically, and Marissa caught a hint of desperation in his voice.
Two minutes.
