“So do you think the entire floor down there is smoky?”
He nodded.
“Do you have more masks?”
“Nope, just the two. She frowned at that, her hands balled into fists, and said, “Well, that wasn’t very forward thinking.”
He just rolled his eyes at her. “We could only carry so much through the tunnels and still get up here.”
“I suppose. But why can’t we just go back down through that smoke?”
“Because a chemical agent has been added to it, possibly some drugs to knock us out,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure we can stay in here much longer.” He pulled her forward into the hallway.
She stared at him in shock. “How about we go up, and you get a helicopter to take us off?”
“How about we go up, and they have a helicopter and a gunman waiting for us?”
She sucked in her breath and stared at him in shock. “Is that what they’ll do?”
“That’s what I would do,” he said. He glanced back at the gas coming up from the open vent. “Is that dissipating at all?”
“It is,” Diesel replied. “If one of us puts wet cloths over our faces, we might get down a flight or two.”
“Well, that would be better than up at this point,” he said. “But the thing is, we have to get past the next floor and at least get down to the fifth.”
“I think we can do that,” Diesel said. Suddenly they heard some noises. Shane looked at Diesel, who said, “It appears we don’t have any choice.”
Shane took his mask and put it on Shelly, despite her objections. “Not now, Shelly.”
Diesel put his on. They quickly grabbed wads of paper towels and soaked them in the men’s room sink. Then Shane took off his shirt and wrapped it around his nose and mouth, tying it tight in the back. “Close your mouth,” he told Shelly, and then he put the wet paper towels inside the mask up against her mouth. He and Diesel did the same with the rest of the wet paper towels. Next thing she knew, she was picked up with a shriek.
“Don’t,” Shane said. “Not a word. Now keep your eyes closed and hang on tight.”
She sucked in her breath and held on to him. She didn’t know what was going on but assumed they were going inside the ventilation shaft. She burrowed close against his neck, worried that he didn’t have a mask on. The next thing she knew, they were inside and slowly working their way down. She didn’t know if he was trying to cough, but he wasn’t breathing very much.
Suddenly they burst through the bottom of a vent and went down even farther. When he came out the other side, he put her down, then rolled onto the ground, hacking and coughing.
She quickly pulled the shirt off his face and looked at him. “Oh, my God. Shane, are you okay?”
He nodded, but his eyes were streaming. She handed the wet paper towels from her mask to him, as he immediately put them on his eyes. She checked on Diesel. She and Diesel made it through better, with the masks. “You guys could have been killed doing that,” she said crossly.
Diesel laughed. “Well, we could have been,” he said, “but chances were good that we wouldn’t.” He looked at Shane, who had stopped coughing now.
“Now,” Shane rasped, “let’s get you out of here.” He coughed one more time, and his eyes seemed to be better.
“Sure,” she said. “You got any idea how?”
“Well, we could take the stairs,” he said, “but the elevator might be faster.” He quickly grabbed her hand and raced her to the elevator. “I wish there was a whole bank of them,” he said, as he pushed the buttons. One opened almost immediately, and he pulled her inside, and Diesel stepped in right behind them.
“Will they be waiting for us?”
“Well, let’s hope not,” he said, “but we’re ready for them just in case.”
She shook her head. “How can you take all this so lightly?” she murmured. But she was studying Diesel too, and he appeared to be taking it all in stride, the same as Shane. “Is this the life you lead too?” she asked him.
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “Well, I retired a while ago,” he said, “but it doesn’t appear to be sticking.”
She shook her head. “Jesus, if this is your idea of retirement—”
The door opened just then, and nobody appeared to be outside waiting for them. The men stepped out carefully, but the wide corridor was empty. She was walked down the hallway—past where the security staff should have been—which led outside. Immediately they were surrounded by first responders and separated. She cried out for Shane, only to see him surrounded by armed SWAT. She was rushed off to an ambulance, where she was checked over. The oxygen really helped, but she tried to tell the EMT that Shane really needed oxygen. When the EMT failed to listen, she finally shouted at him.
“Those two men saved me,” she snapped. “They need oxygen.
The EMT looked at her in surprise, then looked to where Shane and Diesel still stood, surrounded by SWAT and NYPD, but with their hands in the air. The EMT walked over and immediately put an oxygen mask on each of them. When the cops surrounding them tried to argue, the EMT shook his head and pointed at her.
One of the cops came over and asked Shelly, “What can you tell us about this?”
Chapter 3
“Shane’s the guy the terrorists were waiting for,” she said. “He’s like special ops or something. Shane and his partner came in, rescued me, and brought me out.” He looked at her in shock, then raced back to the others. It took another few minutes to get the all clear, and, apparently by then, everybody had calmed down. She sagged against the side of the ambulance. One of the ambulance drivers was a woman.
She looked at Shelly and said, “Exciting day for you.”
“Not by choice,” she said. “I’d have been happy to stay home with a cup of coffee and miss all this.”
“Yeah. Some days are like that, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said, yawning. “Gosh, I’m really sleepy all of a sudden.”
“Stress will do that do you. Do you want to jump in here and lie down on the gurney?”
She looked up at her gratefully and said, “I would love to, but I don’t need to go to the hospital or anything.”
“Come on. Just go ahead and lie down for a few minutes,” she said. “It’s not a problem. Here. I can shut the door and give you some peace and quiet.”
Maybe it was what she’d just been through, or maybe it was everything else going on in her world, but Shelly just wasn’t feeling it. “No, that’s okay. Thanks, though.” And, with that, she hopped off and walked to where Shane stood, still explaining what had gone on. She caught the relief in his face when he saw her. She walked over, wrapped her arms around him, and just held on tight. “I don’t want to let you go,” she said.
“Ditto.” He held her close, as he answered all the questions.
She turned and looked at the uniformed officers. “Did you guys even go up there? Did you go in and start a recovery mission?” she snapped. “Did you get to the roof to see how the killers are getting out of here?”