As he stood looking around, he flexed his leg. It was sore, but not as bad as it had been the night before.
The corridor wasn’t much different from the one on the floor above, except that the lighting wasn’t quite as bright.
The first door he came to led to a room with three upright tanks that looked like they were twenty feet tall and twelve feet across. They were labeled “fresh water.” That made sense if you were in a closed facility. But did they really hold water?
There was no way to tell since he didn’t see a spigot on the side of the tanks.
He stared at the sign. It was in English—with no translation into anything that looked like Thai.
Well, Sophia had told him this facility had been constructed by the U.S. government.
He exited and continued down the hall. The next door led to a storeroom with shelves of cans and boxes. Food, medical supplies, toilet paper, linens, clothing. Again, the kind of things he’d expected to see. He walked along the rows of shelves, looking at labels. And as he had in the room with the water tanks, he saw everything was written in English—with additional information in Spanish on some of the cans.
Again, he could come up with a reason. The hideout had been stocked under a U.S. government contract. Or maybe they had taken the place over several years ago.
But it was difficult to believe that they hadn’t stocked any indigenous products. It certainly would have been cheaper to buy from the locals than to import everything from the States.
###
Sophia glanced over her shoulder. Martin was still in the bathroom, and she wasn’t going to go back there for a consultation.
Snatching up the portable GPS locator, she rushed down the corridor toward the hidden door that she’d used to enter the bunker. Cash was in the storeroom. She knew it. And if she could just get to him in time, she could bring him through. That would solve her biggest problem—how to get him out of there.
“Cash, stay right where you are,” she called out. She knew he couldn’t hear her with rock walls and a thick barrier between them, but it helped to feel like she was communicating with him.
And he was so close. So close.
Before she could open the door, a hand came down on her shoulder, and she screamed.
###
Cash heard a muffled scream. Either it was far away—or on the other side of a thick wall. It sounded like a woman, and the only woman he’d seen here was Sophia.
Now it sounded like she was in trouble, and his heart leaped into his throat, blocking his windpipe.
He wanted to call out to her, but he knew that was the wrong thing to do. Where was she? Or had he really heard her.
He moved toward the shelves at the far end of the room. It sounded like the scream had come from back there. Or was he making it up?
As he crossed the room, the door behind him opened, and a hard voice called, “Hold it right there.”