Page 44 of Red Zone Awakened

“You think they’ve found the panic room?”a voice asked.

Mace tensed and shot Keiko a look.She arched her eyebrows.It was the first she’d heard of it too.

“I doubt it,” someone else said.“Shepherd keeps their locations to herself.I’d be surprised if they even knew there was one.”

“Where do you reckon it is?”

“My guess?The office, probably.”

Keiko’s mind raced.Panic room.A safe place to hide.Somewhere to ride out this whole mess.But where?Not the office.They were wrong about that.The office would have had a security team attached to it, so Miriam wouldn’t feel vulnerable in there.No, a panic room would make more sense in a place where Miriam felt exposed.Her eyes snapped to Mace.The bedroom!It had to be.

He pursed his lips and made a softshhsound at her, which made her glare back.Of course she wasn’t going to make a noise.She didn’t want to die.They lay there for what seemed like hours, the steel beams, mesh, and cables biting into their bodies as they listened to the Freedom fighters move about beneath them.The dust grew thicker, as though attracted to them, and the air became dense.

Keiko’s nose twitched, and she slowly reached up to rub it.Mace stared at her movement and frowned.She was about to smile at him, to silently signal that everything was fine.But it wasn’t.Her nose began to tingle, and she knew what was coming.She was going to sneeze.And there was no stopping it.He opened his mouth, probably to warn her to be silent.But it was too late.She rammed her face into the crook of her arm.

And sneezed.

* * *

Mace saw the sneeze coming and sent out sound waves to counteract the noise, but he was still new to this noise-dampening thing and didn’t quite get the frequency right.Although the sneeze wasn’t as loud as it would have been, it was still audible.

“What was that?”a voice barked.

There was nothing they could do but lie still and hope they weren’t found.

“Check the elevator shaft again.”

“We’ve been over it twice.There’s no way they could’ve climbed out of the elevator and into the shaft without us spotting them.There’s no place to hide in there.”

“What about the ceiling?”

Keiko dug her fingernails into Mace’s arm, and he clamped his hand over hers, holding it tight.

“I can’t see an access panel,” someone said.

“Yeah,” another voice chimed in.“You’d need to crack open one of the ceiling tiles to get into the crawl space.They did that in my apartment and had to replace the tile when they were through ’cause they broke it to bits getting in there.Cost me a fortune.”

“My apartment has built-in access,” the first voice said.

“You see any access?”the other guy demanded.

In the silence that followed, Mace quietly released Keiko’s hand and inched his toward the gun at his side.

“There’s no way they’re up there,” the second voice said.“Even if there was an access panel, there’s nothing around here they could climb on to get up there.No chair.Table.Ladder.There’s no sign anyone stood on something to reach the ceiling.”

Those words made Mace insanely grateful he was freakishly large and able to access the crawl space without help.

“Where the hell are they, then?”The first voice again.“We saw them on camera, walking through the apartment.There’s no way they could’ve slipped past us.I want these two.Want them bad.That asshole killed two of our people.He isn’t getting away with that.Not on my watch.”

“Maybe they went out on the ledge again?”a woman said.“There’s balcony access.They wouldn’t need to break a window.”

“Check all the ledges.Search this place from top to bottom.I want them found.”

Mace released a slow breath and glanced over at Keiko.Her eyes were so wide it was a wonder they didn’t pop out of her head.They were safe for now, all they could do was wait until the Freedom fighters gave up on their search.He bent his head and pressed another kiss to the back of her hand, then smiled against it.When he looked back up at her, she rolled her eyes at him, and he grinned.

Keiko Sato was a remarkable woman.No matter what came her way, she adapted to cope with it.He honestly couldn’t remember ever coming across anyone like her.She was brave, tenacious, smart, funny, seriously sexy, and just violent enough to give her a little bit of an edge.She was beautiful: inside and out.He’d seen how she cared for her friend Abigail, taking the time to reassure her in the middle of a press conference.She noticed people, saw what they needed, and tried to give it to them.And she was so damn brave.Walking into situations people twice her size would hesitate to take on.

He caught her frowning at him and realized he was staring.Man, she was adorable when she got all grumpy on him.He just wanted to pick her up, put her in his pocket, and keep her with him all the time.Everything about her drew him to her.When he thought about it, she was pretty much his perfect woman.Then he remembered that she worked for CommTECH, was born to a different century, and could never accept him or the life he led.