Chapter 321

“No, Daisy.” Victor shook his head. “You can go back to the passages, even for Cassidy. It’s too dangerous.”

I pulled away from him. “I’ve been in the passages twice this morning. I just came from there, and I’m in one piece. I’ll be fine.”

“Listen to him, Daisy. I can’t lose you either,” Alex said. But his face was contorted in agony. He loved Cassidy. She was his second chance for happiness in life.

I couldn’t let him lose her like he lost my mother.

I kissed Victor and backed away. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Daisy, no!” Victor and Alex shouted.

“Don’t worry.” I tucked the gun into my waistband. “I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t ask you to risk your life to save Cassidy’s,” Alex said. “I’ve only had you back in my life for a year. I don’t want to lose you either.”

“You didn’t ask me to do anything. Stop worrying. I’ll be back,” I insisted and hugged Alex.

After giving Victor a last loving look, I left the room and made my way through the complex’s empty halls to the bathroom.

I checked the bathroom to be sure it was empty before moving to the Ivory Columns and opening the passageway door. When I checked inside the tunnel, there was silence, so I slipped into the corridor and let the door close behind me.

Carefully moving through the passage, I ducked into a cross passage when loud laughter and merriment echoed off the stone walls.

The laughter was coming my way, so I hid until the men passed by on their way outside.

The faction members were jubilant about something. Their high spirits and laughter were offensive to me, considering what their mission had been.

But why were they happy? They had lost the battle to take over The Association.

Plus, the many faction members who had been arrested were sure to tell the authorities everything they knew to get lighter jail sentences, and all of the members would soon be identified and become fugitives from justice.

That thought gave me an idea. I could help the police by retrieving the memory cards from my cameras. They were bound to have caught something useful.

I stopped at the junction to the spy’s passage and grabbed the tiny camera Cassidy and I left near a light fixture. I tucked it into my back pocket and moved on to the next camera.

It was near the grate that listened in on Victor’s office. As I reached up toward the low ceiling and reclaimed the other camera, I heard Victor telling Alex I would be fine.

It was nice to know that even though he was worried, he had faith in me.

It made me smile until I saw what looked like a painter’s drop cloth covering something a little further down the passage.

“That’s strange,” I mumbled.

It wasn’t there a short time ago when I stood there listening to the silence in Victor’s office. What was it, and who put it there?

It couldn’t be more lemon boxes. They would have taken all of them, and it wasn’t shaped right. The bottom was square like a box, but the top half was shaped like a person.

I stepped closer and began to pull away the dropcloth to see what was beneath it when it moved!

Someone was hidden under the cloth. Was it Cassidy?

I yanked away the cloth and confirmed my suspicions. Cassidy was lucky. The men had tied her up and hid her under a drop cloth instead of killing her.

Cassidy had a cloth tied over her mouth and a rope around her wrists. Her eyes were wide and scared, and she kept looking down at the dark metal box she sat on.

I pulled the gag from her mouth and began untying the ropes that bound her wrists.

“Daisy, you must get out of here.” Cassidy trembled as she spoke. “Tell Alex to get everyone out of the building. Do it now!”

“Why?” I asked. “I’ve almost got you untied. We can go to Alex and Victor together.”

She shook her head, and tears ran down her cheeks. “Daisy, I’m sitting on a bomb! They said it would blow up this section of the complex and kill everybody in it.”

“What? No way!” I hurried to untie the knotted rope and pulled Cassidy to her feet.

The metal box she had been seated on had three lights. A clear one was on. A green one was flashing slowly. And a red one wasn’t lit.

Beneath the lights was a small screen with numbers. It read seven twenty-two when I first saw it. But the number was growing smaller as I examined the box.

“That’s a timer!” I exclaimed and backed away. The timer made it real in my mind. “It’s counting down. We must warn them.”

I began to pound on the grate and yelled, “There’s a bomb! Victor, Alex, get out of the building. There’s a bomb in the passages!”

“Daisy,” Victor’s voice came through the grate. “Did you find Cassidy, sweetheart? I can’t make out what you’re saying.”

I repeated the warning about the bomb, but he couldn’t hear me. The grates must be built to only allow sound to flow in one direction.

“Your voice is too muffled for me to hear what you’re saying,” Victor said.

I pulled on Cassidy’s arm. “We have to hurry to his office and warn them.”

“We won’t make it in time to save our mates or for them to get everyone out of the building, Daisy,” Cassidy insisted. “Look. There’s only a little more than six minutes left on the timer.”

“We can’t let Victor and Alex be killed!” I cried.

“Let’s see if we can pick it up,” Cassidy suggested. “We must get it out of here.”

“What if it blows up when we lift it?” I asked. I knew nothing about bombs other than what I saw on TV, and I was terrified.

“It won’t blow up from lifting it,” Cassidy said. “They armed it in the other tunnel where they caught me retrieving my cameras.”

“I heard one of them tell the others that it was safe to carry the bomb. It will blow up ten seconds after the timer runs out, and the red light comes on.”

“Then let’s get it out of here,” I said and moved to one side of the metal box. I couldn’t walk away from the bomb, knowing it would kill everyone in Victor’s office and the rest of this section of the complex.

The box was about two feet high and three feet long, and it had two handles on each side. The handles would make it easy to carry …if we could lift it.

We each took a side, and I was surprised to see the bomb rise from the stone floor.

“It’s heavy, but I think we can manage,” Cassidy insisted.

“Let’s get it out of here,” I said, trying not to freak out. “Which way is the closest to outside?”

“Up the long hallway to the back of the building,” Cassidy replied. “And we’ve got a little over five minutes until it blows up.”

“Then we better hurry,” I said, and we began carrying the box through the passages.

We made it to the long passage when Cassidy began to move faster.

“We have less than four minutes to get it outside,” she told me. “Let’s try to run.”

My gaze met hers, and fear flashed through me. The fear made adrenaline course through my body, and I nodded.

“Okay, hurry,” I agreed, and we began to run.

The weight of the heavy metal box between us made it awkward, but we made it past the bathroom exit before we had to slow down to adjust our grip on the handles.

“There’s a minute and a half left on the timer,” Cassidy announced.

“Then let’s move,” I said.

We ran as fast as we could. Our fear and the desire to live made us faster and stronger than we ever thought possible.

We were at the cross tunnel to the outside entrance behind the Azalea when Cassidy yelled, “There’s less than a minute!”

We hurried to the stone wolf that would open the door, and Cassidy pressed its nose.

“It won’t open!” she cried. “The faction must have done something to jam it.”

“Put the box down and try again,” I said. This situation was a nightmare. Would I feel the explosion? No, I had to stop thinking that way and fight. I wanted to live.

“But there’s only thirty seconds left,” Cassidy sobbed. “I’ll never see Alex again. I wish I would have told him I loved him more often.”

“I’m not giving up,” I declared. “We’re so close to surviving this ordeal.”

Please open,” I said as I moved closer and pressed on the wolf’s nose.