Page 18 of Little Dove

“I have something over here that shows nineteen fifty-four,” Lazaro says, pulling my gaze over to him where he’s standing by the large machine in the back, where papers are tacked to the wall. “Looks like this place was used for a few years, at least.”

Then he turns back and says, “Let’s check the other one. See what else we can find.”

The second bunker door is just as hard to open, but Lazaro manages and finds the light switch again easily. I immediately realize this room is different from the others. It’s set up like a meeting room, with corkboards and maps lining each wall. Some places are damaged in a way that suggests whatever used to be there was ripped down. In the center of the room is another large boardroom table, and in the back left corner, a good-sized filing cabinet has been abandoned, open and empty.

“This is probably where the leaders met,” I surmise. “But why would they have it so close to the main door? Wouldn’t it make more sense for this room to be further down the hall? I mean, that tunnel keeps going.”

“American design is different from what I’m used to, but yes, that would make sense. Unless this room is a decoy; it might not have held anything of importance, but they could use it if they needed to.”

It’s a fascinating part of unknown history.

I look to the far left of the room and see another door. It opens with ease, revealing another bathroom. I close it and look around again, seeing a small wooden handle in the wall. It’s odd, and when I reach for it, it gives way easily.

Poking my head out, I realize that we’re back in the tunnel, in another recess with another door on the left wall.

“There are more exits and even more rooms. Damn, they must have been planning for an invasion or something.”

“Weren’t you just saying that in a setting like this, you never give yourself only one way out?” Lazaro muses. “Hell, I wouldn’tbe surprised if there are secret exits in each of these rooms—ones to the outside as well as into the other bunkers.”

The thought of discovering them excites me, but he gives me a stern look.

“No, not yet. We need to keep looking for the other way out, in case anyone finds their way in.”

“Do you really think they will?”

Lazaro shrugs. “They’re going to figure out pretty quickly that we didn’t keep running in the desert, which means they’ll start looking for places we might have hidden. If the existence of this place is mentioned anywhere, they’ll find it. We need to be ready for any possibility.”

Seriously, why are these guys so persistent?

“All right then. Let’s keep looking.”

The third bunker is bigger than the other two and looks to be the main sleeping and cooking quarters. The room has a kitchen on one side, and a good fifteen beds fill the middle of the room. There are two small bathrooms, both complete with showers.

The final bunker is smaller, the walls lined with shelves and scattered boxes on the floor, indicating it might have been used for storage. Inside one of the boxes are some well-packaged old cans. I pull out a couple of them, but of course, they’re expired by a good fifty years.

When we leave the fourth bunker, we find ourselves at what appears to be a dead end, but we can both feel and smell fresher air.

“There’s definitely a door nearby,” I mutter, studying the walls carefully.

I start moving my hands across the surfaces, trying to find a hidden latch or button, like the door upstairs and the table—there’s certainly a theme. Finally, I find a small lever, just above my head height. They clearly didn’t build their escape tunnel with a small woman in mind. When I pull it, the wall to my rightcracks and releases, revealing a door that fits seamlessly into the rest of the wall.

Light pours through the crack, and fresh air fills the tunnel.

I give Lazaro a triumphant look, but it falters slightly when I see him staring at me intensely. Before I can ask him what’s wrong, he reaches out, hauls me up, and presses his mouth to mine.

My brain must short-circuit again, because I don’t even attempt to push him away. I kiss him back awkwardly, despite the voice inside my head screaming at me to stop. But he tastes so good, and I just need a little more.

When he pulls his mouth from mine, he rasps, “You amaze me, dolcezza.” Then he kisses me one more time, hard, before he sets me back on my feet, a sexy grin pulling at his lips as I sway slightly, my knees turned to jelly.

I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.

Yeah, I need to stop that ASAP. Kissing him is dangerous.

Lazaro turns and pushes the door open, the hinges screaming until we finally reveal the bottom of a sizeable hole in the ground and a ladder leading to a grate across the surface above us. Lazaro motions for me to wait as he carefully climbs it, head tilted slightly like he’s listening for noises outside. When he reaches the top, he peeks through the grate, and after a long, tense moment, he carefully pushes it up, both of us freezing when it makes a low grinding whine.

When nothing happens, he pushes it the rest of the way off and hauls himself out. I want to follow him up, but common sense tells me to stay put. After another five minutes, Lazaro comes back and calls down, “It looks like we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Can I come and see?”

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